The TV Zone

You’d think it was a secret if FX hadn’t been bragging about it all over the tabloid TV shows:

Jennifer Aniston reunites with “Friends” costar Courteney Cox! Their characters share an on-air smooch!! And -- wait for it tonight -- a whole nasty bunch more!!!

Yet FX didn’t provide a critics’ review disc of tonight’s season finale of “Dirt” (Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX) till the last minute, perhaps to preserve the suspense, perhaps to preserve the bankability of Aniston’s big-screen career. (Can you imagine her reps being hot to hype a TV guest shot?)

What that late-arriving disc reveals is a snappy “special guest star” turn by Aniston as a Hollywood gossip-rag rival to Cox’ scandal-mongering editrix. They share not only a tabloid mindset but also a “special” past relationship. Cool your jets on that one -- Aniston doesn’t show up till a third of the way through the hour, and she pops in and out of the subsequent plotting only enough to help move the story forward toward a second season that may never come.

Despite Cox’ presence, “Dirt” hasn’t been the boffo hit FX had hoped, the reasons for which are on full display tonight. The show is a weird amalgam of two intriguing ideas that seem to crash when they meet, rather than dovetail. Series creator Matthew Carnahan confided during our chat at a midseason press tour party that his original series concept was to depict schizophrenia from the inside out. That’s retained in the show’s most fascinating character -- schizo paparazzo Don Conkey (Ian Hart), hard-core dirt-getter and genuine best friend to Cox’ hard-driving editor Lucy Spiller. His internal torment is vividly embodied in weird sequences visualizing his demons as living-dead bad angels, forever urging him on to kill Lucy.

The show’s other, and you’d think parallel, focus was grafted onto Carnahan’s concept when FX got involved: the split personality of Hollywood itself -- all glamour/grunge, backscratching/betrayal, kiss-kiss/knife-in-back. Actors snitch to the tabloids on their own spouses to advance their careers, an arc that’s been playing out all season with a drug-addled, sex-crazed celeb couple (blonde “24” terrorist Laura Allen, “Third Watch” regular Josh Stewart). Their machinations come to a head in tonight’s bloody cliffhanger denouement.

But the two plot tracks seem to unfold in different universes, not a single integrated drama, which makes “Dirt” just plain weird to watch. On one side, Aniston’s visiting editor/friend has a jaunty, wicked edge that’s a kick, and her scenes with Cox set off old-friends sparks from the characters’ mix of lingering affection and bad blood.

That juice is watered down, though, by the eerie dreaminess of Don’s schizo battle with himself, played out in the sagebrush desert like some Biblical temptation metaphor. There’s also a parade of crammed-in plot devices -- undermining underlings at the tab rag, a stalker terrorizing Lucy after hours, rampant blackmail, the occasional car chase, and various other personal wreckage strewn about as a byproduct of Tinseltown’s gosh-darn evilness. And too much of it feels manufactured.

When the most real person on the premises is the craziest, the characters aren’t exactly riveting. Dishing “Dirt” should be lots more fun.

[FX photo of Cox and Aniston by Michael Becker]

UPDATE: As several eagle-eyed comments below accurately note, Laura Allen was on "The 4400," while the "24" terrorist was actually Laura Harris. Sorry for my blonde Laura mix-up.