"DIRT" -- My Worthless Reaction

I tuned into the FX premiere of "DIRT" last night because ... well, there was nothing else on.

Ultimately, *YAWN*. Fifteen minutes into the pilot I was starting to wander of -- do the dishes, re-stack DVDs, check my Amazon Seller's account.

I was bored by "DIRT". I didn't care about the characters or the stories. It didn't even seem like "DIRT" tried to grab your attention. As if the sight of Monica playing Cruella Deville, chatting about her drink was going to rivet me to my seat. If they didn't work Rick Fox naked in a hot tub with some ex-porno actress surely would, right!? Not so much.

The pilot just seem to drift along relying on the shock of drugs (that We the Audience Collectively know about), sex (which We the Audience have all seen before on TV -- done better too), and the outrageousness of the main characters (who weren't all that outrageous by "Real" Hollywood standards).

Yeah, Courtney Cox is intentionally unlikeable as the Evil Overlord of her tabloid magazine empire, but she's so unlikeable that she's not believable. In the first season of ENTOURAGE Ari Gold is an unlikeable, brazen ass. That's not all he is though -- Ari's also a family man, loves his wife (in his way), and hovers over his daughter. He's still unlikeable at times but he also seems like a fully formed person. Courtney Cox's tabloid Editorix character comes off as so singularly vicious it feel as though she's playing it for parody.

(If you notice I can't even remember the names of the characters in "DIRT" that's how forgettable a show it is. I had to go back and look up that Cox's character is named Lucy Spiller.)

The same goes for all the characters in "DIRT". They are walking, talking embodiments of cardboard with no motivation beyond whatever plot element they are driving at. The only glimmer of characterization is Ian Hart's clincally crazy (shizophrenic) photographer, Don Kinney. Even Kinney comes off as the one dimensional, camera totting Toadie of Lucy Spiller. I was wondering when he'd go waddling out of her office, yelling, YES MASTER!

Another curious thing about "DIRT" is that for a show about Hollywood its not very Hollywood. What remains great about "ENTOURAGE" is how Vince's fictional character brushes past the "real" Jessica Alba or the "real" Anthony Edwards. That fusion of current pop reality with fiction.

In "DIRT" you don't get that. Outside of Courtney Cox no one else is recognizable or famous. The parties aren't fabulous, the clubs don't hop with excitement, the private parties filled with supposedly the Who's Who are dull. DIRT's Hollywood isn't fun, or glamorous, or self-obsessed, or any of the things Hollywood is and can be. I guess one might argue DIRT is supposed to be Hollywood's "dark side". However even that "dark side" is not all that dark. Certainly not as dark as it can be in this town.

Everything feels oddly disconnected between real Hollywood and "DIRT" Hollywood. The Hollywood of "DIRT" feels like "STUDIO 60" -- the kind of over-simplified, inglorious place writers commit to paper for everyone else. And DIRT looks very low budget on top of it. I live in the black centre of Hollywood and I couldn't pick out one familiar locale in the mire.

Where DIRT really falls down is in the fulcrum of the entire show. The Tabloids odd relationship with celebrity. Considering F/X background -- NIP/TUCK, The Shield, Rescue Me -- you'd expect something pretty novel and interesting. Nope. There is nothing here that hasn't been done on every other TV show from MURDER ONE to LAW AND ORDER. There's no inside baseball here. There is no real knowledge of how the Tabloids really work. What research Cox and Company did on this show must've been watching the way Every Other Show has depicted the life of the tabloid.

Nothing special. I'll give it one more episode but I am not impressed.

Keep it Sexy, America.