There are only a few short days until Katie Holmes' perfect-on-paper "Slutty Pumpkin" gives How I Met Your Mother's Ted the Halloween treat he's been wanting for a decade. But fans don't have to wait that long to see Holmes' Naomi (a.k.a. Ms. Slutty Pumpkin herself) and Josh Radnor's Ted show off their on-screen chemistry -- or lack thereof. Below, watch three clips from HIMYM's Halloween-themed Oct. 31 episode, appropriately titled "Perfect on Paper."
The legend of the Slutty Pumpkin was first introduced in the show's season 1 Halloween episode in 2005. Ted recounted the tale of how he'd met the unnamed woman -- who wore a pumpkin costume with "strategic cutouts" and liked a drink called "the Tootsie roll" -- at a Halloween bash in 2001, was immediately smitten with her, and just as immediately lost her phone number when Lily (Alyson Hannigan) gave away the Kit Kat on which Naomi had scrawled her digits. Though Ted went back to the same party dressed in the same costume (a hanging chad) year after year, he never reconnected with the Slutty-Pumpkin-suited potential mother of his children -- that is, until now.
There's no denying that the pair's re-meet-cute in the first clip is just that -- extremely cute. ("Halloween, 10 years ago. Now that's a slow play," Naomi quips adorably when Ted turns up at her door.) But the two subsequent clips quickly make it apparent that Ted isn't nearly as convinced as Naomi that they "fit like two puzzle pieces."
So while it's highly unlikely that Naomi will turn out to be the titular mother, the HIMYM episode promises to be a strong one. Holmes oozes that smart-tongued Joey Potter sass that endeared to legions of fans in her Dawson's Creek days. And we're intrigued by the subplot in which Robyn (Cobie Smulders), dressed as a tooth-challenged hockey player, makes fun of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), suited down as Rocky IV's Apollo Creed, for his apparent Canadian heritage. What's that aboot?
