It’s nearly the end of the road for How I Met Your Mother , which will end its nine-year run with a one-hour series finale on March 31st. On a recent visit to the set of the show, following a press discussion with the full cast, I was among a group who sat down with the show’s creators, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, in one of the booths at MacLaren’s. With just six weeks left of production on the series, the duo spoke about reaching the end and writing the finale. Thomas and Bays also gave an update on the current status of How I Met Your Dad, the potential spinoff series, which won’t involve any pre-existing characters, and how they're approaching that.

Oh, and they revealed some very interesting ideas for how to use that final slap Marshall has left…

Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, with director Pam Fryman and How I Met Your Mother's cast.

How I Met Your Mother.

Slaps Forever.

No, we have not. We have a lot of ideas, and we're gathering ideas. We've sort of nailed down everything leading up to that final script, and we know what happens in the final script, but we haven't had the "Craig and Carter in a room" time yet to really figure it out. I think part of it is, we're putting it off, because it means this is really ending.We have an outline for it that we're still filling in. It's the last piece of the puzzle. Everything else is written, even the second to last episode. Carter and I basically have to lock the door in the next few days and really start cracking that episode. We've been stalling, because it's so tense.Yes, and you always feel like you have things a little more figured out than you do. When the rubber hits the road, you're kind of like, "Well, what is every minute of this hour-long finale?" There's a sense that we know the shape and the very end, but we need to figure out, like, "What's every word of that? What's every single word of that script?" It's so daunting to try to do that. We have a lot of it. I really think we've been stalling a little bit. We're still well ahead. It doesn't shoot for five or six weeks. I think you're always a little more confident when you haven't done it, and then when you sit down and do it, you're like, "Every word of this has to feel right and perfect, and the right goodbye."I just re-watched the Cheers finale recently, and it's so dauntingly perfect and moving and funny. But you know what heartened me about it? There's still just silly jokes in it. My favorite joke in it, re-watching it, was everyone leaves the bar. Sam is very introspective about his place in the universe -- "Does my life matter? Is it worth anything?" -- and everyone else tries to cheer him up and leaves, but Norm hangs back, and Norm says to Sam, "Sam, I didn't want to say this in front of the others, but you know what I love more than anything in this world?" Sam says, "Beer, Norm?" And Norm says, "Yeah, I got time for one more." Huge laugh! It's just the simplest little joke in the last three minutes of this Cheers. It almost took the pressure off of me. It's like, if they could just do a silly little misdirection joke and then get gorgeously beautiful about life and Sam realizing he's the luckiest man in the world -- he does have a family, and it's the family you've been watching him be with for those 11 years. It's just gorgeous and heartening and right. We'll look at every single letter and comma of this hour-long finale and hope that it's good enough.I think so, yeah.Yeah, the last couple minutes, we know.Yeah, that'll be interesting.It will be so hard to do that! "Does that joke earn its place in that last hour!? Really, that joke?"[Laughs] Spoilers! You guessed it! That was how you guessed it!We can't say. Here's the thing about the last slap, also... There is still the possibility that we might leave that last slap as an un-slapped slap that we know will happen someday down the road.[Laughs] There you go! In the background.Whenever the ratings are flagging on the new show, here's the last slap! Cheapest tactic of all time -- but it's not beneath us!I'll tell you another idea that we haven't really talked about in awhile, and we probably won't do this, but we may do it -- the end of the series, the series ends, and if you go to TheSlapBetCountdown.com, a new countdown comes up, and it's 25 years. Then in 25 years we'll reveal when the last slap happens.This has been seriously discussed.Don't discount the possibility of that happening.We literally talked to Jason and Neil about it at one point, and they said they would come back and do it! [Laughs]

Continue to Page 2 as Bays and Thomas discuss the spinoff, How I Met Your Dad.