TV-Reviewed

Last season we were introduced to Nick George, a man trying to find his father’s murderer and we were also introduced to the Darling Family, one of the richest families in the world, but with even more problems then the average human.

The Darlings are back and nothing has changed, there’s still just as much drama as we’re used too. “The Birthday Present” starts us off six months after last season’s finale on the night of Nick’s birthday party. It’s obvious based off looks of some of the characters that something isn’t right though, After Nick receives his gift, the police show up in a helicopter…

We then jump 48 hours earlier, so I guess this is technically the beginning of the episode, things really haven’t changed much since the finale though, the darling family are still exactly in the same positions that they were when last season ended. Karen is still dating with Simon; spying on him for Tripp, but when Simon tells her that he loves her, Karen actually feels bad about what she’s doing. Karen shows up Nick’s to give him her birthday present which comes with food and her naked. Karen’s outlandish behavior could be deemed insane had she done it in front of anyone else, but Nick knows her so well, that it doesn’t seem to bother him as much.

The Karen and Simon relationship continues to be of interest, because by the end of the episode, it’s fairly obvious that both are playing each other, it’s just a matter of which one will win in the end.

The Dirty Sexy Money Cast

Jeremy still hasn’t gotten over Lisa and is still showing more aggressive behavior towards her. You would think that Lisa being married to the family lawyer he’d know that she was off limits, but apparently this isn’t the case. It doesn’t help that Nick and Lisa’s marriage is still on the rocks and things are just made worse when Nick stands her up again for his birthday dinner. Jeremy comes in and saves the day. They drink, they kiss, and Nick sees them.

The Jeremy and Lisa storyline was started last season and really seemed to come from nowhere. Nick is usually the calm one so it was great to see he and Jeremy in the same room and when it looked like Jeremy would get away without as much of a yell, Nick just turns around and punches him as Tripp watches. Hopefully this is the end of this storyline, because it just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The Jeremy and Lisa storyline was probably the biggest mistake last season and it’s good to see the writers patch it up as best they can. Plus Jeremy is already in a new “relationship” if you want to call it that with the unnamed lady at the bar played by the beautiful Lucy Liu. Lucy Liu’s character so far is a mystery, but there has to be some purpose to her other then Jeremy Darling’s girl toy.

Speaking of Tripp, he’s still running things as usual and Donald Sutherland is still doing a great job. Tripp is perhaps the most devious of all in the family members, when it sounds like he’s telling the truth, he could be lying or vice-versa. Tripp had a hand in almost everything this episode. Was it really him who let Brian’s son and the mother gets the tickets to fly off? We don’t know. Tripp says it wasn’t him, but something says that he had a hand in it.

Tripp and Patrick are still at odds after Patrick nearly ruined his campaign last season. Patrick seems to be doing okay in the polls, but Ellen, his wife (in name only) is now an alcoholic and is causing a scene in public. Patrick’s lover Carmelita has gone missing and Patrick can’t seem to find her. Things take another turn when in a violent rage, Ellen slips, hits her head, and dies. It’s even insinuated that she did something to Carmelita. Patrick panics and instead of calling the police like a normal person, he calls Tripp and the two concoct a scheme to cover up the accident. Tripp tried to get Nick in on it, but with no luck. Nick has definitely been drawn into the problems of the Darling family, but it’s still good to see that he’s not so drawn in where he’d be stupid enough to cover up a murder.

We then get back to the night of Nick’s party, where it’s replayed again, but there’s a lot more uncovered and the looks and everything now makes sense. The cops arrive and it looked like they were coming to arrest Patrick, but instead they arrest Letitia for the murder of Dutch. This was somewhat of a surprise only, because Dutch’s murder hadn’t been mentioned the whole episode. In fact, if anyone was tuning in for the first time this episode, you wouldn’t know that Nick started this whole thing looking for his father’s killer.

The show seems to want to make us forget that there’s another daughter Juliet played by Samaire Armstrong who’s been cut out of the show this season and possibly forever, but let’s hope not. While she’s not missed due to how diverse and how many cast members there are in this show, Juliet was still a bright spot last season. It should be interesting to see how the writers address this problem or if we’ll just have to pretend that Juliet doesn’t exist.

It’s great to have Dirty Sexy Money back. While not the strongest episode for this series, it was a good episode that showed us a lot of the drama that will be taking place this season. It looks like things will still be dirty and sexy this season and we can’t wait to see how it all unfolds this season.

Rating: 7.5