Director: Frederick King Keller
Cast: Courteney Cox (Lucy Spiller), Ian Hart (Don Konkey), Will McCormack (Leo Spiller), Laura Allen (Julia Mallory), Josh Stewart (Holt McLaren), Jeffrey Nordling (Brent Barrow), Johann Urb (Johnny Gage), Perez Hilton (Himself), Tony Potts (Himself), Nancy O'Dell (Herself), Shauna Stoddart (Terry), Richmond Arquette (Collin DeQuisto), Lukas Haas (Marqui Jackson) & Alex Breckenridge (Willa McPherson)
Julia's sex tape with Johnny Gage is released on the internet, with Lucy implicated as the leak. Meanwhile, Don gets an unusual assignment...The penultimate edition of Dirt focuses on a plot that has provided the spine to this season: Julia Mallory's sex tape with Johnny Gage. Last week, Holt (Josh Stewart) destroyed the only copy he was given by secret lover Lucy (Courteney Cox), but now the full x-rated tape is the talk of the internet...
As anyone with an ounce of pop-culture nous can guess, the leaked sex tape energizes Julia's flagging career (more shades of Paris Hilton on this show!) When Julia manipulates the press by claiming she was raped, it's not long before she gets to flex those underused acting muscles as a chat show's star guest -- playing "the victim", lapping up the limelight, while Gage protests his innocence and claims Lucy was behind the leak...
Laura Allen has been wonderful this season as Julia; sexy, desperate, vulnerable and believable. Her performances are in stark contrast to Josh Stewart's, who seems stuck in neutral even during sex scenes with Courteney Cox. His hangdog expressions of bafflement are actually quite endearing, but it's a shame his character wasn't written with more charisma and spark.
As usual, Lucy's job comes under threat for tenuous reasons, this time thanks to an underselling Sexx Issue and, later, Gage's embarrassing reveal of her "you scratch my back" methods. Again, publisher Brent Barrow (Jeffrey Nordling) acts holier-than-thou for a few scenes, before being chewed out by Lucy and forced to eat his words by the episode's end.
Lucy, along with the viewers, is always complacent about everything job-related -- as it's clear she's the best tabloid editor ever to put pen to paper. I mean seriously, if a magazine had the kind of cover stories DirtNow delivers weekly, it would be the best-selling magazine in the world!
Dirt has just never made Lucy's job security look precarious, as every week she achieves the impossible, under tight deadlines. Maybe a few more episodes should have dealt with magazine failures and disappointing sales, but instead we've always had the impression every issue of DirtNow is like ambrosia to the Gods of gossip.
But what about Don Konkey (Ian Hart)? He's the real reason for DirtNow's success, after all. Unfortunately, after last week's brilliance from Hart, Joel Fields' script doesn't have much room for a Don misadventure. Instead, he sets the stage for next week's season finale, as Don is haunted by another hallucination -- in the form of comatose wannabe-pap Marqui, who follows him around wearing a hospital gown and drip...
Marqui (Lukas Haas) has a secret assignment for Don, which he illustrates by having him photograph L.A's homeless community... before a spooky, gothic version of Lucy waltzes out of a nearby alley to shed a blood tear. Ooh, symbolic. Don's clearly facing an internal war because of his mindless loyalty to Lucy; which has given him a dead cat, busted fingers, multiple beatings and hospitalized friends... so can you blame him?
Other subplots exist as moments of calm in the drama, or set up the finale. Lucy's gay brother Leo (Will McCormack) reappares on her doorstep, now with a mute girlfriend. It's a bit confusing, but undoubtedly this episode is just positioning a domino for next week's tumble. Is Leo his own sister's stalker, I wonder?
Ahhh yes, the stalker storyline. Unfortunately it's no longer as scary as it was initially, because Lucy can afford a $2,000-a-day security task force, but the unmasking of the culprit should be fun. I still think it's a toss-up between brother Leo or best friend Don, but there are quite a few others who have every reason to mess with Lucy's head...
Caught In The Act is quite a typical Dirt episode, with most of its success down to 11 episodes of gradual build-up. Laura Allen is great to watch, particularly when she shares the screen with Lucy, who reveals who leaked her sex tape online. The way Lucy monologues her investigation had shades of Hecule Poirot to it; well, if the Belgian detective were a bitchy tabloid editor and he accused people in "The Vault", not The Drawing Room...
I also enjoyed a throwaway Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? joke, with Lucy Spiller's name substituted for Virginia's -- as the Edward Albee play includes commentary about truth and illusion (or fiction and reality) -- which is very much the domain of Lucy's professional life.
24 September 2007
FiveUS, 9.00 pm
