Deadly Furniture

Because of my recent short-lived interest in Parenthood and because I just watched the complete series Sports Night, I have a strange affection for Peter Krause. It’s not a strong affection, but it was enough for me to watch Dirty Sexy Money.

And you know what, it wasn’t bad. In fact, I sorta liked it. Far from what the promotional material, title, and basic marketing scheme (MORE LIONS! MAKE THE POSTER LOOK LIKE WE’RE STILL IN THE NINTIES! THEY’RE RICH!) would make the average viewer believe, the first season of the show shows some acting chops and some actual story telling. In fact, I liked the first season so much that I actually stuck around for the second season. Which was a mistake. But I’ll come back to that later.

The “money” part of the title centers on the Tripp family. A wealthy dynasty worth billions, they’re everything that one would expect. Their family’s personal problems/frequent lawsuits/and general tight spot getter-outer, Dutch George, mysterious dies in a plane crash at the beginning of the series, forcing Dutch’s son Nick (Krause) to take over. Nick, of course, has spent all his adult life running away from the Tripps, but no one says no to Donald Sutherland. Besides, Nick may have just learned that his father’s death wasn’t an accident.

When the show wanted to (or perhaps when it stopped trying) it could actual create something very watchable. There’s an amazing scene between Krause and Sutherland when Donald learns that his wife has been having a forty year affair that is understated, silent, and right. Then there’s the character of Brian Tripp (Glenn Fitzgerald) who learns how to be a father to one of the most adorable little boys in the world. Those were the good moments that shown in season one. But then season two happened and the main plot took over.

And see, the problem is that the main plot never really works. Perhaps the show, canceled after its second season, never had enough time to make it work. Or maybe Blair Underwood, brought in to be a villain, wasn’t interesting enough (“Look. We’ll cast Blair Underwood. People like him, right? And….we’ll do something with his character. We’ll figure that out later.) And then there was the sense that, constantly nervous about cancellation, the show runners were frequently trying to switch things up to entice viewers to stay. Therefore, they sped up the end of Nick’s marriage so that he can start one with one of the Tripps; Donald Sutherland’s character stops demanding acting and instead wastes away ill-used; characters do complete one-eighties so that they become likable; (Look. We’ll cast Lucy Liu. People like her, right? And….etc…”). This all culminates in the second season episode called “The Facts” where the show runners just stop even trying and offer strange, off-putting mini-stories that don’t fit into the show’s overall cannon. Near the end there, I couldn’t help imagining frantic writers throwing out crazy ideas in the hopes that stranger stories would make everything better. But they didn’t stop being frantic long enough to realize that none of these ideas were any good.

Which is a shame. Because for that first season, Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause actually had something going there. It wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t really even about money. But it was pretty good. And then people panicked, and a show that had potential just became another cancelled show.