It took five soul-deadening episodes, but Bravo's Hey Paula finally offered something by way of quality entertainment on this week's show, when unstable protagonist Paula Abdul appeared to have been relieved of her producing duties on the Bratz movie, the most hotly anticipated release of the summer (among RealDoll fetishists). Despite an amazingly convincing meltdown, in which she openly questioned the existence of God and berated her staff for daring to speak as she tried "to tell a goddamned story," Abdul now claims that the entire sequence was concocted by dastardly reality show editors. Paula wasn't fired—she fired them!

Of course, that was before the show actually aired, and Abdul's dreary, fame-hungry existence—filled in the Idol off-season with QVC appearances and pointless strategy meetings with a staff who respond with icy, death-stare detachment—was laid out for all the world to see. In the above clip, Paula reacts pretty much as one might expect as she learns that she has been forced out of the Bratz movie she proudly plugged in every interview this year. Dramatic? Perhaps, but where some might see a fourth-rate movie inspired by a line of slutty dolls, Abdul saw in the project a raison d'être outside the karaoke ghetto that has come to define her existence.

A vigilant reader (i.e., one who didn't get cross-eyed drunk to celebrate the return of Top Chef) noticed that the new round of commercials for upcoming Bravo offering Hey, Paula!, a serialized documentary on the effects of prescription painkillers on talent-show judges, went to air without adequate proofreading. We suppose that it's possible there is a better reason than mere carelessness for the mistake; at a network where deep budget cuts force their programming executives to assume second jobs generating their website copy, it's not inconceivable that the talent is required to write and edit promos themselves, and that Abdul—busy juggling the demands of self-medicating, dodging the pack of fluffy dogs constantly underfoot, and approving new storylines for her "character"—was simply too overwhelmed by her multiple responsibilities to catch the error.

Last night's edition of brain-smoothing dinnertime celebrity newsmagazine Extra offered up a crazy-flavored appetizer for the upcoming Bravo reality series, Hey, Paula!!!, in which the American Idol judge unscrews the top of her head and allows the world an opportunity to climb inside and stroll around the church-parking-lot-quality carnival that is her mind. The brief clip reveals little, but now we do know this: her "best friend" is her stylist (always a sign that a famous person has disengaged from reality), there are many fluffy dogs—some of which will defecate on camera—underfoot to provide believable excuses for medication-induced mishaps, and we will get some glimpses of the Idol-related "exhaustion" incidents that are the reason the show exists in the first place. Unfortunately, we have to wait until late June before the star can officially welcome us into her home, a greeting that we expect will be followed by Abdul handing us a shopping bag full of half-empty prescription-pill bottles and urging us to makes ourselves at home.