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The New York Times
September 27, 2007
Television Review | 'Big Shots': Four Rich Guys Behaving Unbelievably
By Ginia Bellafante
"Big Shots"
Thursdays at 10:01 p.m. on ABC
To fully appreciate the subtle attempts at verisimilitude in "Big
Shots," a new dramatic comedy so similar in its genetics
to "Desperate Housewives" that it might have been called "Reckless
Executives," you will need to turn first to PBS. I direct you to "CEO
Exchange," a talk show in which the journalist Jeff Greenfield sits
down with a pair of chief executives to find out what moves them in
the office and in life.
Earlier this year Mr. Greenfield chatted with Terry Semel (before he
resigned as the chairman of Yahoo) and the casino magnate Steve Wynn
(whose reign over Las Vegas has left him looking more and more like
Wayne Newton), asking both men what glories still eluded them. In
turns out that when you are incredibly busy developing subsidiary
markets, trying to eviscerate the competition and, in some instances,
reaping compensation grossly unequal to your performance, what you
really crave is greater social opportunity. Both men said they longed
for more time — for their friends and for each other.
So maybe ABC was acting as a branch of the Make-A-Wish Foundation,
just for them, supplying "Big Shots" as a vicarious realization of
the unreachable guy-time dream. It is the minions who benefit though
because "Big Shots," which begins tonight, is one of television's
rare examples of successful farce.
As a travelogue of corporate leisure life, the series tracks the
relationship of four chief executives who are able to clock an
enviable number of hours dissecting their marital and coital
transgressions at a country club, where the wine cellar is used by
one of them, Duncan Collinsworth, for trysts with his ex-wife. That
he prefers her to any 26-year-old is one of the female fantasies
fulfilled by a series that imagines that when men are making a birdie
on the back nine what they are actually talking about is women.
Duncan, played by Dylan McDermott with a lot more scruff and libido
than he displayed in his "Practice" days, is the chairman of Reveal
Cosmetics. (His friend Karl runs Fidelity Pharmaceuticals, which
specializes in an erectile-dysfunction drug.) Reveal is sent up as a
burgeoning purveyor of makeup for the aged. "By the year 2015, the
most rapidly expanding population will be women over 60," Duncan
announces in a news conference held while he is hitting golf balls
off the roof of his headquarters. "Why not make them feel beautiful
too? Why shouldn't women in nursing homes have access to the best
foundation and base available?"
As a brand, ABC is quickly becoming the network most eagerly
committed to broad depictions of American wealth and all of its
intrinsic folly. "Dirty Sexy Money" focuses on the profligacy of a
dynastic family, and "Brothers & Sisters" on the stifling intimacy of
the business-owning Walkers of Pasadena, Calif. What is emerging as
an expression of ABC's auteur-ship in this genre is a portrayal of
homosexuality as a primary threat to maintaining status and position.
Both "Big Shots" and "Dirty Sexy Money" feature plot lines in which
instances of indiscretion surface to endanger the careers of
successful men — but these indiscretions don't involve women named
Candi: they are with transvestites with names like Dontrelle. (In the
first case, the story line seems very much ripped from the headlines:
Duncan has to deal with the possible disclosure of a long-ago arrest
for soliciting a prostitute in a truck-stop bathroom who turned out,
anatomically, to have been not what he expected.)
That certainly hasn't happened on "Mad Men" on AMC, which, as
television's great paean to fraternity, is in direct competition
with "Big Shots" thematically and logistically. (Both are shown on
Thursdays at 10 p.m.) In some sense, though, ABC's adventure in male
bonding might as well be "The Flying Nun" by contrast, so
comparatively conservative is its commitment to exploring the
ostensible lunacy of marital infidelity. By the end of tonight's
episode Karl (Joshua Malina) has already begun to think of his
voluptuous mistress as a nut case and a drain. "The only thing we do
together anymore is couple's therapy," he tells her when she asks how
he and his wife spend time. "Couple's therapy," she says, signaling
the end. "Then that's what I want to do with you."
"Big Shots" would have arguably infuriated very few had it presented
itself as a more vicious satire of the one-hundredth of the one
percent. But it doesn't fail us miserably in evoking the
imperiousness of the upper classes. "First of all, it's shrimp, not
shrimps, no s even when plural," one of the muckety-mucks corrects a
Hispanic waiter in an opening scene. "And second of all, my first
name is Brody, not my last."
© 2007 The New York Times Company
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