TV Barn and TeeVee.net nutshell guide to the Fall 2007 premieres

Dirty Sexy Money

Official "Dirty Sexy Money" web site

Nick George (Peter Krause) hates the super-rich Darling family. His father was their lawyer and those duties ruined Nick’s childhood and drove his mother to suicide. (Bit dark, eh?) But now Nick’s dad is dead, and the Darlings want Nick to replace his dad. Nick doesn’t want to ruin his own family’s life, but he can’t turn down the $10 million a year. And so he must try to bring sanity and civility to the very same messed-up, super-rich family he grew up hating. Think “Arrested Development,” but without the warm family ties.

Aaron's take:	There's too much going on in the first episode, but the show's inherent star power (besides Krause, Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh play Mr. and Mrs. Darling) and the fact that ABC is pretty good at managing large ensembles ("Brothers & Sisters," "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy") bodes well.
When It’s On	Wednesdays at 10/9 Central, ABC
When It Starts	Wednesday, September 26
What It’s Up Against	CSI: New York (CBS), Life (NBC)
Starring...	Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland
Cliche-o-Meter	Tranny Hooker Rich Folks Forbidden Former Love Men's Room Annoying Narrator
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Full Review

"Money is the root of all evil," declares Nick George (Peter Krause) during the opening narration of ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money," and you figure Nick's got to know what he's talking about it. He's spent his entire life around the super-rich Darling family, a collection of messed up kids who are now a collection of seriously messed up young adults. Nick was the regular kid on the outside looking in, because his father was the family's lawyer. Fortunately, Nick has grown up to be a lawyer who works for charitable causes and is otherwise nothing like his father.

Doesn't sound like much of a premise, does it? Fortunately for the future of "Dirty Sexy Money," Nick's dad dies suddenly and Darling family patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland) makes him an offer he can't refuse: millions of dollars a year, for himself and his favorite charities, if he takes his Dad's job. The job that ruined his own childhood and drove his mother to kill herself. Who says "Reaper" is the only show about our hero being trapped in a deal with the devil?

The first ten minutes of "Dirty Sexy Money" go to a pretty bleak place. But once Nick takes the "lawyer" job, which is really about providing a moral center to the comically out-of-touch Darling kids, things get funny in a hurry. Hard-partying Jeremy (Seth Gabel) wins a yacht in a poker game, but questions of how to get the pink slip are rapidly overridden when the NYPD discovers the boat's crew of illegal immigants and put Jeremy under arrest. Karen (Natalie Zea) has been in love with Nick since she was a little girl, and he's now got to negotiate her prenup for the latest in a series of doomed relationships with other men. Rev. Brian (Glenn Fitzgerald) wants to get his illegitimate son into a tony boarding school. Married politician Patrick (William Baldwin) needs help breaking up with his transsexual girlfriend. And Tripp's wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh)? Apparently she was having an decades-long affair with Nick's dad.

At first blush, "Dirty Sexy Money" sounds like yet another soap opera about the trials and tribulations of incredibly rich people. I am not a fan of those shows. But this is not one of those shows. "Dirty Sexy Money" refuses to take itself as seriously as its rich-kid characters take themseves. Its closest analog may actually be, of all things, "Arrested Development." Like Jason Bateman's character in that classic cult comedy, Krause is the voice of reason in the center of a swirling maelstrom of insanity. And Krause strikes the right balance, laughing at the ridiculous situations his charges have gotten themselves into while never forgetting to treat them like real human beings. Even if that means grabbing Brian by the ear and pinning him to the floor because he's being a complete jerk.--JASON SNELL