As you've read all season long in EW.com's Hey Paula TV Watch — and by ''all season,'' of course, we mean a whopping six episodes over the last five weeks — writer Michael Slezak has been struggling to understand what exactly possessed Paula Abdul to wade into the murky pool of celebreality television. Today, we'll be cutting and pasting classic paragraphs from Slezak's previous columns, and then adding a bunch of old, random sentences he didn't deem worthy of printing the first time around! You can join the fun, too — by resurrecting your weeks-old message-board comments, and sharing photos and/or videos of your pets humping the bejesus out of their favorite plush toys!

Oh, come on now — you know I'm only kidding. I have way too much respect for the 11 people still reading this column to do something that discourteous. Unfortunately, though, the folks at Bravo don't seem to have any such qualms. Tonight's slapdash, half-finished Hey Paula season finale dropped like the sickening first squeeze from a long-dormant mustard bottle: watery, insipid, and best rinsed right down the drain.

Indeed, who among the Hey Paula faithful could've possibly enjoyed tonight's half-hour debacle? Especially with the sudden and unwanted materialization of that robotic male voice-over? Certainly not the folks who haven't been able to stop laughing at Paula's brand of sobbing melodrama since late June. Yeah, sure, we got a second helping of Paula's ''I don't do recreational drugs!'' and ''I'm tired of people not treating me like the gift that I am'' zingers, but not a single new manic meltdown. And no, Paula's ''my hair looks orange'' whining doesn't count. Heck, her ''I should use Botox probably'' joke — delivered with a beautifully human furrowed forehead — wasn't just amusing but also pretty darn astute.

Similarly, people like me who have been compelled to tune in every week out of a sense of morbid curiosity — how did Paula allow this show to happen? why doesn't anyone on her oversize staff ever feed her? — got no fresh insights tonight. Okay, there was that one doozy of a quote from Paula's dad. ''She's my girl, but I lost her to the public, and now she's on her own,'' he blurted to the camera before busting out with an uncomfortable laugh. But if I'm gonna actually sleep tonight, I have to trust that some savvy producer took the quote out of context, rather than believe Paula's dad would declare his daughter a hopeless case. On national television. On her birthday. Right?

Even Paula's most ardent cheerleaders must've gone home hungry tonight. That whole segment where she auditioned young artists for a project called Shut Up and Dance felt deeply unconvincing. Aside from the fact that the project shares a name with her 17-year-old remix album, what exactly is it Paula is producing? A reality TV pilot in the vein of J. Lo's Dancelife? A tour? An instructional video? Or maybe just a ploy to get shiny young things like Janelle to gaze into a cue card and read sentences like ''My dream is to do various projects with her''? Likewise, that meeting with Paula's musical collaborator Peter Lord played like something that would never have happened if a camera crew hadn't been wired and ready to capture it. Still, you'd think the guy might've at least brought an original track or two to Paula's pad, instead of getting her excited with some dated, chipmunk-y dance track only to reveal he'd written it for another artist. That's just straight-up coldhearted — pun intended!

Still, amidst the clips and the leftovers collected off the editing-room floor, a handful of take-home messages emerged:

1. Chinese guys apparently need subtitles; Billy Bush apparently needs a gag Okay, so I know Paula's acupuncturist, Dr. Jun Song, had a Chinese accent, but if he'd been from, say, rural Arkansas or deepest Brooklyn, would the producers have slapped subtitles over his very intelligible comments? Also, Billy Bush? Never, ever try to link Paula and Shaquille O'Neal under a filthy quilt of innuendo. Yeah, I know, she's the one who said Shaq can't ''take it deep'' the way she can, but she was referring to intensive massage therapy. Thank you. Now go away. That is all.

2. One of Paula's Chihuahuas is a very horny beast And on the off chance I'd managed to erase the image of his thrusting doggie haunches from my brain, we got a second shot later in the episode. Thanks, Bravo!

3. Paula has a boyfriend??? Or, um, Paula has a boyfriend. And his name is J.T. And apparently he's smart enough to make himself scarce when reality-show cameras show up. Or else he started dating Paula after she'd already taped the first six Hey Paula episodes. For her sake, I hope it's the former. Because even people who mercilessly abuse their interior decorators deserve some degree of personal happiness.

So what did you think of Hey Paula's seven-episode run — and the scraps in tonight's finale? Would you watch the show if it came back for a second season? And more important, has it changed the way you feel about Paula Abdul?

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