Last night Sarah Chalke guest starred again on How I Met Your Mother, and it got me thinking -- what if Scrubs wasn't going to be picked up by ABC for the fall?
As this season began, Scrubs was, for all intents and purposes, headed into its final year. Then, the writers' strike happened and the number of episodes produced of the show for this year got cut drastically. Apparently, the producers may have felt that they needed the full amount of episodes in order to end correctly though and the show is produced by an arm of ABC. In a fit of serendipity and vertically integrated corporateness, the show is all but assured of a slot on ABC next fall. Will this new season now be the last season? Who knows? What I'm more concerned with today is what that means for How I Met Your Mother.
You see, Sarah Chalke, a star of Scrubs, had been cast in a multi-episode arc as the new girlfriend of Ted (the main character on HIMYM). The entire premise of HIMYM is that Ted is telling the story to his kids of how he met their mother (hence the title). This season of the show followed up on the ending of Ted's relationship with Robin, who is not Ted's kids' mother. So, ostensibly, the show was on the right track to actually inform us about how Ted met the future mother of his children this season.
Now, Ted has a new, possibly long-term girlfriend, Stella (Sarah Chalke), and at the time this was all in the planning stages, people may have thought that Chalke's schedule would be more open for next season than it now appears to be. So, that leads me to wonder - was Stella at one time the intended mother of Ted's children? If she was, now that Chalke seems to be busy next year, has that changed?
Of course, this is all purely theoretical as HIMYM hasn't yet been renewed for next season (seriously, CBS, we need to talk about this, you don't have a funnier show on your schedule and while the ratings aren't stellar, they're not bad). But, just because it's theoretical doesn't mean that it isn't something that has been bothering me for a goodly long time.
These are the questions that keep me up at night, these are the questions I feel compelled to ask, these are the questions I never really get answers for.
I guess we can't have everything.
Article comments
1 - bibbyroo
i think all of the scrubs stuff is moot. when the show originally wrote the role of stella it was not going to be played by chalke, rather it was going to be alicia silverstone. when they cast britney spears as her secretary, silverstone backed out because she thought spears would take away the spotlight from the stella character. chalk was chosen as a quick replacement.
now, i dont know if there is any truth to stella being the mother of the title, but it would have originally had nothing to do with chalkes schedule, or that of scrubs.
2 - Cos
I'm really torn because I'm a fan of both "Scrubs" and "How I Met Your Mother". I'm glad that "Scrubs" is probably going to get a proper send-off, but I seriously doubt it will last more than one more season. I can see Sarah on a few "HIMYM" episodes next season, and potentially joining full-time once "Scrubs" is gone.
There is part of me that wants Chalke to make the jump next season, and be on "HIMYM" full-time and only part-time on "Scrubs". This could work since they've been trying to get rid of Elliott for that past two seasons, but they keep bringing her back.
I really don't think Stella is the mother, despite the fact that I want her to be. I doubt they'd introduce the mother this early, and there's some logistics to think about (i.e. the kids would know if they had a 30 year old step-sister, and their mom's name, but there could be a twist coming).
I'm not too worried about season 4 of "HIMYM". To my knowledge, CBS hasn't had its upfront meeting yet so there's still hope.