Dirty Sexy Money: Pilot (Episode 101)

"The love of money is the root of all evil." Such is our introduction to Dirty Sexy Money. Nick George (the delectable but unfortunately coiffed Peter Krause) has always thought that money makes everything go wrong. He watches the wreckage of a small plane as it's drawn slowly from the Long Island Sound; the plane is nearly bent in half, sighing water like an expiring whale. Nick says his father worked for the richest family in New York City. Flash back to his mother and father fighting over the Darlings—not Wendy and her brothers, but the family for which Devlin George works. Nick's mother leaves him with his dad, and with the Darlings.

Nick explains that it was hard living in the shadow of his dad and the Darlings. We see in flashback that Nick accompanied his father the Darlings home, where a frightening boy in clown make up and sad little girl harlequin dress watch him from their playroom. The boy says, "I hate you." The girl says, "I love you," and the door shuts in Nick's face. Nick promised himself he would never become his father or work for the Darlings. And in contrast to the opulence of the Darlings' home, Nick works in a small, dingy office doing pro bono work and avoiding his father's many calls. Until two weeks ago, when his father died.

Nick, his wife Lisa, and his daughter Kiki make their way through a crowd of gawkers—not mourners—on their way to the funeral, into which they cannot gain entrance. Two limos pull up, and the Darlings arrive. First are Patrick "Tripp" Darling III and his wife Letitia (Tish), who mutters, "I wanna die." Following behind is Karen and her golfer fiancé Freddy; Patrick Darling IV, aspiring senator and tabloid fodder; Juliet, an innocuously dumb but far more innocent Paris-clone; and Jeremy, a hung over mess. Patrick schmoozes with the press that Devlin George was so much more than a lawyer, he was like a father to the Darlings. Nick, nearby, calls out to him, like, "dude. For real." Patrick gets Nick through the barricade. Inside, Brian Darling, an Episcopal minister, greets the mourners; he offers Nick his sympathy and a handshake. Nick tries to accept both and move on, but Brian grips his hand and begins a bitter tirade about how much Devlin tried to insert himself into the Darling family to steal their money. Nick asks Brian to take it easy, and Brian lets him go, hissing, "I hate you!" He then leans down to shake Kiki's hand, saying he's sorry her grandpa's dead. Lisa and Nick are appropriately pissed. "Please, God, say we'll never have to see these people again," Lisa grits. Nick doesn't even pause: "Done."

Nick dresses later in his apartment, and Lisa wonders why he agreed to meet with Tripp. Nick says the Darlings are going to set up a charitable foundation in his dad's name. Nick's going to do the paper work, and that's the end of the George/Darling partnership.

At the Darling abode, the family is gathered, liquored, and squabbling. Brian thinks asking Nick George to be the family lawyer is the worst idea in the history of the western world. No, he really does. Karen tells him not to be melodramatic, and Patrick tells him it's what Tripp wants. "Yeah!" chorus Jeremy and Juliet, side by side on a couch. Patrick says they grew up with Nick, but Brian disagrees. He says Tripp might love Nick, but he's wrong. "Since when is loving someone ever wrong?" Patrick wonders (tellingly). Jeremy thinks Nick is "wet," and the brother he's always wanted. Jeremy is drinking. Assume always that Jeremy is drinking. Tish wants Jeremy's dog off the couch, so Jeremy calls the maid to push the dog, that is sitting right beside Jeremy, off said couch. Brian continues to rant—revealing that Karen is in love with Nick—and winds up calling Devlin George a glorified parasite. This causes Tish to grab a very large and presumably expensive vase and smash it to the floor. Everyone stops their boozing and whining, and Tish gasps that she wants a fresh start as much as anyone else, but Tripp's word is law.

