Jennifer Aniston vs. Christina Applegate
Battle of the Button-Cute Sitcom Singletons

Admittedly, this one looks like it's over before it begins. In one corner, we have Miss Aniston: arguably the most famous TV personality going (deserving or not), what with her top-rated, recently enlivened sitcom; her million-dollar-an-episode paycheque; her bi-weekly appearances on the cover of People; and her marriage to Hollywood's favourite perma-A-list pretty boy, Brad Pitt. And in the other corner, we have Miss Applegate: She played Kelly, the slutty daughter on Married...With Children. Oh, and then there was Jesse -- you know, that shameless rip-off of Friends, except with only one friend, and she lived in Buffalo. And she's married to Johnathon Schaech, the guy from That Thing You Do! who's best known for looking quite a bit like non-A-list pretty boy Peter Gallagher.

So, well, there you go.

In fact, the thought of pitting these two vaguely related sitcom actresses against the other would never have crossed our minds had we not seen Applegate nestled in among the "Actresses to Watch in 2002" on the cover of the new "Hollywood Issue" of Vanity Fair. Yet there she is -- plunked elbow-to-elbow with the buzz-friendly likes of Jennifer Connelly, Kate Beckinsale, and Selma Blair. And dang, if she doesn't look quite a bit like Jennifer Aniston. Of course, in Jesse, Applegate was essentially cast as a cut-rate Rachel -- a flighty but button-cute urban singleton trying to juggle the sundry problems faced by beautiful, unattached young women.

At the time, Jesse seemed less like a calculated effort by Applegate to usurp Aniston's place at the celebrity banquet than a calculated effort by Applegate to expunge from our minds the memory of her purgatorial days as a big-haired bimbo on TV's favorite long-running, low-rent burp joke. And, of course, it didn't help that Jesse was flop on toast.

But now Applegate's landed herself a role opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the upcoming stewardess comedy A View from the Top. It's a part that, in some alternate reality, might have gone to...well, Jennifer Aniston, if she wasn't so famous and not really looking to play supporting roles to Gwyneth Paltrow in sitcom-ish comedies. So Applegate gets the part and, thanks to what must be some pretty wily handlers, she's managed to land herself on the year's most coveted magazine cover. We're not saying she's wily enough to triumph in this David-and-Goliath bout. But we are saying that we're intrigued.

It's mainly because Applegate has one solid pebble in her slingshot: see, when you're playing flighty singletons, you rely a lot on audience empathy; an empathy that can be compromised when you're also seen every other week in glossy magazines, picketing for pay raises and mansion-shopping on the arm of your Adonis-like hubby. (Think about how much more likable the Friends seemed when they were all fresh-faced unknowns who'd stumbled into fortune and still all went bowling together, rather than overexposed stars with substance-abuse problems and famously terrible taste in movie roles.)

So maybe, just maybe, there's a crack in Miss Aniston's armour. And maybe, just maybe, this might leave her seat at the table vulnerable to, say, a well-known but much cheaper lookalike with similar comic chops. Or maybe Applegate can simply hang back and feast on Aniston's table scraps. Either way, she should be dining very well.

Advantage: Aniston, for now.