There are some places on this earth that seem to laugh in the face of natural order. Studio lots are among them.
The size of a small city in their own right, they exist only for the creation of movies and television, housing dozens of fake apartments, half-bars and partial street corners. Besides the modest looking offices, studio lots seem to frown on streets with buildings and rooms with four walls.
On the day I arrived in L.A., sometime between being picked up at the airport and accidentally finding my apartment complex by myself in my new rental car, my family friend Janet thought it would be a good idea to take me to the 20th Century Fox lot, where "How I Met Your Mother" is shot. She thought that it would be nice to show me where I would be going before my first day. Perhaps she also thought that it would keep me from freaking out around other people (and embarrassing her) upon first seeing the set for MacLaren's Pub, the show's version of Central Park.
"HIMYM" (pronounced "him-yim" by both my friends and the show's creators) shoots on Stage 22. The building is located somewhere between the giant Julie Andrews poster and the Star Wars mural (when the massive warehouse door slides open, the terrible likeness of Mark Hamill is decapitated). The soundstage itself isn't quite as grand as I'd been taught to imagine by behind-the-scenes featurettes for big-budget movies (this is a four-camera sitcom, after all), but it's indeed a large, tall space. And the sets look smaller in person, although I suppose I was expecting that.
The weirdness didn't really hit me until I almost stumbled onto the set for Ted's tiny kitchen. Though large sheets cover the furniture pieces for the other rooms on non-shooting days, the kitchen remains intact, down to the tchotchkes on the fridge. This is where Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) consummate their engagement in the pilot, where Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) make crêpes in "Slap Bet," where Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) wimps out of telling Robin he loves her in "Benefits," where ... I'm sorry. I just nerded out for a second.
The point is that the phrase "breaking the fourth wall" is more literal than I ever realized. In fact, I'm still uncomfortable walking onto the sets when I cut through the stage. When I step from the concrete aisle way onto the fake wood flooring, I keep expecting someone to tell me to get off or stop soiling it because I don't belong.
It's the darndest thing, though — no one ever does. Somehow, I've been granted the privilege of stepping through the invisible fourth wall and examining the things about the construction of the show that are both more fake and more real than they look.
(One of the funniest gags on "HIMYM" is the never-ending stream of jokes about Canada at Robin's expense. On set last week, Cobie Smulders, who's also Canadian, corrected Jason Segel's pronunciation of "gouda," and he rejoined, "What, is that what they call it in Canada?" She shot back, "No, in Holland, where it's from, douche.")
At the end of my second day in the office, I decided to cut through the empty stage to get to the parking garage. And I couldn't resist: I stopped at the gang's signature booth at MacLaren's, which is positioned right in the front, where the fourth wall of the room should be. As I sat, my heart raced. I couldn't believe where I was.
Then I heard the security guard call, "Is anyone in here?" and, in a panic, I rushed out, back to real life.
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Rebecca Goldberg is a junior majoring in American studies. She can be reached at Rebecca.Goldberg@tufts.edu.
