Dirt – The Complete First Season (DVD-Video)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Episodes: B-

 

 

The FX Channel has an uncanny ability to produce solid and slightly dark hits; granted those hits mostly work off of the concepts of sex, money, and violence, but who really cares?  This reviewer is no soccer mom and watching other FX hits like Rescue Me, The Riches, Damages, The Shield, and the best of all Nip/Tuck only makes new series like Dirt all the more tasty and tantalizing.  The high hopes this reviewer had for Dirt does not hold up as well as the aforementioned series, but it does have gripping and crazy storylines that could make the strongest many gawk in disbelief.  FX series are truly the ‘soap opera’ for the new generation.  House wives across America and the world used to tune in everyday to stations like ABC and CBS to catch their ‘stories;’ stories that centered on sex, violence, betrayal, and such other crazy circumstances that it was like a car crash with commercials.

 

The problem with ‘soap operas,’ though still extremely popular, is that they have become so submerged in disgustingly repetitive and idiotic storylines that they can barely be called entertainment any longer.  FX has revised the ‘soap opera’ concept to better embody an audience that needs a bit more substance with their insanity.  Beyond the great writing teams that FX has brought to the table it seems bigger stars are becoming interested in partaking in the hedonistic pleasure of dark television.  Stars such as Glen Close, Minnie Driver, James Woods, and now Courtney Cox have begun to call television home again and both television and actors alike are reaping the benefits.

 

Dirt’s plot follows fast talking, hard working, and tough chief tabloid editor Lucy Spiller (Courtney Cox) as she runs not one, but two top rate tabloid magazines.  The series is pure ruthlessness, with Courtney Cox being the duchess of dirt.  Every episode takes the viewer deeper into the dark rabbit hole of the tabloid world, where people are willing to do anything and everything to get the story or shot.  Besides Cox, Ian Hart (playing Don Konkey) is a functioning schizophrenic who is Lucy Spiller’s best friend and top photographer who will go to the ends of the earth to get the shot.  Hart’s schizophrenic character as the First Season progresses becomes more entwined in his delusions, ranging from first having an imaginary girlfriend too hearing voices that demand he kill his best friend, Lucy Spiller.  Besides the leading crazies (Hart and Cox) other characters like Julia Mallory (Laura Allen), a drug addicted actress who despises Spiller and her trashy tabloid, and Holt Maclaren (Josh Stewart), Julia’s adulteress husband who also suffers from addiction, but his is to Lucy who he feels he can not live without, continue to cast the series into pure insanity.  Dirt is not the best series on FX, but it is surely exciting, enthralling, and addictive.

 

The technical features on this 4 disc set are not completely clean, but what can you expect from Dirt?  The picture is presented in a pleasant 1.78 X 1 Widescreen that is color balanced, but tends to have light/dark issues in the darker scenes.  The sound is balanced and crisp in its Dolby Digital 5.1 surrounds, projecting well throughout.  The extras are plentiful and well presented, offering fans features like a behind the scenes look at the inspiration for the series with Courtney Cox and David Arquette with ‘Celebrity Couple Gets Dirty’ and a other featurettes with cast and crew in ‘Through the Lens, Darkly’ and ‘Tabloid Wars: Totally True Stories From the Celebrity Trenches’ that explores exactly what the title states.  Other features will certainly excite fans by offering additional deleted scenes and outtakes.  This reviewer found the featurettes to be interesting and insightful about the series, but found the deleted scenes and outtakes to be lackluster; so leave or take them…there is no difference.

 

Courtney Cox made an excellent choice in pulling a 180 on her character from the hit series from Friends and by getting her hands dirty by being one of the series executive producers with her husband (Arquette).  This will ensure Cox to have large staying power in Hollywood, along with former Friends stars Aniston and Kudrow; seems the men from Friends did not fair as well.  Dirt is a creative series that truly looks at the darker side of things, all while be entertaining and completely ridiculous.  This reviewer highly recommends this series as well as many other FX series.  If Dirt doesn’t always have Hart, at least it always has Cox.

 

 

-   Michael P Dougherty II