2008 Winter TV Preview: Dirt

Dirt Season 2

Premieres: Sunday, March 2nd at 10:00 p.m. EST

Network: FX

Creator(s): Matthew Carnahan

Starring:: Courteney Cox Arquette, Ian Hart, Alex Brekenridge, Ryan Eggold, Josh Stewart

Website: fxnetwork.com

Dirt is a drama series that centers on Lucy Spiller and her work as the editor-in-chief of Dirt Now, a tabloid magazine. In many ways, her life is just as dramatic as the celebrities she has her reporters and photographers hound. Her closest friend is Don Konkey, a schizophrenic paparazzo who spends a lot of his time hounding celebrities trying to photograph them and the rest of his time having weird hallucinations.

In the first season of the series, Lucy was involved in a love triangle with Holt McLaren, a has-been actor who was dating Julia Mallory a famous actress. Things turned ugly by the end of the season though after Lucy and Holt wrecked Julia’s career. Julia returned the favor by stabbing Lucy in the abdomen. She took off on foot afterwards and was hit by a car. Now for some dirt on the new season (this contains spoilers so if you don’t want to know anything about the new season, skip to the Preview Pulp.

Ok, you’ve been warned! The first episode of season 2 starts off with Lucy in a coma. She obviously wakes up eventually and with the help of Don, does her best to recover and get back to the magazine. She hires a new reporter, Farber Kauffman and there appears to be some chemistry between him and fellow Dirt Now reporter, Willa McPherson.

The second episode features Tom Arnold, whose character is a beloved sitcom star who runs into some PR trouble when an audio file of a voicemail he left for his daughter surfaces online (Alec Baldwin can relate to this one), followed by a video of him having a Hasselhoff burger-episode with a plate of spaghetti. The episode also includes a Paris Hilton-esque character who’s trying to avoid jail time and change her image. Obviously Lucy is all over these stories and trying to get to the bottom of both of them.

I’d only seen bits and pieces of the first season of Dirt and didn’t really have much of an interest of it but the first two episodes of the new season have turned me around. Courteney Cox told Access Hollywood that the show is going to be lighter this year and after seeing some of the new season, especially the second episode, which borrows stories from real life, I can definitely see what she means. Old drama is still being addressed and resolved but I got the sense that the series is definitely moving forward with new characters and story arcs.

Like every original series on FX, Dirt definitely has a dark and twisty side but there’s also an element of fun in the ruthlessness of Spiller and the people who work for her. Plus, Cox does a fantastic job of making her character tough but not entirely unlikable.

Check out a promo for the show, below:

For the full 2008 Winter TV Premiere Schedule: CLICK HERE