Director: Adam Arkin
Cast: Courteney Cox (Lucy Spiller), Jeffrey Nordling (Brent Barrow), Ian Hart (Don Konkey), Alex Breckenridge (Willa McPherson), Will McCormack (Leo Spiller), Laura Allen (Julia Mallory), Josh Stewart (Holt McLaren), Ankur Bhatt (Kenny), Carly Pope (Garbo), Grant Show (Jack Dawson), Paul Ruebens (Chuck Lafoon), Stephanie Turner (Maddy Sweet) & Tara Summers (Abby)
When her source takes back her story, Willa's excitement over her first cover story fades. Meanwhile, Lucy's relationship with Leo is jeopardized by Jack Dawson's lawsuit and Don becomes involved with a waitress...Quite against expectation, this episode continues the cheerleader murder storyline from last week, with naive reporter Willa McPherson (Alex Breckenridge) nabbing her first DirtNow cover story... only to discover the murder confession from teen Maddy (Stephanie Turner) was a lie...
It's an interesting turn of events for luckless Willa, particularly as it means yet more strain between human decency and professional ruthlessness; as printing the false confession would land Abby in prison, while ignoring it would lose DirtNow its weekly scoop.
I know which course of action I'd take, but the characters of Dirt are more hollow and soulless in their decisions, particularly Lucy (Courteney Cox), who this week damages her relationship with brother Leo (Will McCormack) over his Jack Dawson mud-slinging. Leo's conscience tells him to stop dragging ex-boyfriend Jack through the gutter press, after he discovers he has a wife and family. Of course, Lucy's sense of moral decency has been in the gutter for years now, so she can't understand her brother's dilemma.
In an interesting new subplot, began in earnest last week, schitzophrenic photographer Don (excellent Ian Hart) takes a shine to English waitress Abby (Tara Summers) and, in an amusing scene, asks Lucy to confirm she's real...
It's here that we're given an intriguing new dynamic to the show, as Abby is aware of Don's mental illness, but views it as a natural downside to Don's natural "artistry", while also being critical about how Lucy's manipulates him. Abby is an intriguing new character; she could turn out to be Don's salvation, or a nutter just looking to exploit a sick man. This "love triangle" should take us into some interesting areas...
Holt McLaren (Josh Stewart) has made a definite move into Lucy's affections, with another sex scene kicking off this episode, although it quickly becomes yucky once Holt vomits more worms into her sink. Disappointingly, his medical complaint is diagnosed by a starstruck doctor very early on, so I'm not sure what purpose it has achieved... beyond providing a few gross-out sequences in past episodes.
Josh Stewart looks increasingly bored and two-dimensional as Holt, and I'm not sure this subdued performance is intentional. Sure, it could be a comment on how famous actors are actually fairly mundane guys behind closed doors (a Harrison Ford riff), but it could be that Stewart is incapable of rising above hangdog expressions and laconic drawling.
That said, Stewart's relationship with girlfriend Julia (Laura Allen) is touching and deserving of his understated style. A scene in Come Together, when Holt commits to take drug-addict Julia to rehab, is memorable and sensitively handled. It was also given a typically acidic twist by the presence of Don, again intruding on privacy to grab snapshots for the magazine. One thing Dirt does well is make you cringe at tabloid intrusion, while at the same time get you invested in the search for juicy gossip.
Things certainly get juicy with Brent Barrow (Jeffrey Nordling), a character who has been slowly coming to the fore since his manhood was threatened by gangsters awhile back. As DirtNow's publisher, Barrow is a force for good and bad at the tabloid, always poised to chastize Lucy's tactics, but increasingly presenting a united front against the magazine's detractors -- as exemplified here, when Jack Dawson's stetson-wearing lawyer arrives and threatens them with a lawsuit...
Barrow has earned viewer empathy in recent weeks (certainly from the male demographic), so a subplot with him flirting with Willa and stroking her ego seems innocent enough. Of course, everything in Dirt is... well, dirty... and Barrow's seedier nature is exposed, as he video-tapes himself having sex with Willa (the latest conquest of a huge collection, it seems...) Are half the staff at DirtNow on his tapes, ready to be blackmailed? It's another salacious subplot that will be fun to see developed...
Coming Together earns its title with a neat closing montage of the characters, all caught in various strands of the showbiz spider web: Julia going cold turkey in rehab; innocent murderess Maddy swapping her pink bedroom for the grey of a prison cell, to start another Paris Hilton collage; and Lucy hearing news that the cheerleader murder DirtNow sensationalized is to be turned into a Spike Lee movie...
It's the circle of tabloid life.
20 August 2007
FiveUS, 9.00 pm
