Steppenwolf’s 1968 counterculture anthem, “Born To Be Wild,” is about living life unafraid and on one’s own terms. It’s a fitting play on words for The Naked Truth episode, “Born To Be Wilde,” in which Nora Wilde decides to embrace her love of billiards and play the game her way.

Lasting only three seasons (1995-1998), the ABC-then-NBC sitcom The Naked Truth starred Téa Leoni, in her first lead role, as Pulitzer Prize nominated photographer Nora Wilde, who is forced to take a job at The Comet, a sleazy celebrity tabloid that requires her to work in demeaning situations. While the TV series opened with strong ratings, by the third season, it was in a downward spiral, and the last seven episodes were never aired. “Born To Be Wilde” is one of those episodes.

Whether the demise of The Naked Truth was warranted, I cannot say; I had never heard of the series, and I have no plans to watch any of the remaining 54 episodes. However, for 23 minutes, I was pretty entertained, largely because Ms. Leoni has solid comedic chops, and she throws herself into this episode’s original script.

In “Born To Be Wilde,” the tabloid team learns that the Shoot Billiards Not Bullets celebrity pool tournament is allegedly rigged to ensure the celebrities win. To break the story, Wilde’s partner, Jake, will compete in the tournament to where he can “get his ass whupped by some model who weighs less than a pool cue.”  Wilde’s role in the sting is less enjoyable. She is assigned the role of “chalk girl,” where she must “wander around the floor wearing a tight dress, a lovely smile, and chalk on a chain.”

Though Wilde pretends to know nothing about pool, and mocks Jake for naming his cue stick Old Mahogany Joe (“Why are men compelled to name anything that is longer than it is wide?”), it’s quickly revealed she has a passion for the sport. When Jake disappears to the restroom, she steps up to the pool table, longingly caresses the cue stick, and then threads a difficult shot through two balls.

At the tournament, dressed as Chalk Girl, Wilde is approached by her first celebrity, Diff’rent Strokes star Gary Coleman (playing completely against type), who lecherously says, “Hey there sweet thing, how about a little chalk for the old stick?” But, after a coquettish rebuff, Wilde still has no more information on the tournament scandal.

However, when Jake accidentally gives himself a black eye trying to mimic Tom Cruises’ cue stick twirls in The Color of Money, Wilde then professes her love for pool and seizes the cue to compete as his substitute. She explains, “Back in college, I’d wake up in the morning after a feverish night at the pool hall with balled up twenties in my pocket, and I had no idea how they got there, whose stick I had used, how many games I had played. All I knew was that I had won and I didn’t care how.”

Unfettered, Wilde proceeds to demolish her celebrity opponents, first Mr. Coleman and then (an off-camera) Angela Lansbury.  With each game, her confidence rises and her tongue gets sharper, as in, “Now, now I’ll let Ms Lansbury have at least one shot… oops., I lied… guess it’s Loser She Wrote.”

As the tournament unravels, its organizer finally reveals her true colors and tells Wilde to “take a dive,” which is captured on tape. Having nailed the scandal, but also having lost the support of the crowd, Wilde acquiesces to losing her final match against country music star Trisha Yearwood. But, Ms. Yearwood’s taunts, including a left-field dig comparing chest sizes, pushes Wilde back into beast mode, and the match ends with the ladies billiard-brawling on the pool table.

While I wish there were more on-screen billiards in this episode, “Born To Be Wilde” packs it in with sassy dialogue, a couple of well-placed celebrity cameos, and an original concept. (Aside from Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats, I’m pretty sure ‘celebrity billiards’ is unmined comedic territory.)

One of the final Naked Truth episodes that aired was “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” a reference to Margaret “Molly” Brown, the socialite who survived the sinking of the Titanic. While The Naked Truth ultimately sank like a struck battleship, Ms Leoni fortunately proved to be the series’ Molly Brown. She subsequently has had a successful career in film and television, with lead roles in major big budget movies (i.e., Deep Impact, Jurassic Park III), and then years later in the CBS drama Madame Secretary. Alas, her famous cue stick caress was never reprised.