Tonight was the much-discussed-in-the-media guest appearance of Britney Spears in "How I Met Your Mother." I'm not a fan of hers, but I'm a fan of the show, so I was planning to watch anyway. My guess is that the show runners wanted to do something to get this again-on-the-bubble show a little more attention -- and maybe a few more viewers who actually live in Nielsen households.

My verdict: She wasn't bad. She wasn't amazing. She was fine. She could have been anybody.

But the real revelation of the episode was Sarah Chalke as Dr. Stella Zinman, the dermatologist whom Ted sees for 10 sessions in order to have his "tramp stamp" removed. Stella tells him she won't go out with him, but at the end of the episode, we see Ted "turn a 'no' into a 'yes'" and take her on a two-minute date during her lunch break. When they part, it's left wide-enough open that Stella could be the "mother" in the title.

And, Britney ends up with Barney -- a much better match for her than Ted would have been.

However, the best half-hour comedy of the night was "The New Adventures of Old Christine." Hamish Linklater is brilliant as Christine's brother, Matthew, and whoever came up with the idea to make Wanda Sykes her best friend deserves an Emmy for casting. Watching the two of them try to hide their affair from Christine, then find themselves out of lust once she does find out was pure joy. Their subtle facial expressions had me laughing out loud.

As they say in TV Guide, I'd live to give a "cheer within a cheer" to the dream sequences where Christine and Richard are making out with Matthew. Again -- comic gold.