Dirty Sexy Money, Season One: Exposed
ABC Studios
Starring Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, Blair Underwood, and Jill Clayburgh
427 minutes (10 episodes on 3 discs)
Release Date: September 16, 2008

Dirty –
1. soiled with dirt; foul; unclean.
2. spreading or imparting dirt; soiling.
3. vile; mean; sordid; contemptible.
4. obscene; pornographic; lewd.

Sexy –
1. concerned predominantly or excessively with sex; risqué.
2. sexually interesting or exciting; radiating sexuality.
3. excitingly appealing; glamorous.

Money –
1. any circulating medium of exchange, including coins, paper money, and demand deposits.
2. gold, silver, or other metal in pieces of convenient form stamped by public authority and issued as a medium of exchange and measure of value.
3. any article or substance used as a medium of exchange, measure of wealth, or means of payment, as checks on demand deposit or cowrie.

See, you learned something new about familiar words! Thus concludes today’s vocabulary session for this post.

The cast of

Is there ever a time when too much money is a bad thing? This is the question posed throughout the series Dirty Sexy Money, the answer to which appears to be that money makes everything go wrong. Dirty Sexy Money is a primetime soap opera in the same vein as Dallas and Dynasty. While it has its moments, the vapidity of the main family, the Darlings, becomes tiresome quickly.

Peter Krause (Six Feet Under, Sports Night) plays Nick George the son of Dutch, his late father, who was lawyer for the Darling family. Following his father’s mysterious death in a plane crash, Nick is approached by the Darling family patriarch to become the family’s new lawyer. Donald Sutherland (Fool’s Gold, The Italian Job, and dozens of other credits) plays Patrick “Tripp” Darling, who heads the clan of spoiled, rotten, devious, and shallow sons and daughters.

Blair Underwood (The New Adventures of Old Christine, Madea’s Family Reunion) plays Simon Elder, the financial nemesis in Patrick Darling’s life. As a billionaire philanthropist, Elder is a shrewd businessman with a penchant for gambling and winning pieces of the Darling fortune.

Every angle on the lives of rich and famous people is exploited to its fullest extent through each of the Darling kids. Whether it’s gambling, hookers, drugs, alcohol, irresponsible behavior, or adultery, this family has it all; and it’s up to Nick to smooth things over with everything hits the fan.

Nick’s goal is maintain his small law firm and keep his own family in the foreground, while the Darlings remain just one of his clients. Of course, when dealing with oodles of wealth, power, and prestige, it’s hard to keep it out of your life for long. One of the primary ideas expressed in the series is: What’s it like to be a lawyer with a conscience and moral center for a rich and powerful family with neither?

With all the sniping, backstabbing, in-fighting, and sleazy behavior, it left me feeling grateful for my own family. The series displays the insanity of inanity; the ability for those who have everything to cause drama for themselves that is easily avoided.

The big mystery is who killed his father? Was it an accident? Was it a set-up? And through his dealings with the Darlings and their ilk, Nick hopes to discover the truth. One aspect surfaces in the pilot when Nick discovers his father and Patrick Darling’s wife, Leticia (Jill Clayburgh, Running With Scissors) had an affair that lasted forty years.

The elite, the superrich, and the spoiled rotten all get their time in the spotlight in a show that has intriguing elements, but becomes tiresome after awhile.

Special Features are abundant and include featurettes, bloopers, audio commentary on selected episodes, and deleted scenes.

Dirty Sexy Money gets a Dirty Sexy B. You’ll need to take a shower after you see the dirty things these folks do and get away with. But Donald Sutherland is always a sure thing.

SEASON PREMIERE NOTICE: Season Two begins October 1, at 10pm on ABC. I wonder what they’ll do with it once Lost returns to this time slot in February 2009. A cross-over episode perhaps? Both series began with a plane crash.

To watch Season One online on the ABC website, click on this link: ABC.com.