Lord knows I love a good nighttime soap; the juicier, the
more improbable the plot , the more melodrama the better. I
adore intricate love triangles with complex stories of
betrayal and infidelity. I also love stories about women and
their relationships and what they do TO and FOR each other.
Lucky for me, ABC’s Mistresses has it all. Chock full of
glossy, beautiful people living glamorous lives, suffering
rich people problems, this show taps directly into my
guilty-pleasures center. Just like the pilot of its distant
cousin, Desperate House, it is starting off a little
rickety, but has all the makings of a good and juicy soap.
The show centers on the friendship of four women and their
respective relationships and careers. Savannah, played by
the incomparable Alyssa Milano, is a powerful corporate
lawyer with a dreamy Australian husband with fertility
problems. The pilot shows the cracks in their marriage as
they grapple with the whose-fault-is-it dilemma surrounding
fertility storylines, and we see a dangerous flirtation come
to fruition when Savvy sleeps with her hunky colleague
Dominic, played by Jason George. I guess we’ve seen the last
of him as Miranda Bailey’s husband on Grey’s Anatomy.
Milano’s character is flawed enough for us to like her, but
unreal enough for her to belong on a nighttime soap (my
favorite combination in a primetime heroine).
Savvy’s sister, Josslyn is played by the effervescent Jes
Macallan, and is the typical over-sexed-in-the-city,
girl-interrupted. She is a swanky realtor who is sleeping
with her boss, and if we can believe the previews, may dip
her toes in the lady pond this season (like we didn’t see
that coming from all the foreshadowing in the pilot). She is
so gorgeous you can hardly take your eyes off her, and I
predict she will be the breakout star of this show.
On a more suspenseful note, Yunjin Kim plays Karen, a
strait-laced psychiatrist that fell in love with, and
possibly euthanized a patient (in that order). As questions
arise surrounding the death of her lover-patient, we get a
sense that there more to the story. Cue the dramatic music:
now the son is sniffing around, looking to find answers
about his father’s mistress and his last moments before
death; as if these two things are related. As her pants
suits suggest, Karen is a very serious character, fulfilling
the part of the “smart one” that is requisite in shows about
a group of women (think Miranda in Sex and the City). Fourth
in the group is the widowed, shop-owner, single mother,
April played by Rochelle Aytes, who is navigating reentry
into the dating world. Her storyline heats up when her dead
husband’s illegitimate son shows up on her doorstep three
years after his death.
Sure, all this may sound familiar, and it seems likely that
the rest of the season may prove to be very predictable, but
I am ok with that. I am relying on ABC to strum a tune it
knows pretty well (anybody remember Lipstick Jungle or
Cashmere Mafia?) so that we can appreciate the show for what
it is... mindless fun. My advice to ABC is dial down all the
guilt that these characters are experiencing over their
indiscretions and just embrace the depravity (Dirty Sexy
Money comes to mind here). I want to see them turn up the
sex, the betrayal, the fighting and the conniving, so I can
justify watching something I feel like I’ve seen before.
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