Actress Cobie Smulders admits she was apprehensive when she learned that her character on CBS' popular comedy How I Met Your Mother, newscaster Robin Scherbatsky, was about to become smitten with the show's notorious ladies' man, Barney Stinson. The Moonlighting rule of episodic television would have it that there's no faster way to ruin a long-running series than to pair off the main characters.

Mostly, Smulders says, she didn't want to take Robin immediately from one love interest (stand-up architect Ted, played by Josh Radnor) to Neil Patrick Harris' morally dubious Barney quite so quickly.

''For a while, I was confused about that,'' she says. ``But I think it's a very endearing pairing, Barney and Robin. It's an interesting dynamic to watch.''

If any show can pull off the romantic shuffling, it's How I Met Your Mother, whose premise affords creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas a lot of freedom. The show unfolds as one extended flashback, with middle-aged Ted (voiced by Bob Saget) recounting to his children his younger days in New York with his four best friends (Smulders, Harris, and, as married couple Marshall and Lily, Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan).

Smulders and Harris say they're excited about the budding romance between Robin and Barney, who confessed their true feelings to one another in the season finale.

''I'm assuming we get together next season,'' Harris says to Smulders.

''I feel like if we do, we'll have an open relationship and you can do whatever you want,'' she responds. ``But you come home to me.''

''That doesn't seem like Barney would want Robin to have an open relationship,'' Harris observes.

''And therein lies the comedy,'' says Smulders with a wry smile.

To the casual observer, Barney Stinson seems reprehensible. An incorrigible womanizer who just celebrated his 200th sexual conquest, he's an egomaniac loyal only to his ''bro code,'' though even that doesn't stop him from executing extreme pranks to embarrass his buddies.

Somehow, Harris manages to bring an endearing, impish spark to the cad -- work that earned him supporting-actor Emmy nominations in 2007 and 2008. He says he's grateful that the Robin story, which developed after the characters slept together last season, is allowing him to explore a softer, potentially more likable side of Barney.

''As she was concerned about flipping from one guy to another really quickly,'' Harris says, ``I was concerned about Barney losing his womanizing edge. It's sort of the only part of the character. It's been fun this season for Barney to have just another layer, a sort of human layer of struggling between true feelings and his own bravado. I'm anxious to see what they plan to do with it.''

Bays admits that he and Thomas haven't worked out all the details. The idea for the unexpected coupling, he says, came from an episode in the maiden 2005 season, when Robin and Barney discovered that they're kindred spirits -- ``They both love smoking cigars and drinking scotch, and they both have pretty relaxed attitudes toward relationships and don't really want to settle down.''

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