If it helps, I get the impression from her Twitter that she's fairly snooty (and thus flawed!). But when you look like that (and I actually preferred her in the scene when she first saw Francis) AND can actually act, I guess you can be.

*MELLIE (seriously?)

Not sure I agree.

She didn't really write though - she contributed to two songs

Somebody here really nailed it last week when they said Adam Lambert was holding back vocally. After seeing what he did with freaking' Ring of Fire on American Idol, I can't believe he delivered versions of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" and "Barracuda" that were significantly LESS extravagant than the originals.

Obviously. I mean, technically, Finlay/Finley could be a girl's name too, but they'll probably just keep it straightforward.

Completely agree. The character has never worked, and I find Jenna Ushkowitz to be actively off-putting.

Is "a quartet is 25% more powerful' a reference to something?

You're misinterpreting that final scene.

The main reason people started thinking she was dead was an interview comment in which Bays & Thomas said something to the effect of "you'll understand why this was the plan all along."

Tropical Skittles is what I heard.

Point A could still work. What if Ted's narrative ends at, say, 2026 when her 3rd round of chemo failed, and the kids say, "Dad, please stop." And then the Mother walks in, "What have you guys been talking about for so long?" Fade to black.

I'm hoping I don't come off like a dick, but I don't know that the show has given us a reason to care about Ted's mother so deeply. They don't have the bond that Marshall and his dad did. Since whatever is making Ted cry should, theoretically, also make the viewer cry, I just don't see how it can involve his mom.

Not sure I understand.

Not to mention "sorry that this dirtbag raped me."

The reunion is in 2020.

I actually like this approach. Even though it relies on a gimmicky story structure, it's actually SAFE. If we saw the entire courtship process, there would have been room to question whether Ted and the Mother were right for each other. By giving them only short, cutesy scenes, the writers minimize the risk that…

Interesting theory.

But the key to that conversation was Milioti choking up at the prospect of a mother not attending her daughter's wedding.

In fairness, the season two moment to which you're referring felt more like a cheap punchline ("haha, get it, I'm going to tell my kids every conceivable detail about my late twenties and thirties so that they know how I met their mother") than an assurance that his current narration is unrelated to tragedy.