After weeks of half-hearted hemming and hawing about "script approval" and her "very busy schedule," Britney Spears was back in the studio last week to tape next Monday's "sweeps" episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Apparently, her lovestruck Abby, still smarting from her manipulation and rejection by Ted (Josh Radnor), returns to conspire with duplicitous Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) to make him jealous.

Okay, so it reads more like an episode of The Hills than it does a Mother. That is hardly the point. Spears's initial appearance earned the CBS sitcom its best ratings ever, and Spears the only positive press she's had since those infamous sans panties paparazzi shots.

The lesson has not been lost on Spears's tabloid tag-teamer, Lindsay Lohan, who was spotted on the Ugly Betty sound stage over the weekend, prepping the first of a six-episode guest arc as Betty's former high-school tormentor, to air as the season finale May 22 and continue on into next season.

It's not exactly a new phenomenon, but celebrity stunt casting does seem to be Young Hollywood's new preferred mode of emergency career rehabilitation.

Stretch the definition to include Tom Cruise's spin-controlling bookend appearances on Oprah Friday and yesterday; George Michael on Eli Stone and the Extras finale; Rosie O'Donnell on Rachael Ray; Gary Coleman on Divorce Court; George W. Bush on Deal or No Deal (okay, so some careers are beyond repair). Even in Canada, recently released rehabilitant ex-con Kiefer Sutherland did a season-ending cameo on Corner Gas.

Stretch it a little further, and remove the air of desperation, you can also include Jimmy Kimmel's first visit in five years to last night's Letterman (and the preceding Clinton and Obama "Top Tens"), and the crossover cameos on last night's Two and a Half Men in support of this week's writer exchange with CSI ' the Men scribes' CSI episode airs on CBS Thursday (an hour earlier on CTV), opposite Matthew "Mr. Jessica Parker" Broderick's one-off stopover on NBC's 30 Rock.

And this is, I suspect, only the beginning. As you well know, it is conventional TV wisdom that anything worth doing is worth beating to death. Some suggested scenarios for other crossover opportunities, just in time for May sweeps:

SUE-PER-NANNY: Rob Lowe and his wife pay a surprise visit to the domestic distress show to charge childminder Jo Frost with defamation and breach of confidentiality. Next week: Mary Poppins.

DEA: Celebrity Drug Mules: In a special dedicated episode, Gilligan's Island vet Dawn Wells and CSI casualty Gary Dourdan explain again how the drugs that weren't theirs somehow ended up in their cars just in time for them to be pulled over and searched by police.

LOST: Everyone ever arrested for drunk driving whose character was subsequently killed off returns to the island; the mysterious fog monster is finally revealed as a breathalyzer test gone horribly wrong.

MEDIUM: Transgendered Alexis, the only Arquette who has not yet appeared on sister Patricia's psychic crime-fighting hit, does so. Additional cameos by Eddie Murphy, Danny Bonaduce and, as special guest wardrobe consultant, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano.

SURVIVOR: The series' final season reunites all the most annoying contestants from the entire run, along with Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and Ryan Seacrest, and strands them all in the middle of the desert. Whoever isn't eaten by the others gets to come home.

rsalem@thestar.ca

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