Tripp pours Nick some wine in a pretty fancy-ass room. He cuts right to the chase: he wants Nick to take his dad's job. No one else seems right for the job, not even Johnnie Cochran or Bill Clinton. "You're the guy," he says. Nick says he's flattered, but he didn't like having to share his dad with the Darlings, and he won't do the same to his wife and daughter. Tripp massages Nick's ego, saying Nick is a good dad and a family man, and he's got a moral center. "If I had one kid like you, I'd be lucky," he says. "I don't." Nick demurs again, so Tripp says he's going to put his nuts on the table. Nick's bemused, wary expression is priceless. Tripp offers Nick five million dollars a year, in addition to his salary, for charitable work. He says he misses Devlin, who was honest with him. He says he also trusts Nick. Nick replies he'd have to have it his way: regular hours, the ability to say no if he's asked to do something questionable; and he'd never lie for the Darlings. Tripp gives all the right, cloying answers. Nick doubles the asking price, and Tripp echoes Nick's closing line from the last act: "Done."

Lisa thanks Nick for the fancy, expensive night he just treated her to, but asks how. He happily says he's working for the Family, which is good because of all the money they're going to throw at Nick that he can use however he wants. (This totally reminds me of that Sandra Bullock movie where she works for Hugh Grant, but I'll be very disturbed if Peter Krause ends up falling in love with Donald Sutherland.) Lisa can't quite believe this; she asks if he's sure. Nick insists he's not his dad, and it's a great opportunity. He's going to do it his way. Things get a little sexy until the phone rings. Nick answers, and it's Jeremy, showing his true Darling roots by wearing a top hat. He tells Nick he's at Ethan Hawke's place playing poker (he won a yacht). He's also in the bathroom at Ethan Hawke's place, and he wants to know the legalities of winning a yacht from a guy named Francoise. Nick tells Jeremy to bring the title to his office and they'll take care of it. Jeremy calls Nick "the wettest," and Nick resumes the dirty. Or the sexy. Your pick.

Nick's office has gone decidedly upscale, and he hurries into a meeting with Karen and Freddy. On his way, he hands his cell off to his assistant (Daisy) and asks her to load the Darlings' numbers in, and to remind him later to pick up his daughter at school. Karen starts the meeting off by moonily telling Freddy that Nick deflowered her. She then gives him a check, though the two are unrelated: it's the ten million for Nick's charitable work. One million is immediately going to save a playground for some orphans. "Oh! Orphans!" Karen sighs, the way one would say, "Oh! Puppies!" Karen tells Freddy that Nick used to read her poetry, and that she always thought they'd get married some day. But instead, she married three—now four—losers who weren't Nick. "It's weird, weird, isn't it? Life's so weird!" An awkward pause later, Nick hands them the prenup. "It's so exciting!" Karen sings.

Later, Karen and Freddy take their leave, confirming that Nick is coming to Tripp and Tish's anniversary party that night. Daisy observes that Karen's still in love with Nick, but Nick says she's in love with everyone. Daisy has armed Nick's cell with numbers and personalized rings, the first of which is the Hallelujah chorus, for Brian. And then, a montage of sorts.

Brian summons Nick to a private school, where Brian is threatening the headmaster with all manner of personal harm and tire-slashing if the school doesn't admit a certain child. Brian leaves for a baptism, spewing bile as he goes. The headmaster tells Nick that if the kid were legally a Darling, they'd take him, but until Brian decides to legitimize him, he's verboten. Nick's cell rings: Hall and Oates "Rich Girl," for Juliet. Juliet summons Nick, also, to the theater where she's starring in "Wait Until Dark" and sucking like the void she is. She's devastated to learn Tripp's financed the production and bought her the part. Peter Bogdonovich watches this unraveling with a flask in his hand and a skeptical expression. And you'd think he'd seen everything, you know? "Oh, I wish I was dead!" she screams. Bogdonovich tells Nick, "She's—she's not good." And with that, Nick's phone rings again: "Born to Be Wild," for Jeremy. Jeremy summons Nick to his new yacht, as gotten himself arrested for the illegal aliens he found there. Jeremy tells Nick he has to bail him out, because if he misses the Darlings' anniversary that night, his dad will kill him. Nick says he'll be there, and again his phone rings with the regular, singsong tone of any other cell phone. He realizes he's forgotten to pick up Kiki.

