Last night, Britney Spears appeared on one of my favorite trad sitcoms, “How I Met Your Mother” (7:30 p.m. Monday, CBS), a show that succeeds due to great, disciplined writing; one of the best ensembles on current television; and something I’ll call an uncommon internal logic system — more than half of the events on the show only make sense or are funny because of who these people are and what they have done since the series premiered. In short, there are few random moments on “How I Met Your Mother,” or things that a recent Harvard Lampoon staffer has had rattling around in his Ivy-cultivated mind for a few years and could hardly wait to deploy on his first gig, no matter how inappropriate.
I was ambivalent about Spears appearing on “Mother,” mainly because (a) I don’t like anything about her, but (b) she is notorious enough to gain exposure for a show deserving of attention but underperforming at Nielsen. Spears played a ditzy receptionist/intern at a dermatology clinic, where Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) is getting a butterfly tattoo removed from his butt (a long story involving heavy booze and spite).
Was she any good? Well, she did not figuratively leave Radnor, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders in a hot car while she went into Starbucks for a latte, but it was typical stunt casting. The wheels ground to a halt whenever Spears showed up in frame, because (1) she is who she is, (b) she was okay in a “high school production of ‘You Can’t Take It With You’” kind of way, and (Γ), it felt like they shoehorned her character into what was otherwise a typically great episode — the “moustache bet” was the best bit, and it had nothing to do with a pop star frantically trying to rebuild her crumbling economy.
But Us Weekly raved about it on the “Today” show. Vindication! Renewal! Phoenix rising! Meh!