Pages tagged “peter krause”

"The Star Witness" saw the Darlings all split off into different storylines, at times seeming as if the writers were incapable of creating content for more than two people per scene. It was the soapiest episode of the season thus far and also one of the weakest. The introduction of Nick’s estranged mother should have been the core storyline, however, it played second fiddle to the completely absurd romantic entanglements of the Darling children.

Tripp Darling is a magnificent bastard. There is no other way to describe a man who is as manipulative and conniving as Tripp. The second installment of Dirty Sexy Money proved that the Darling patriarch is capable of playing his entire family like a skillful game of chess. The ease at which he pits his children against one another would be scary in reality, but sure makes for ridiculously fun television.

Wednesday’s season premiere proved that no one does scheming quite like the Darlings. Greg Berlanti’s sprawling family dramedy, Dirty Sexy Money, focuses on Manhattan’s richest family, the Darlings. The family is, of course, anything but. Dirty Sexy Money benefits from one of the most impressive casts on network television. Peter Krause leads as the family’s exasperated lawyer Nick George, Donald Sutherland appears to be having the most fun of his professional career playing Tripp, the manipulative patriarch of the Darling clan, and Jill Clayburgh gets in a few laughs as his alcoholic, adulterous wife, Leticia.

It is easy to write off Dirty Sexy Money as a clone of '80s nighttime soap operas, but the show has just as much in common with Arrested Development as it does with its soap roots. The Darlings are the most deliciously dysfunctional family to emerge on network television since the Bluths, and Nick is charged with keeping the insanity in check just as AD lead Jason Bateman did not long ago.