What with all of yesterday's doom and gloom, I felt a need for a little escapism for a while, the trashier and more inconsequential the better, which is why I decided to ... uh ... acquire a copy of the initial episode of the 5-part miniseries on the epic romance of pop tart Britney Spears and unemployed backup dancer Cletus Kevin Federline. Needless to say, my trashy hopes were not in the least disappointed.
The funny thing about this inaugural episode is that it actually manages to improve my opinion of Britney Spears a bit, despite being chock-full of inanities. Ms. Spears comes across as a perfectly nice, outgoing young woman, albeit one who's not too bright or anywhere near as worldly as she likes to imagine herself to be; there is no evidence whatsoever of a single book or even a newspaper in sight throughout the show, and despite being shot mostly in London, Ms. Spears' experience of the British capital seems confined to her hotel room, her stage performances and a visit to total request live; as far as we can tell, she makes no visits to art galleries, famous monuments or even the popular tourist traps, not even taking in a restaurant or two along the way. Britney Spears may have toured the world, but she's actually seen far less of it than the typical backpacker making his or her way across Europe over the summer. Still, it's hardly news that lil' ol' Britney is no sophisticate, and in this respect she's no worse than millions of young women like her anywhere.
The other thing that comes across as clear as day is that where romance is concerned, Britney Spears is an intensely needy girl (I won't say woman, cause she doesn't act like one), and that a big part of the allure of Kevin Federline for her is a sense that here's a guy who has so little going on in his life that there's no way he'd fail to devote to her the doting attention she couldn't possibly expect from a man with half-way decent prospects - though I doubt she'd ever acknowledge as much to herself. Britney's the one doing all the chasing here, with Kevin at best passively going along for the ride, and despite her big talk about not wanting marriage, her agenda is screamingly obvious from the very beginning, what with all her leading questions, so much so not even a no-talent scrub like Federline could miss what's going on. As for "K-Fed" himself, I sense not an ounce of "love" or anything approximating such an emotion from his angle, and Ms. Spears' bodyguard seems to be the only one on her payroll willing to call him out on camera for the opportunist parasite he really is - which brings me to one thing I regret about watching this glorious train-wreck of a show ...
In a way, I wish Britney Spears didn't come across so strongly as Ms. Nice-but-Dim, as then I could take full pleasure in watching her relationship to Cletus Leech unravel according to my predictions. She may not be very bright or all that independent, but neediness and stupidity aren't crimes, and considering just how little exposure to the real world this creation of a show-biz mom has had, Britney's turned out pretty well, all things considering. As such, I can't take all that much pleasure in knowing that this one-sided, content-free "relationship" has nowhere to go but downhill, rapidly, taking Ms. Spears' career with it, and leaving her in the end with little more than heartbreak and another Federline rugrat, as the lazy bum runs off to spread his seed further afield, juicy divorce settlement firmly in hand.
"train-wreck of a show"
Heh. Found that cheeky comment amusing .. in the dark humor kind of way.
Posted by: hercules | July 08, 2005 at 01:56 PM