November 2nd, 2009 11:46 pm

‘Dirty Sexy Money’ The Complete Second Season

‘Dirty Sexy Money’ is probably worth a look for fans of juicy mind-bending soap opera.

‘Dirty Sexy Money’ returns for another gut busting season of lies, deceit, murder and adultery.

Lead by family patriarch Trip Darling played by the incomparable Donald Sutherland, the series also stars Peter Krause, Jill Clayburgh, William Baldwin, Glenn Fitzgerald, Seth Gabel, Zoe McLellan, Blair Underwood, Natalie Zea and Lucy Liu.

As the Darling’s family attorney, a role which he inherited from his father, Nick George (Peter Krause) finds himself thrown into all kinds of crazy situations orchestrated by the family’s outlandish antics. The biggest head banger is Nick’s personal connection with the family, with several members being key suspects in his father Dutch George’s murder. While this mystery is ultimately solved by series end, it’s long drawn out reveal slightly diminishes its eventual impact.

Perhaps one of the more outrageous story lines on the show is Patrick Darling’s (William Baldwin) affair with his transexual lover Carmelita Rainer (Candis Cayne). After discovering Patrick’s deceit, his wife Ellen (Bellamy Young) confronts Patrick over the affair — however this ultimately leads to her accidental death.

In an attempt to cover up Patrick’s political reputation as a New York senator, he and his father conspire to cover up Ellen’s death by planting her body in the family’s burning country house estate. Definitely a mouthful to say the least.

This second season of ‘Dirty Sexy Money’ also introduces Nola Lyons (Lucy Liu) the hard-ass prosecutor in Nick’s father’s murder trial, who’s determined to bring down the Darling family. But because that clearly isn’t quite juicy enough, she also becomes romantically involved with the Darling’s playboy youngest son Jeremy Darling (Seth Gabel).

Like all series that debuted that previous year, ‘Dirty Sexy Money’ was heavily impacted by the 2007-2008 writers strike. The 100-day production halt is likely the main reason for the show’s cancellation, following its return to low ratings post-strike.

Had the series continued for a full season the previous year, I think the show would have started out much stronger creatively in it second season. The momentum built up surrounding Dutch George’s murder mystery was unfortunately lost between the first and second seasons. Having said that, it does do a modest job of trying to re-engage viewers and eventually wrap up all loose ends.

The 3-disc set contains a couple of extras, including behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes and a bloopers reel. Nothing particularly ground breaking here. It would have been nice to have an audio commentary from the show’s cast and crew, particularly to hear their views on how the writers strike impacted their original story arc.

‘Dirty Sexy Money’ is probably worth a look for fans of juicy mind-bending soap opera. It’s delicious characters make it thoroughly entertaining, if not just for your disbelief over what these characters get away with.