How To Play Xing Hai Shi Bu Xing | S2E8 “Atlantic City”
How We Made Your Mother
Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas
4.8 • 922 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Josh and Craig revisit Season 2, Episode 8: “Atlantic City,” written by Maria Ferrari, who started as a writer’s assistant before becoming a staff writer. They discuss the unusual challenge of writing a road-trip episode that takes the whole gang out of their usual sets and how that led to one of the longest rewrite nights of the early seasons. The conversation covers how the story’s emotional center—Lily trying to escape judgment by eloping with Marshall only to realize she can’t run from family—finally clicked during late-night rewrites, and how the episode became a metaphor about facing what you’re avoiding. Josh recalls on-set memories, like Ted’s Twizzler moment and Robin’s bikini-shirt gag, while Craig explains the origins of Barney’s fake Chinese gambling game (“Deal or No Deal,” a jab at the rival show). They also talk about guest star Kate Micucci, who sends in a warm voice memo about her brief role, and close with reflections on Cheers, improv, extras’ pay, the pressure of 22-episode seasons, and the meaning of the final song “Sink to the Bottom with You” by Fountains of Wayne—an anthem for commitment, even when it means sinking together.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm alone. |
| 0:02.0 | What a pity. |
| 0:03.0 | I won't be soon in New York City. |
| 0:20.0 | When I see you, please permit me to tell you everything in Atlantic City. |
| 0:30.9 | Well, hello, friends. Hello, it's Josh Radner. I'm here with my friend Craig Thomas. Hey, Craig. |
| 0:36.4 | Hey, Josh. Hey, we're talking about |
| 0:38.7 | how I made your mother. That's a show we made together from 2005 to 2014. We did 208 episodes |
| 0:45.3 | of that show. People still watch it. People still love it. People still talk about it. We're |
| 0:49.1 | still talking about it. We're now edging up close to the age of the older Ted narrator character. |
| 0:57.0 | So we are looking back on this time, this younger time in our lives, |
| 1:02.0 | when we made a TV show about a younger time in these people's lives. |
| 1:05.6 | The meta situation here knows no bounds. |
| 1:09.9 | But today we are talking about episode. |
| 1:12.9 | What episode is this? |
| 1:14.1 | Episode... |
| 1:15.4 | Episode eight. |
| 1:16.5 | It's called Atlantic City. |
| 1:18.5 | It was written by... |
| 1:21.2 | This was written by Maria Ferrari, |
| 1:23.2 | who was a writer's assistant at the time, |
| 1:25.8 | and he went on to become a writer on how much mother and has gone on to a bunch of really cool things since then. And she wrote this one. I think this was her first episode, I think. Boy, no, wait, there may have been one in season one. I'm having a moment. You were just talking about how Waldberg getting and this is just proof of it. But it's a huge thing. You remember we were talking about Courtney had, Courtney Kang had been on like four different shows that all got canceled before her episode aired. So I think return to the shirt, right? It was her first episode from season one that had ever made it onto the air. I mean, there's a, there's a weird thing in Hollywood where you can be like shooting pilots and shooting shows, you know, episodes of canceled shows and no one ever see. |
| 2:03.2 | You can't tell your hometown friends like, here's my episode or I'm going to be on TV. But you're working. You're like getting your health insurance. You're, you know, you're working in Hollywood. It's weird. It used to be a very, that part's weird. another part that's gotten even weirder is becoming a writer's assistant |
... |
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