By Jae-Ha Kim
Amazon.com
September 23, 2008
Pitted against Lipstick Jungle during the 2008 TV season, Cashmere Mafia holds its own with a familiar but still welcome focus on four powerhouse New York women whose fierce devotion to their jobs is matched only by their unwavering friendship with each other.
Helmed by Darren Star (Sex and the City), Cashmere Mafia focuses on the lives of magazine publisher Mia Mason (Lucy Liu) and her friends Zoe Burden (Frances O’Connor), Juliet Draper (Miranda Otto), and Caitlin Dowd (Bonnie Somerville).
Zoe and Juliet–both married with children–juggle their jobs as high-powered executives with frenzied family lives.
While Mia searches for love with a colleague, a brain surgeon, and a manny, cosmetics executive Caitlin questions her sexuality and finds a relatively stable relationship with another women.
There are some plot points that go nowhere: a sex tape, a pregnancy, a fashion show disaster.
But the core group shares wonderful chemistry.
While Liu is meant to be the show’s star, Otto, with her icy, red-haired good looks and regal voice, has the most compelling scenes. As the cuckolded wife with a n’er-do-well husband, Otto injects depth and emotion to Juliet, who has to work out in her own mind that presenting a happy image is no substitute for actually being happy.
Thanks to the 2008 Writers Strike, the series is truncated to just seven episodes. The sad thing is that the show was canceled just as the writers began to develop the characters into interesting women, rather than high-heeled caricatures we’ve seen before.
Often compared to Sex and the City because of the female cast, the New York setting, and the fashionista wardrobe, Cashmere Mafia doesn’t touch Sex at its peak.
But it hints at enough “what could have beens” to make viewers wistful that the series didn’t get a second season.
