How I Met Your Mother: The Britney Mess
By fred | March 13, 2008
As you’ve probably heard by now, Britney Spears will guest-star in an upcoming episode of How I Met Your Mother. But that single fact is already coming with quite a few consequences, and not of the best bunch, though not all bad either.
Alicia Silverstone was supposed to come and guest for a multi-episodes arc, but when she found out that she’d have to share screen with the ex-pop princess, she decided otherwise, fearing that Britney would steal her thunder. Maybe it sounds like a legitimate concern, you can bet everyone will be talking about Spears more than her, but since she was supposed to stay around for more episodes it may not have mattered that much.
Anyways, it does suck but at least they found a nice replacement for Silverstone’s part : the lovely Sarah Chalke, whom you may know as Dr. Eliot Reed on Scrubs, will take over the role of the doctor, who has Spears’ character for receptionist. Although Chalke couldn’t be available for more as long as Silverstone - she has to be back to work on Scrubs starting March 24 - so the story will be written differently.
But creators of the show are excited to have her on, as co-creator Craig Thomas confirmed recently: “We couldn’t be happier to have Sarah Chalke joining us to play a new love interest for Ted, Dr. Stella Zinman. Not only is Sarah smart, funny and charming, but we already know she looks damn good in a lab coat.”
And since they do love Silverstone as well and would really like to have her on, they are planning to write her another part soon. So in the end it would would out pretty good for the show, except that I’d still wish we didn’t have to go through that whole mess with Britney.
Craig Thomas recently commented the casting of Britney Spears to play on episode 14 of this season : “We’re thrilled to have Britney Spears on the show. Britney is an exciting new talent, and we can’t wait for the world to meet her. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to check out this ‘Internet’ thing everyone is talking about.”
Now I have to say, after reading that, and once I was done laughing, I did wonder if they were really thrilled about it, or forced into it and couldn’t refuse. Recently Neil Patrick Harris answer such concerns, making sure to let everyone know it wasn’t pressure from anyone that led to her appearance on the show :
“It gets the name How I Met Your Mother out more, which I think is important, but it should be clear, and I hope you state this, Britney’s camp came entirely to us with the idea of it, and in fact we all thought it was a joke. It wasn’t like CBS or How I Met Your Mother is trying to get ratings, and said who can we star-cast to get attention.
We were literally just filming last week and told, “You’re not going to believe who just called and said they wanted to be on the show.” So, that’s sort of how it all went down. So my only reservation about her being on the show at all is that it appears that we are desperate for ratings and that’s not the case, we’re sort of in a good comedy groove. So, my only concern is one of appearance.” Yeah, sure, of course he says that. Just like Alyson Hannigan said she was “been quite impressed by Britney’s performance. The character she is playing is very sweet and endearing which seems to come naturally to her. Not to mention, she has good comedic timing, which helps given we’re a sitcom.” Sounds good, but then again, it this whole thing was a mess forced into them by the network, requiring them to go with it if they wanted to get renewed for another season, would they ever say so ?
And when Harris added that “She’s doing a good job, but on a situation comedy, if someone as unique as Britney Spears says they’d like to come and hang out on the show for a week, it’s a hard thing to say no to, so now we just have to make sure that she’s going to execute it well“, well, sounds to me like they didn’t really had a choice…
So I really hope they will be able to have Britney to “execute it well”, and more than everything else this whole buzz about the show better lead CBS to pick it up for another season.
How I Met Your Mother will be back with 9 new episodes on CBS next Monday, March 17 at 8.30 (remember, new timeslot!) with episode 12. The infamous Chalke/Spears episode will be episode 14.
Posted in News
Shows: How I Met Your Mother
