IMHO "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" (5.9): Official Book Club Selection

After last week's gay milestone episode, anything Kathy did this week was bound to be a letdown, but thankfully there is enough in this meandering outing to earn the up arrow.

Look below to find out why!

When I called this episode "meandering", I wasn't kidding. The editing decision seemed to come down to "a little bit of this ... a little bit of that", as Kathy flits from getting her own wax likeness to trying to get a book published and get on a book club list (preferably Oprah), to shilling boneless wings.

Frankly the parts I enjoyed most were the simple Maggie moments at the beginning. There's an absolute classic moment involving Maggie's insistence on re-using paper towels. I can't be the only one who said "that is so my mother".

The Evil Kathy comes out and involves Maggie in a discussion about ... Hustler magazine and, well I can't go into it here, but once again Kathy takes hilarious advantage of her mother's innate goodness.

Kathy is getting her own wax figure at Madame Tussaud, which leads to a nice scene with muscle guys in gold shorts, but strangely, the Tussaud stuff didn't really work for me (maybe it's because I'm terrified of wax statues, the same way other people are terrified of clowns. Perhaps it's because of this, or especially this, or even more terrifyingly ... THIS!.)

But I digress ...

The other big bit was Kathy and her book, inevitably titled Official Book Club Selection. This stuff worked better, mainly because of the exasperation she caused her publishing company. Between picking out her book cover (they nixed everything involving an outstretched finger), and their extreme apprehension over Kathy "naming names", she caused a lot of brow-furrowing. This is the Kathy we know and love. Take a look ...

Kathy tries to learn what it takes to be a best-selling writer by visiting with Jackie Collins and Salman Rushdie (both of whom are good sports), but they pale in comparison to other big-name celebs from this season.

Even though I'm giving this episode an up arrow, for me it was probably the weakest of the season. It was all over the place, and there was nothing to pull it all together. This show seems to work best when there's one theme throughout the episode

Maybe I'm judging it too harshly, especially compared with last week's classic episode, and the previous week's ambitious "race and comedy" entry. Or maybe I realized that next week is the season finale, and I don't want it to end, so I'm taking out my frustrations on this week's show.

What did you think?