It’s not even breaking a sweat

Full disclosure: I work out at Sky Sport & Spa, the high-end Beverly Hills gym featured in Bravo’s docu-soap “Work Out.” When I signed up, I had never seen the show; I picked my trainer, Agostina, because of her aspirational abs.

As it turns out, Agostina is one of the new trainers on the third season of “Work Out” (10 p.m. Tuesdays), which started last week. So out of curiosity, I downloaded the first and second seasons and watched the show at lunch as I ate my cottage cheese.

Those episodes spotlighted Sky Sport’s Sapphic owner, Jackie Warner (the star of “Work Out”), as a businesswoman in conflict with her mother, who cannot accept her daughter’s sexuality; and as a single woman facing a hard choice, at 37, whether to freeze her eggs so she can still have a child later in life. There’s also some fun stuff about hot lesbians sweating in clubs and making out. (According to a recent New York Times article, those particular scenes have won Jackie legions of female fans who identify as straight.)

Sadly, in Season 3, the drama that’s supposed to pump iron into the new episodes has run out of steam. What we’re watching feels like same old same old, as if the only story lines and conflicts the producers could find were already on the cutting-room floor.

Jackie still rules over her ragtag crew of genetically perfect fitness trainers. There’s Rebecca, on the rebound from her Season 2 relationship with Jackie and still mistaking attention for affection; Erika and her killer bee-stung lips; and good ol’ boy Peeler, still talking the talk behind Jackie’s back (If the two shared a cell in a prison movie, you can bet Jackie’d have the top bunk).

New trainers include Greg, a male fitness model with a body made for TiVo; Renessa -- proof somebody opened a gym in Whoville; JD, a massage therapist-turned-trainer; and Agostina, an Argentine transplant with enough sense to stand back and let the Americans look stupid.

On the personal side, Jackie has a new girlfriend in live-in love Brianna. If anyone out there misses Mimi-the-crazy-ex, it’s clear that Jackie -- who looks like she could play Scarlett Johansson’s hard-edged (older) sister -- traded up.

A touching tribute

At the office, Jackie spends a lot of screen time planning a fundraiser to support the Doug Blasdell Foundation, named for one of the show’s trainers. Blasdell’s unexpected death during Season 2 injected an undeniable sense of community among the Sky Sport trainers and added sincere emotion to the episodes.

Viewers knew it had happened, and the producers teased out the tragedy. Blasdell made the show’s reality fluff seem real -- and serious. More important, it distracted us from Jackie’s black hole of narcissism, an ever-expanding spatial phenomenon where even light is bored. Sit through one of Jackie’s therapy sessions, and you’ll know what I mean.

Watching Season 3, it feels like Blasdell’s passing is the only thing that kept this show going.

In this week’s episode, Jackie surprises the female trainers with a working vacation, a boot camp on a lesbian cruise. Brianna’s concerned because Jackie will be alone with Rebecca. Jackie brushes it off -- “It’s business,” she says, ignoring her partner as she moves off-camera to pack.

Why does that sound so familiar? Oh, right. The producers shot the same scene (and Jackie used the same look to deliver the same line) with Mimi, when Jackie took the trainers on a “business” retreat to Palm Springs in Season 1.

Then, if you can believe it (and I don’t), Rebecca forgets to pack a bikini, forcing the ladies to endure a shopping trip montage of bathing suits and lingerie.

The other important component of this season’s “Work Out” is the continuation of Skylab, an “all-inclusive” program for overweight clients who want to change their lives. The struggle with weight and body image is very emotional -- hey, it’s why I’m at the gym -- and shows such as “The Biggest Loser” and even the style-focused “What Not to Wear” prove those stories make compelling television.

No doubt the “Work Out” trainers care about their clients and want them to meet their goals and succeed, but the Skylab sessions split the focus of the show. When you get the woman in a sweaty XXL T-shirt, crying because she can’t do a sit-up in the same episode as lip-locking, midriff-baring women partying at a nightclub, even the most sincere trainer’s going to look like a carb-hater trying to get into heaven by helping the fatty.

Jackie hand-picked Agostina to train clients for Skylab, and at Sky Sport; in full disclosure (again), she’s pushed me to lose 34 pounds. Sky Sport is a real gym, and it works. But for a show that deals with losing weight, “Work Out” feels pretty thin by now -- something to watch between promos for “Top Chef.”

A Hollywood producer once said to me that his pitch had “the patina of verisimilitude” -- meaning, a story about Navy SEALS using trained dolphins to stop terrorists from hijacking a nuclear submarine had the shine of appearing to be realistic. If that’s true, those Navy SEALS probably trained on “Work Out.”