Reports from the Spitzer-Faso debate are focusing on Faso's go-for-broke aggro style — attacking Spitzer, the grandstanding blowhard; his fear of treating unions the way he treats corporations; his daddy's money; his mother's combat boots, etc. And we applaud both Faso's try at making a little late-in-the-game hay and the news folks' valiant attempt to reconstitute it as something worth sitting through. But sadly, Faso never came through with a rhetorical Hail Mary.

What we instead got was a remix of their first debate, as if chopped and screwed by a cough-syrup-sipping Houston hip-hop D.J. — the content didn't change, it was just a little hazier, duller, somewhat meaner, and a lot darker (literally, thanks to Buffalo host station WNED's dyspeptically public-access-worthy lighting).

Faso leavened his feints of rage with flourishes of smarm, adding a get-a-load-of-this-joker smirk to his digs on Spitzer, as if he were debating Barney Fife. His main rip went like this: Alan Hevesi, Alan Hevesi, Alan Hevesi, you totally wanna make out with Alan Hevesi. He repeated the scandal-tweaked yet little-known comptroller's name at least five times. He also twice rewound to an allegation from the first debate that Spitzer got a plane ride from an out-of-state Indian tribe. He trotted out these leftovers with the studied gusto of a summer-stock actor who can't admit he's a night shy of Labor Day. Overripe though they were, the "jabs" got Spitzer spitting tacks. He harrumphed, guffawed, and a couple of times turned a full 90 degrees to give Faso a look of blazing blue-eyed decimation that must reduce folks in the attorney general's office to little puddles of fear. (The quasarlike pulse of that forehead — it's so intense!)

Yet, by the hour's end, the event's uneventyness seemed to weigh on both men, especially the hard-charging challenger. Last time out, Faso clamored for more debates, and pundits agreed that Spitzer was adopting a rose-garden strategy before he'd even received a vote. Tonight, when we got to the predictable moment when Faso should have clamored for more holy screen time with Saint Eliot he offered not a peep of protest.

Who can blame him? Short of producing IMs between Spitzer and local Boy Scouts that say "I AM SOOOO HORNY FOR BIG TAX HIKES," there's nothing left Faso can do.

Faso Jabs Sharply at Spitzer, Who Assails 'Angry' Tone [NYT]