Director: Chris Long
Cast: Laura Allen (Julia Mallory), Jeffrey Nordling (Brent Barrow), Josh Stewart (Holt McLaren), Ian Hart (Don Konkey), Courteney Cox (Lucy Spiller), Alex Breckenridge (Willa McPherson), Shauna Stoddart (Terry), Richmond Arquette (Collin De Quisto) & Lukas Haas (Marqui Jackson)
A young photographer is taken under Don's wing during a dangerous assignment, Lucy's stalker makes a bold move, and Julia struggles to find work..."Okay, this is our cover; fly my little monkeys..." commands Lucy, alluding to Oz's Wicked Witch; and this episode definitely proves head chimp Don Konkey is under her spell. Even the ratty paparazzo's name bears relation to video-game gorilla Donkey Kong!
Pap Smeared is the first episode entirely devoted to Don (Ian Hart), who's been our comic relief and quirky guide throughout much of Dirt's dog-eat-dog celebrity underworld.
The episode begins in media res, with a blood-stained Don in the DirtNow office, before jumping back 36 hours to slowly discover the reason. We've always known being a pap was a tough job (particularly for a functioning schitzophrenic), but Don really has bad few days -- beginning with a mugging from a gang of L.A hoodlums. Lucy, in typically pragmatic, faintly-maternal way, gives Don her trusty stun-gun...
This week's story concerns a celeb (a Paris Hilton type), whose boyfriend (a Justin Timberlake type), is cheating on her with her best friend, unbeknownst to her. Well, until she reads the next issue of DirtNow, if Lucy has heer way!
Don is on the case (isn't he on every case?) -- sniffing out the "story", not mindless snapshots --although his loyalty and principles apparently don't endear him to his peers. Interestingly, rival photographers view him as "Lucy's lapdog", although Don can silence their jealous bitching with explicit reminders of his amazing success.
It's great to get some insight into how Don is perceived by his peers, although it begs the question why he drives a crappy car and lives in a hovel if he's paid so handsomely by DirtNow. Mind you, I can't see Don swanning around in a luxury apartment, can you?
Back at the office, Willa (Alex Breckenridge) is being forced to research 18 seasons of The Real Life for a frivolous page-filler, as punishment for her unprofessional relationship with publisher Brent (Jeffrey Nordling). Ambitious Willa isn't happy, leading her to dump Brent, who mistakenly thinks the way to woo her back is to simply shave off his facial hair!
It's interesting how Willa's the one wearing the trousers in their relationship -- quite literally one Brent is seen shuffling around his office with his pants round his ankles, begging for sex in his sleazy way. But has her brush-off pushed him too far? Surely Brent's sex tape will be used to blackmail her soon.
Speaking of sex tapes, Holt (a bearded Josh Stewart) and Julia (Laura Allen) burn their own together, destroying the strangleold DirtNow had over their relationship. Is it just me, or does it seem like you're nobody in the world of Dirt unless you have a sex tape to worry about!
Anyway, exorcising that demon doesn't help Julia in her search for acting work. She's denied a starring role in a Guy Ritchie project and won't lower herself to become the weekly corpse on CSI.. resulting in a return to self-mutilation with shards from a broken mirror.
Sadly, it seems the writers are going in circles with Julia now, having recently taking away the things that made Holt and Julia's pairing so interesting (the car crash secret, the drugs, the rehab), and leaving Allen with nothing fresh to work with!
Willa, Julia and Holt are just mild diversions this week, as the crux of the episode revolves around Don's assignment. It's not long before he's snared himself "a fan"; wide-eyed young photographer Marqui Jackson (Lukas Haas, the kid from Witness, all grown up), and the decision to give Don an inexperienced apprentice proves to be a clever one. It allows insight into how Don's professional mind works. I particularly enjoyed their conversation in a car during a stakeout, with Don extolling the virtues of The Three P's ("patience, persistence, point of view. Three P's, like the three R's, but they're P's.")
Marqui helps Don with a gang of rival "photographers", intent on scaring Don away so their leader, gangbanger Ozzie Romero, can take the prized snaps himself and sell them to DirtNow for a hefty sum. There are a number of violent moments throughout this episode, as getting a relatively straight-forward picture turns into a nightmare for Don -- one that genuinely make you fear for his safety... and sanity!
More development is also given to Don's past, building on last week's revelation that he was abused by his stepmother. It seems Don left home for college as a teen, allowing his younger brother Jason (who appears in visions) to face the same sexual abuse...
Don is cursed to relive the same pain, as Pap Smeared builds to a similar situation; as puppydog apprentice Marqui is viciously beaten up and electrocuted by Romero's gang, and Don chooses to get his prized shots, instead of help the poor boy.
Don's peers were right: he really is a brainwashed "lapdog", focusing exclusively on his work and repressing any human decency to help a friend in need. It seems no lessons were learned by Jason's situation all those years ago, sadly...
Pap Smeared concludes with Lucy's stalker making a bold move, by sending all the DirtNow staff embarassing snaps of Lucy half-naked with Holt! There's an escalating tension over the stalker's identity, although it must be a character we already know, surely! The final scene is one of regret, as Don stands at the bedside of the hospitalized Marqui...
Overall, this is one of the best episodes of Dirt, despite repetitive subplots and lack of development with the week's cover story. But none of that matters, because it's just such fun to see events solely from Don's angle.
His mentor/pupil relationship with Marqui (the great Haas) was genuinely involving and, by the end, culminates in one of Dirt's most tragic, violent and heartbreaking sequences. It's rare to have a character as sympathetic as Don make such an awful decision -- you find very yourself severely disappointed by Don... but, to be honest, not convinced you'd have done the right thing in his position either!
17 September 2007
FiveUS, 9.00 pm
