Entertainment

Bryan Cranston Is Headed Back to Sitcom Land

by Alanna Bennett

From one final season to the next: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston will be returning to How I Met Your Mother this year. He will not be playing a meth kingpin. As far as we know. For those How I Met Your Mother fans with long memory — or who have perhaps recently rewatched the whole series through Netflix — you might remember Cranston's previous appearances on the show. He played Hammond Druthers, Ted's sadistic boss and the architect of unintentionally phallic buildings.

Ted eventually overcame Druthers' powers and became his boss, then fired him on his birthday, then fired him again while he was having a heart attack.

CBS broke the news through a tweet, and no further details have yet been announced. It was accompanied with the show-title-mashup hashtag #BreakingMOTHER.

This season of How I Met Your Mother — its ninth and last — takes place entirely over the span of Barney and Robin's wedding weekend, so it's possible Druthers will make a crash-landing at the festivities and make things interesting for Ted & Company.

Breaking Bad ends this week (oh god), which we're still in denial about, but it will be nice to see Cranston stretch his sitcom legs again; sometimes after too much Walter White we forget what he looks like without the Machiavellian crazy-eyes.