How Ted Won the Belt [with Dave Hemingson] | S3E3 "Third Wheel"
How We Made Your Mother
Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas
4.8 • 920 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Josh and Craig are joined by Dave Hemmingson to revisit “Third Wheel,” the Season 3 fan-favorite where newly single Ted unexpectedly finds himself navigating the possibility of a threesome with returning guest stars Busy Philipps and Danica McKellar. Dave talks about joining the writers’ room during a pivotal moment for the series, helping launch the “free-range Ted” era after the Robin breakup, and crafting the episode’s frantic, almost real-time energy inspired by farce and physical comedy. The group digs into Barney’s surprising vulnerability, Marshall and Lily’s enthusiastic “mission control” support of Ted’s big night, the origins of the tramp stamp storyline, and whether Ted actually “won the belt.” Along the way, they reflect on why the episode still works: balancing absurd comedy, emotional honesty, and one of the weirdly sweetest stories HIMYM ever told.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, this is Jay from Boston. In 2008, I moved to Boston for my first job out of college. |
| 0:08.0 | And I was so excited to be in a bigger city and be with my friends and make new ones and go on adventures and be single. |
| 0:15.0 | And then I had my Ted and Robin meet cute moment of sorts. I wasn't in a bar. I was in my office, but across the office, |
| 0:23.8 | even though I swore I was going to be single for a while, I locked eyes with the woman who is now my wife. |
| 0:28.9 | I was already a huge Himium fan and always identified with Ted, somebody who felt deeply and got hurt badly and fell in love fast and wanted to skip the dating stuff |
| 0:38.5 | to be good at the relationship stuff but maybe didn't want to admit that to myself at the time. |
| 0:42.5 | And so my wife and I spent several years after that moment with this really tight-knit group |
| 0:46.4 | having our adventures around the city, being young, being in our 20s, and then we had our first |
| 0:51.6 | child in 2018 and our second a few years later. And this brings me to |
| 0:55.3 | this under explored way we watched the show. There's a phrase you hear about when you become a |
| 1:00.3 | new parent. The phrase is loss of identity. As a parent, you experience a loss of identity. And for all |
| 1:05.7 | the happiness you feel, all the love and fulfillment you receive, you also mourn pieces of yourself that you don't |
| 1:11.6 | have time or energy to access or that you have to leave behind. You feel a loss of identity. |
| 1:16.4 | And I often think about my days roaming the city with all my friends, daydreaming about the future, |
| 1:21.1 | or just the infinite hours we had at our disposal after brunch on a Saturday. And watching Himium |
| 1:26.5 | today hits different for me because |
| 1:28.1 | it gives me access to a version of myself, to a major source of my identity, which honestly |
| 1:33.3 | has been lost as I grew older and became a parent. And I don't want that version back. Nothing is |
| 1:38.4 | better in my life than being a dad to my two wonderful kids. But it helps me feel whole when I |
| 1:44.0 | watch the show if I have moments |
| 1:45.6 | of feeling flattened. It helps me laugh at what we used to be, and to see it fondly, not sadly. |
| 1:51.4 | Those days and how I met your mother are part of my identity. So thank you for making this show. |
... |
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