Dirty Tricks

Is Lucy Liu the new Heather Locklear?

(No, no you meanie, this isn't a gossipy post about Amanda Woodward Heather Locklear's recent run in with the law. I am very pro-Heather and I totally hope she and Frisco Jones get married and live happily ever after.)

I digress.

However...remember in the old days, every time a show needed a little help, they'd bring in Heather Locklear? Remember? Melrose, Spin City? Scrubs? Heather would just waltz in in her mini skirt and black-light-white teeth and make everything better?


I'm thinking Lucy Liu is the new answer.

Tonight, Dirty Sexy Money begins season 2, and Lucy is their new secret weapon, if the billboards I keep seeing around town are to believed, anyway. Now, LL didn't do much to enhance Cashmere Mafia last year (who would've thunk that they'd get bitch slapped by Lipstick Jungle by the way), but she's certainly lobbying hard for the Locklear title. Consider the evidence: she did lots for Ally McBeal, she did a little ditty on Ugly Betty.

I mean, they even brought this Angel onto JOEY as a Hail Mary, ya know?

And so even though I wasn't really all that jazzed up about Dirty Sexy Money last year, I'm gonna check it out. Considering I keep watching that 90210 crap, it's the least I can do.

And NO, Shannen Doherty is DEFINITELY not eligible for the super shiny Locklear guest star title.

Mr. Big (s)

This past week, ABC rolled out both Dirty Sexy Money AND Big Shots, both [not to oversimplifiy it] about rich guys. But, Big Shots is about much HOTTER rich guys, and is much campier, escapist fare. Dirty Sexy Money is pretty campy, too, but it feels like it might *try* to be more serious. My problem with it though is that the characters were such cliches...I mean that kid that played Jeremy Darling, the drug addict rich kid? He was SO some kind of sad Less than Zero parody. I'm going to give it a [big] shot, though, probably because I'm brainwashed by ABC's PR machine. They seem to have more of THEIR dirty sexy money behind this one. You can already go to their site and see a full episode, and at least here in NYC, the billboards are EVERYWHERE.

Regardless, Big Shots just got me right away. True, it's just the male Desperate Housewives, but it's pure sug-ah, especially with the one two punch of Dylan McDermott AND Michael Vartan, who both look like they've stepped out of a Bruce Weber ad. The dialogue is snappy and fun, and I can't wait to see what happens next week on this soapy soap.

Moving around the dial, I also checked out Life. I'm kind of into it, though I was absolutely annoyed to the point of distraction by the shooting style of the inserted "documentary" pieces that are used as a storytelling device. If you're not familiar, this is NBC's offering about a wrongly accused cop who goes to jail for murder, then is freed years later with a gazillion dollar settlement and becomes a cop again. It's worth a second look.

And, not to leave the gals out, I also gave Bionic Woman a chance. Also heavily hyped, I wanted to like it even though it's not my typical fare. I couldn't get into it, and frankly wasn't really sure what was going on half the time. But, the plot went something like this [I think]: girl gets in car accident that may or may not really be an accident with boyfriend and is brought to some Lost-ish medical facility where she gets all of her bionic parts. Then we find out her boyfriend is in on it, the people there want her to fight crime, or commit crime...I'm not really sure. Then some other bionic dissenter wants to kill her and/or her boyfriend who may or may not also be a criminal. Mostly, all of these people seemed to very baaaaaaad people. I think.

Oh, and Miguel Ferrer, aka George Clooney's cousin, is in it. Don't ask me why I know this.