January 2, 2007: The Premiere of "Dirt!"

Tonight is the premier of Dirt, the Nip Tuck-ish stylish terrorthon about paparazzi favorite Courtney Cox getting her revenge on the tabloids who both boosted her career and stalked her every movement during "Friends" (especially with BFF Jennifer Aniston) by playing a "Devil Wears Long Lens" Bonnie-Fuller-but-worse tabloid editor who stops at nothing to get the celebrity scoop. The skinny is that it will get the Nip Tuck crowd, but really, the drinking game to beat has to be figuring out which story lines are roman a clefs about her friends. I am not sure I care about the show as much as I do that Hollywood stars probably consider this their moral duty to serve up a self-righteous expose. But do they get it right?

As New York Magazine notes, "Dirt wants us to believe that Courteney/Lucy has feelings that get hurt. On one occasion and very briefly, she seems to experience a soupçon of regret and a smidgen of shame. So we know that Dirt is fiction. I've stood in the lobby of places like the midtown Fox building, and I've looked into the faces of the people who work there as they emerge from elevators and grope toward sunlight, and I've hoped for a shadow of shame on a single face. But there is not an Ian Hart among them. They are proud of themselves."So why would Courtney throw herself into this if not for some sort of so-called comeuppance, or perhaps even more lofty, to teach Americans how evil the paprazzi really are? Maybe she should, a la Sinead O'Connor, rip up a picture of Rupert Murdoch and yell "Fight the real enemy" to kick the show off. Of course, I am watching the premiere.

Will you watch? After you see it a few times, is there any redeeming value to this show?