What I'm Watching: Dirty Sexy Money (Series Return)

Dirty Sexy Money: Season 2, Episode 10 “The Facts” (C-)

This episode is not a good way to get back into “Dirty Sexy Money” right before its three final episodes begin next week. This installment is from way back in November, and was filmed as the seventh episode of the show to serve as a filler hour. It never aired, so here it is now. The biggest reason it doesn’t work is that every actor on the show regularly plays their roles way over the top, and making them even more unbelievable by having them tailor to fanciful made-up plotlines about them is simply too much. Shawn Michael Patrick, who plays Clark, isn’t the most enthusiastic of actors. While he is great in small doses, as he was in the second season premiere, he’s not really capable of carrying an entire episode by himself. The fact that the role of the reporter went to Rena Sofer only makes matters worse. I could barely stand watching television when Sofer was guest-starring on both “24” and “Heroes” at the same time since watching her attempt to act just makes me cringe. She’s so grating and uninteresting, and her characters are one-note and lame. Her reporter here was all talk, and her continuous threatening of Clark was obvious from the start. The ending of the episode wasn’t anything stunning – the very direct parody of “The Usual Suspects” is good for a laugh or two, but it doesn’t really work with the bulk of the episode that came before it. Clark’s promise to give the reporter inside scoop from that point forward makes no sense if he made the whole thing up; why wouldn’t he just leave her feeling like she got everything she wanted? I know I’m looking too closely, and “Dirty Sexy Money” isn’t that complex. This episode shouldn’t be judged so harshly because it was designed to fill in the gaps instead of airing a repeat of the show. Hopefully the remaining three installments will be much better than this, a return to the incredible awesomeness of “The Chiavennasca,” but my hopes aren’t too high.