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Britney's Home Video: Plumbing The Depths
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By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 18, 2005; C01
One sure thing about Britney Spears's new reality TV show: There's no danger of anyone ever dumbing it down. A dumber downer would potentially be lethal. It would have to be buried in lead for 10,000 years, like nuclear waste.
"Britney & Kevin: Chaotic," which premiered on the dispensable UPN network at 9 last night, was not made available in advance for critical review. After seeing the show on Channel 20, this critic can say that what seemed like a snub now appears to have been an act of charity. UPN was trying to spare us poor scribes a bad case of mal de mer .
Incredibly, Spears and hubby Kevin Federline took "credit" for the cinematography on the show, which was done by them on a standard-issue home video camera with more out-of-focus scenes, blurry wild pans and unintelligible visual gibberish than something shot by a 2-year-old child or a 100-year-old granny. Actually, there is no need to insult children and grandmothers here; the program was an execrable mess by absolutely any standard, though of course these days the idea of standards is just all too uncool.
Following in the tipsy footsteps of too many other rock and pop stars, Spears and her entourage decided they could turn the everyday blither and blather of their lives into a reality television show, with Spears asking "Can you handle my truth?" (the show's original title) once or twice during the hour. Her truth consisted mostly of footage of herself, close-ups so close that viewers could count pores -- except that almost no shots were held on-screen for more than a few seconds.
Then onto something else, like a view of two mounds accompanied by Spears's narration: "They look like boobs but they're not. They're my knees." Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh yes, there was lots of laughter, gales of it by Spears and her collection of assistants, hangers-on and suck-ups. In one of those categories we can put Federline, who Spears thinks is a "cute guy" (high praise) and "cool" and whom she dragged along on a London concert tour. Viewers were allowed only fleeting peeks of that.
The least that the smutty-mouthed, pudgy-faced brat could have done was to give her fans a musical number or two, but no. Entertainment was banned on the show, unless you count Spears gigglingly interrogating those around her with questions about "marriage and commitment and relationships . . . and stuff."
Federline, who has bad posture, no personality and wears diamond studs in his ear, didn't really figure in the proceedings (other than teaser sense at the outset) until 12 minutes into the show, when he was glimpsed on the phone in the back seat of a limo. Later, at their hotel, he was asked by Spears to philosophize: "I feel that love is love," he declared. "Love is a commitment." And, a moment later: "Love, it is what it is. It's everything. Everything."
"Magic happened," Federline said of the Monday he met Spears and briefly danced with her at an L.A. bar. Presumably this was stronger magic than that which inspired Spears's weekend marriage in Las Vegas last year (or was it last month?), a quickly annulled embarrassment to which she briefly and chirpily made reference.
Spears wasted much of the show terrorizing her staff. She also repeatedly asked her pals to describe their favorite sexual position, a needlessly tasteless touch for a star whose fans include little girls of 10 and younger.
It's scary to see those tots copying Spears's hyper-pelvic dance routines as they sing along with her records. Everyone laughs and says "how cute," but it can really creep you out.
Like the WB, UPN is a small network that keeps searching for a winning formula and ways of wasting time. "Britney & Kevin" plumbed new depths of shallowness. It was TV's non-event of the week. It was America's crummiest home video.
"Britney & Kevin: Chaotic" (30 minutes) airs on Channel 20 at 9 p.m. Tuesdays.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
