We're already feeling overloaded with Courteney's Cox (and ginormous balls), but alas, we made a committment to ourselves that we would see this Dirt show through the end-ish — which means it's time for round two of Dishin' The Dirt, our on-going feature where we have two high-level tabloid insiders weigh in on the realities of Lucy Spiller's fictional world of celebrity sex tapes and editors-in-chief getting their own coffee.

In our first installment, our pair of gossip industry veterans pointed out some obvious missteps by Lucy Spiller & Co. Among them: an editor-in-chief would never get her own caffeine dose, for one — and second, she'd never be so technologically inclined that she can whip around on her Treo and PowerPoint at the same time.

This week, Dirt brings us a whole new round of tabloid misrepresentations, like a glossy gossip editor giving a shit about winning an ASME award, or letting a lowly assistant dive into the trenches of investigative reporting. Let's check in to see where Tabloiders One and Two stand.

Says Tabloider No. 1:

There were several howlers on last night’s episode of Dirt, but none better than this one: “We got snubbed at the last five ASMEs!”

That was the criticism hurled at editrix Lucy Spiller by her boss, who’s threatening to replace her with a rival who once (horrors!) Photoshopped. (Another thing Bonnie would never do… um, well, scratch that.) He’s pissed that Lucy’s gone way over budget, and oh, not brought home some National Magazine awards along the way.

Sorry, kids, there are two kinds of magazines: ones that traffic in celebrity gossip, and ones that win ASMEs. You’ve gotta laugh at the idea of Bonnie Fuller (the reputed inspiration for Lucy) climbing up to the stage at the Waldorf to collect her prize for “Stars Without Makeup!” while Graydon Carter and co. pick at their poached salmon.

Last night was Lucy’s chance to show off how much she knows about magazines, and she fired off the buzz words like a pro: Adjacencies! Dummy text! Edit queue! Gray space! She even did a little on-the-spot math: “Put it down for 5 – that’s two spreads and a single!” Impressive stuff. And her crowning achievement: Being the first editor to put a dead person on the cover of a tabloid! Yeah, that’ll sell millions and rake in the ASMEs.

But then she got her BIG idea: Struggling to rein in the budgets of the two magazines she runs – one celeb-friendly glossy (Now) and one gossipy tabloid (Drrt) – she gets the inspiration to combine the two. “It’ll be like People with a healthy dose of screw you!” she announces gleefully. Sounds like Star – remember when it was a newsprint tabloid, and Bonnie transformed it into a glossy? Sorry, but the jury’s still out on the success of that one.

We’ll have to wait for next week to see if DrrtNow (or was it NowDrrt?) saves Lucy’s job, but at least it means the end of that Clark Kent/Superman nagging problem of watching Courteney Cox trying to act either nice or naughty, and no one calling her on it.

Says Tabloider No. 2:

Many of the reviews on Dirt say how brave Courteney Cox is for choosing such an unsympathetic character. I think the show is too safe. Lucy may be a caricature of a “tough career woman,” but Bonnie Fuller would never let an assistant do “investigative reporting” or offer staffers her swag stash if they come up with a good story The idea of Bonnie giving away gifts made me laugh out loud. Lucy doesn’t seem too terrible to me and Drrt staffers seem unrealistically happy and content with their jobs.

I enjoyed watching the cover meeting in Dirt last night. No one batted an eyelash when they found out the magazine had photos from a dead actress’ funeral — they were just delighted to have a good cover. I hope that the show features a cover meeting in a slow news week…celebrity weekly editors are very talented at speculating fake pregnancies, manipulating innocuous photos to make them seem sinister, or making up fake romances when there is nothing else going on. Also, I’d love to see someone aside from Don take their job really, really seriously. I know many reporters who report on Brangelina but treat it like they work for the CIA — and who are not schizophrenic.

Overall, this I enjoyed this episode more than the first, but I hope it gets, well, dirtier.