A Tale of Two Britneys: Mother, South Park

• Mar 25, 2008 01:03 PM ET
• by Matt Roush

Which Britney Spears do you prefer: the tragic cartoon version that appeared, head half-blown-off, on last week's brutal South Park satire; or the silly cartoon version that appeared, mercifully briefly, on Monday night's How I Met Your Mother? Could the appropriate answer be: Neither? Every time I see or hear about her, in unflattering paparazzi shots or the endless litany of late-night stand-up insults, I can't help but wonder at a culture so fascinated by someone so intrinsically uninteresting.

On Mother, she was harmless and even (dare I say) kind of cute as an office receptionist with a crush on Ted, who in turn had a crush on her boss ( Scrubs' Sarah Chalke, who walked away with the episode). Eyes wide and face frozen in an eager-to-please grin, the sitcom Britney was kind of endearing as she desperately tried to endear herself to Ted. The role wasn't really juicy enough to merit the attention it got as a stunt, but it was probably appropriately suited for her tentative acting chops. At no point did she convey the edge or danger a true actress might have brought to the role, making something actually funny of her obsession. As Simon Cowell might have said if this had been a performance on American Idol: Forgettable.

That said, I loved Ted's two-minute date with Chalke's Stella, the kind of grand if improbable romantic gesture this show is known for. And while Britney Spears' glorified cameo may not be guest-actor Emmy worthy, it's far from the embarrassment of her awkward Will & Grace guest shot in 2006 or the debacle of last year's enervated Music Video Awards performance. (For another take on Mother's guest stars, see Cheers & Jeers.)

Poll: How do you rate Britney's performance on HIMYM? Vote here.

Poll: Do you want Sarah Chalke's Stella to be the Mother? Vote here.

A much more significant Britney moment occurred last week, when her besieged celebrity persona took center stage in a South Park episode that took no prisoners in its savage condemnation of the vulture "Britney Watch!" media that built her up only to break her down and, in this case, hound her to her grisly death. When the boys sneak into her motel room (posing as her own children) to snap a photo for a quick payday, she is so distraught at being punked by these punks that she blows her head off. They killed her, those bastards! Well, not exactly.

Britney isn't quite dead, but spends the rest of the episode staggering around with only half a bloody stump of a head, uttering strangled gargling noises where words (or notes) should be. Only the boys seem to notice this. The gutter media and her hypocritical handlers go on and on about her new "no-top-part-of-my-head look," too busy mocking her for being stupid, stoned or out of shape. When one of the boys points out, "Her head is gone," he's told, "Yeah, and she's fat, too."

It all ends with an Omen-like demonic world conspiracy to offer Britney up as a human sacrifice: death by paparazzi, slaking our culture's lust for torture and death in the only way still deemed acceptable, through media. As the episode ends, we focus on the next potential victim: Hannah Montana's Miley Cirus.

She can't say she hasn't been warned.