At the Darling manse, Tish wets a towel for Juliet's forehead. She croons that Juliet is the most important thing in the world to Tripp. "I know," Juliet says, like, "duh!" She whines that it makes her feel stupid and lame to have everything taken care of for her: she wants to be a human being! Tish says she will be, some day. She'll walk out of the house and do things on her own, some day, but not today. Tish asks Juliet not to make some grand statement of protest at having her life orchestrated by the greasing of palms. Cut to later, when Juliet makes her statement of protest: palming a handful of pills and downing them with a diet cola, savoring them with a burp.

Nick escorts Jeremy from the police station, dodging the press. They ask him everything from the pertinent (if Patrick, the attorney general, helped him) to the inane (who he's dating) to the downright dumb (if he was planning to harvest the organs of the illegal immigrants). Nick shoves his hand in a camera. No more questions.

In the limo on the way to the party, Jeremy is convinced his father's going to kill him. He thinks he has the worst life in the world. Nick reminds him that most people have it much, much worse than a pissed off rich dad who pays for everything. Jeremy thinks Nick doesn't understand, and he hands Nick an origami boat made from a hundred dollar bill for Kiki.

Inside, Jeremy immediately helps himself to champers as strings play and tiny ballerinas run around for no apparent reason. Nick hands a champagne flute to Lisa, apologizing for forgetting about Kiki. Karen sees and loses her train of thought in mid-conversation, calling Freddy "Nick." She's three sheets to the wind, clearly not bothered by either. Jeremy passes Brian, his wife Mei Ling (or "No Fun," as Jeremy alls her), and carries the POV back to Nick, who is chatting with Tish and Tripp about a huge, over the top birthday party they'd had for him when he was small. Tish grows tearful and nostalgic remembering Nick's dad as being tender and brave for raising his son alone. "Sometimes it seems the whole cosmos is in a state of decay," Tish sighs. Jeremy, bleary eyed, says it's true. Karen sweet/double talks Freddy outside, admitting simultaneously that she does and does not have a thing for Nick, who is married and also in her past, while Freddy is her future. Freddy is greedy enough to be convinced. He tells Karen he met one of the Kennedys—he doesn't remember which one—and he wants to take the family jet to Scotland to play golf with the guy. Karen gives the okay. Elsewhere, Dan Rather is trying to get Patrick to admit he's running for Senate. A member of the staff whispers a message to Patrick, who extracts himself, and his wife beamingly tells Dan that he's totally running for Senate. Out in the foyer, a distraught woman waits for Patrick. She pouts that she missed him, and Patrick does his best to get her out of the house as soon as he can. He sends her to a hotel, saying he'll meet her later.

Back in the party, Tripp is giving a rather morbid toast about how life ends, even though he loves Trish a lot. Everyone claps, and Jeremy clinks his glass. He announces he and Juliet picked out the gift from the children this year. In honor of the day his parents met at Saratoga, they've bought a race horse, and maybe a jockey. Tish is delighted, more alert than we've seen her all this hour. In the rabble, Nick gets a card from Patrick requesting his presence in the library for a Code Pink. Tripp calls out for Juliet, who is nowhere, and asks Jeremy to get rid of the house before it shits in the middle of the party.

Nick makes his way up to the library and finds Karen alone in an empty ballroom, crying. She's self-pitying about how men see her money and her name, not her. Nick says that's not true, but Karen says that's because Nick isn't that kind of guy. He tells her if she doesn't want to marry Freddy, she shouldn't, because life is short and she deserves to be loved. Karen calls him sweet and plants a lingering kiss on his cheek. So long does she kiss him, they're interrupted by Lisa, who curtly tells Nick Patrick's looking for him. She leaves.

Outside, Nick tries to chase a long-gone Lisa down. Brian snags him to talk more about his kid and private school, and Nick gets mouthy about Brian legitimizing the kid or he's out of luck. Brian turns to go back inside, but not before telling Nick he's just like his dad: happy to take the Darling money but a lame ass loser at getting "stuff" done. "I hate you!" he yells again. And Nick lunges, grappling with Brian into the foyer, shouting at Brian not to speak of his father that way. The party busts in to break up the fight just as Karen wails down the staircase to get a doctor: "It's Juliet!"

