Silverstone’s reps reportedly fears Spears’ notoriety would overshadow Silverstone’s appearance on the show, which isn’t far-fetched. The latest word is that the female doctor Silverstone was slated to play will now be portrayed by Scrubs’ Sarah Chalke, and the storyline will center more on Spears’ character.

The good news is that Silverstone remains open to appearing on How I Met Your Mother, and the show’s creators have stated they hope to create a different character for her soon. Meanwhile, the doctor who seemed destined to become “Mother” now will be reconceived as just another ship that passes through Ted’s long night of the soul, since Chalke’s schedule was too full to accommodate anything more than one episode, since Scrubs is still in production and may even be renewed for a previously-believed-to-be-unlikely eighth season, be it on NBC or ABC.

Here’s the clues so far: Silverstone is indeed signed to a “multi-episode arc” when production resumes on the CBS sitcom in a few weeks. The post-strike episodes have a chance of being the last ones to air, because CBS has not yet renewed the show – even though it’s renewed several others so far. Plus, the producers have promised we’ll meet “mother” this season; if the show is indeed canceled for some strange reason, this would also give producers a chance to wrap the storyline up in a tidy way.

So, all that seems to point to Silverstone being the mother in question. And here I was hoping, given the presence in the regular cast of Buffy alumn Allyson Hannigan, that “mother” would turn out to be Sarah Michelle Geller. Oh well.