Crazy About Dirt

I am not normally a fan of being a fan. Even when I joined the caravan following the Grateful Dead from show to show, I was there more for the fun in the parking lot than out of any great sense of devotion to Jerry Garcia. But I find myself to be suddenly a fan of the TV show “Dirt.”

Here is what I love about the show:  the real hero, maybe the only good guy, is Don… the schizophrenic photographer.  He is also often the most grounded.  The only member of the paparazzi to stop taking pictures long enough to save a child in a run away car, the only person human enough to tip off the victim of the latest “she’s so fat” tabloid extravaganza and get her side of the story.  It’s lovely.  The rest of the show is smart, but it’s really just The Valley of the Dolls in post-modern clothes.  (And, it turns out, post-modernity really, really likes to show off it’s ample cleavage.)  But the Don character is something else.  Something new and wonderful and refreshing.  I think he may well be the first well-written character with a mental illness on TV.

Yeah, DIrt!