When I wrote about this show for the first time, I did it after the pilot episode. But after 7 episodes, I feel myself able to truly say something about it.
As I said for the first time, Candace Bushnell knows a lot about women and New York and that's why she has a lot to tell. Sex And The City was about the searching for the true love and not about power, and Lipstick Jungle is about power and the search of a truly self that's hidden somewhere, and it's an interesting plot. What I feel after 7 episodes is that for sure is an interesting plot, but the show is getting a lot late to make it interesting.
The show focuses the lives of 3 friends placed between the 50 most powerful women in the world. All of them has well designed personalities but none that we haven't seen before as the insecure and family troubled Wendy (Brook Shields), a movie producer that despite her insecureness she makes right decisions in her work but it's kind hard for her to tie work and family; the self confident but unhappy Nico (Kim Raver), a magazine editor who is moved by challenges and is tired to be ignored by a husband that never gives her the attention she deserves; and the lovely and believer Victory Ford, a fashion designer that wants to conquer the world in her own impulsive and sentimental ways and is dealing for the first time with the downs of her career.
The cast is quite good but it's kinda hard to feel a great chemistry between them when they're all together but that's OK because most part of the time the story sets each one of them individually. Brook Shields is good even if sometimes she looks like playing "Suddenly Susan" again, but her character is always surrounded by a lot of happenings being hard to follow all the issues at the same time. Lindsay Price is a lot unfamiliar to me because she's been in countless shows but I can't remember her in any of them, anyway, she surprises me a lot when I got myself laughing with some of her moments, but her character stills being quite weak to be placed as "one of the 50 most powerful women" in the show. Kim Raver is by far the best choice because she's proving to be one of the best TV actresses of the time, she's always a lot convincing and her character is for sure the best edged of the show, her previous works with strong characters like Kathlyn Hale in "The Nine", or Audrey Raines in "24" and Kim Zambrano in "Third Watch" gave her great bases for the confidence and the dramatic lines that Nico needs and Lipstick Jungle is being all about her and she deserves this attention after so many supporting roles.
The show lacks of some prime attentions and qualities that made Sex And The City a great thing. New York is being a lot secondary in the plot and that's a shame because this city is a living character for Bushnell's stories. The characters still not being interesting enough (except Nico for the reasons above), and the male characters are being very unnecessary than it should. The plot is flowing in slow motion and after so wrong twists seems like the writers are finally getting in their shape after hard 7 episodes. Now I can see that some really interesting things are trying to come and the show is finally and slowly getting its way. A lot of changes has been made from its pilot, but the show screams for further important turns with urgency.
It's a nice show, and it's being hard to forget it because, as I said, looks like it's finally getting its right tone, and if it does and they kick it right, it promises to be not as fabulous as Sex And The City, but admirable.
