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Network: ABC: Genre: Drama; Content Rating: TV-14 (for strong suggested sex); Available: DVD; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 4);
Seasons Reviewed: Complete Series (2 seasons)
Despite starring in two cult classics now, "Sports Night" and "Six Feet Under", Peter Krause is something of an acting enigma - a likable leading man who can carry a series, but can't seem to get under the skin of a character. Giving another blank-faced performance, Krause offers nothing behind "Dirty Sexy Money's" lawyer Nick George that makes him a hard guy to root for.
Created by Craig Wright, "Dirty Sexy Money" is an oddball combination of a wish-fulfillment series and a straight-up prime-time cheesy soap opera. After a mysterious plane crash that claims the life of his father, Nick becomes the family lawyer of The Darlings - America's wealthiest and most powerful family whose eccentric members spend as much time on the front pages of the tabloids as they do brokering multi-billion dollar deals. There is no real life equivalent to The Darlings though I'm sure a few families think they are. Donald Sutherland effortlessly plays the scheming patriarchal figure of the dynasty Tripp, snarling just as he did in "Commander in Chief". We've also got Patrick (William Baldwin, with a "golly me?" look on his face the entire series) a budding politician, Karen (Natalie Zea, in various states of undress) daddies little girl and serial bride, Jeremy (Seth Gabel) as the loafing black sheep son and Brian (Glenn Fitzgerald) a reverend who having toiled away for the family for years feels entitled to a little compensation and is never rewarded. Karen has a thing for Nick, Jeremy has a thing for Nick's wife (Zoe McLellan, with short "nice wife" TV hair). The constant scandals and ridiculous demands of the Darlings prove to be a strain on Nick's life and marriage.
"Money" is an agreeably watchable little bit of escapist TV. I can't help but wish that the antics of the Darlings would have been better played for class-warfare laughs, slyly mocking the rich and spoiled instead of the genuine attempt at drama the show milks. The show wants to have both side with the Darlings as one big caring family and show them as a ruthless business family in which Tripp manipulates everyone to jack up the stock price and sweeps scandals (up to and including accidental death) under the public eye's rug. It depicts them as double-edged coin: both a black hole of need that sucks up Nick's every waking moment and as an opportunity for him to live the good life, constantly being thrust into positions of wealth power and prominence that he doesn't quite earn at Tripp's arbitrary hand. Time and again Nick is the only one Tripp can "count on". The antics of the Darlings are dragged down a bit by a wholly unnecessary storyline involving the plane crash murder mystery of Nick's father.
Things really get crazy in season 2 when Blair Underwood and Lucy Liu come on board. Liu is a ruthless prosecutor going up against the family who has an affair with Jeremy. Underwood is Tripp's corporate arch enemy shown glowering over security cameras and involved in the most elaborate schemes s to bring down the Darlings. The Wyle Cyote to Tripp's Roadrunner, halfway between "Madea's Family Reunion" and a James Bond villain. It's the juiciest role on the series and Underwood appropriate chews through the scenery. Fitzgerald actually gives my favorite performances on the show. It is a role of frustrated, simmering anger whose arc involving his wife and son, paternal history and position as his father's suck-up is far more interesting than anything going on with Nick.
Taking us into a world of wealth and privilege with snarling villains, hot women, easy sex and lavish parties, "Money" fits the guilty pleasure bill quite well. The scandals are certainly more "Desperate Housewives" than "Nip/Tuck" if that's your thing. The show remains exactly the glossy guilty pleasure escapism that it wants to be. This type of escapism doesn't require it to be compelling or humorous or, really anything. While it makes it a forgettable and disposable series, "Money" certainly does that.
* * / 4
score /10
liquidcelluloid-1 24 January 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2012497/ |
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10-10-2020 03:10:04