"How I Met Your Mother" Heats Up

"How I Met Your Mother" still remains one of the most popular sitcoms on television thanks in part to the performance of Neil Patrick Harris as the philandering bachelor, Barney.

The CBS show follows five friends in their 20s living and working in New York. On tonight's episode, Barney tries to spice things up for Marshall's bachelor party. Marshall has said he doesn't want strippers at the party, but Barney just can't accept that.

"Every minute of every day, his inner animal thrashes against the cage of his own puritanical upbringing," Barney says in the episode. "How could you not like naked girls?"

Marshall is marrying his longtime girlfriend, Lilly. They have been a couple since they met in college.

"They're very puritanical in that way and I'm just trying to mess things up," Harris told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "I want my single friends to go carousing all the time. And with the impending nuptials there's always that guy that wants the strippers."

Other than the fact he's a wealthy, well-dressed womanizer, not much is known about Barney. His career remains a mystery — even to Harris.

"I'm not sure," he said. "There's a little, sort of Star Wars-Darth Vader element to Barney. You're not quite sure what he does. It involves a lot of money because he's wealthy but you don't really talk about it. It's the dark arts, in some way. Maybe tobacco lobbying. I don't know. Oil? I don't know. I think the less you know about him, the better it is, because you don't want to jump the shark too quickly."

Interestingly, Barney likes babies and was quite taken when his brother, played by Wayne Brady, had one. But it doesn't seem like he is going to settle down too soon.

"Maybe season seven," Harris said.

But if the show doesn't last that long, Harris has a passion for game shows and on a upcoming episode, Barney actually tracks down Bob Barker and goes on "The Price is Right."

"It was wicked fun," Harris said. "It's Bob's last year so it was exciting to honor him in a way ... I assumed when I read the script would be some rag-tag set we put together on our sound stage, but we went to CBS studios and piggybacked the end of an actual episode."

Harris said he thinks being a game show host could be fun for about six weeks, and then he might want his old job back.