Poison, it seems, hath not been Juliet's timeless end. She's puked a lot of pills, but she'll be okay. Her mother and sister attend to her as Tripp wonders what set her off. Nick says she knew Tripp bought her the play, and Tripp observes they'll have to be careful about how they "lay the train tracks ahead of her out in the world." Nick looks disgusted. Without prelude, he quits. "I'm sorry, this job isn't me."

Patrick follows Nick down the street in a limo, finally luring him in, claiming it's life or death. As they drive along, Patrick asks Nick to go up to the room and explain to "her" that it's over. "Her," Nick repeats, disbelieving. "You do it. He's your girlfriend. She." Patrick says he can't, because she gets so emotional, he can't handle it. Nick asks if Patrick ever had his dad do this; Patrick says yes, a few times. Well, seven times. He asks Nick to give the woman a check. Nick says he won't give a check to a hooker. Patrick says she's not a hooker—it's not dirty, it's just different. Nick gets out of the car, and Patrick begs, just begs. Nick reminds him he's going to be a US Senator. He has to have enough courage and integrity to go up to a hotel room and give a tranny hooker a check. Patrick sighs that she's not a hooker. Nick asks if she's more of a man than Patrick. This gets through, and Patrick takes off.

At home, Lisa's interrogating Nick about what happened with Karen, not buying the "she was sad, I was making her feel better" lame excuse. He tells Lisa he quit. His phone rings, this time with "Pretty Woman." She demands to know whose ring it is, and Nick admits it's Karen's, as well as Daisy's idea of a joke. Karen's persistent, though, and calls on the home landline; she needs to talk to Nick about his dad.

Outside somewhere, Karen tells Nick she found a requisition from the Darling foundation. Three months ago, Brian asked for money for a man who came into the church needing help. The family donated ten thousand to help him settle his debts. The new requisition is for ninety thousand, and what's more, the man is an airplane mechanic. Nick asks what Karen's saying. Karen doesn't know, but she does say that Brian was never happy about the affair that Nick's dad and the Darling mother had been having for the last forty years. Nick, stunned, spins where he stands. Karen says she thought he knew. And now he does: Brian hates Nick and his dad both so much, he had Nick's dad killed.

We're back at the pier with Nick, two days later, watching his dad's plane get exhumed from the Long Island Sound. There's no body, and no proof what caused the crash. The detective says they can follow up, but they'll need a reason. She also gives him personal effects found in a watertight lock box: a briefcase. Outside the hangar, a helicopter touches down, and Tripp emerges, serious and drawn. He speechifies that sometimes there are no answers. He sees the wreckage of the plane behind Nick and gives him a bear of a hug. Tripp says the family's behind Nick, whether he's their lawyer or not. Nick asks if this is Tripp's way of asking him to come back, and Tripp shrugs a bit about it. He seems surprised to see the briefcase in Nick's hand. He offers Nick the helicopter. "I'll see you in the morning," he says. Nick regards him a moment before replying in kind. They shake, and Tripp says, "I love you, Nicky."

On the helicopter, Nick wonders if love of money is the root of all evil, or if it's something else, like the love of freedom. Juliet, her pink bags packed and carried by an entourage of tiny maids, makes to leave Darling Manor. She breathlessly tells her father she has one life, and she has to make it hers. "Some day is today!" she calls to her mother, watching from the staircase above. "Let her go," Tish says. "She'll be okay." Nick wonders if it's the love of fame instead, and we see Jeremy lounging on his yacht and talking to Ethan Hawke on the phone. Maybe it's the love of virtue; Brian's mistress tells him it's not about the money, it's about their son going to the school he would if they were all together. She hands her son over, saying he's Brian's now. Or maybe it's the love of vice, like Patrick with his unstable girlfriend who will do something horrible if he leaves her. Or it could be the love of romance, which Karen seeks as she cuddles up to the money-hungry Freddy. "Or is it having too much of anything?" Nick wonders. He says he doesn't know, but he does know he's going to find out who killed his father. "And when I do, they're gonna pay."