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The scariest thing about The Street isn't the notion that Wall Street is being run by a bunch of horny 26-year-olds. Or the idea that an initial public offering for a company that harvests the eggs and sperm of Ivy Leaguers and sells them on the Internet could go through the roof. No, it's that Darren Star, the wunderkind who has littered the TV landscape with such gems as Beverly Hills 90210 and Sex and the City, has created a show that's not smart, sexy, or stylish, but stupid, smutty, and self-conscious.
Make no mistake -- I love good trash (no, that's not an oxymoron), especially good TV trash. And what could be more appealing to a philistine who works at Business Week Online than a mix of trash and cash? The news that Fox was going to air Star's new show filled me with joyous anticipation. But alas, The Street, judging by its premier episode, is no Sex and the City.
LOCATION LOCATION. Star might as well have called his new offering Sex and the Street, because the emphasis is strongly -- too much so -- on the former. Wall Street is merely the backdrop against which his young, good-looking actors play out their sexual fantasies and frustrations. Star's other shows -- not only Sex and the City but also Grosse Point,Melrose Place, and the short-lived Central Park West -- tend to be location-focused.
But Wall Street deserves a more muscular role, much more than a backdrop. It's a concept, a character unto itself, evocative of action and power. It's a leading man mistakenly reduced to a walk-on part.
The show is mainly set at a financial-services behemoth. The ostensible star is Tom Everett Scott, playing Jack Kenderson, a broker who finds out his investment-banker fiancÉe is in love with someone else. Of course, he discovers that only after dragging her from a meeting for a quick tryst in the ladies' room. Alas, the fiancÉe, Catherine Miller (played by Jennifer Connelly), is on the rebound after her affair with a married man blows up, and she foils Jack's plans for love in the afternoon.
A SERIES OF STILLS. Then there's the utterly despicable Rick Hoffman (Freddie Sacker), whose juvenile antics would seem out of place at the most primitive of frat houses. The show also boasts not just one, but two, Staten Island strivers, à la Working Girl. (Doesn't anyone from the other outer boroughs have any ambition? Or have all of them already slept, studied, and clawed their way out?)
Some of the plot points could be funny: the analyst whose Dow Jones only rises for the stripper dressed as Xena, the Warrior Princess, or the aggressive Russian lap dancers who want inside information in exchange for, well, more intimate encounters. But the writing and acting are too heavy-handed. And the story line and characters have no real cohesion. It's like watching a movie that's a series of snapshots instead of live action.
Sex without a decent plot, setting, or characters is porn. And porn without nudity is pointless. So unless Star wants to see his show sink faster and lower than Priceline's stock, he had better give his characters something to do other than pursuing their erotic destinies. Forget that this is no Sex and the City. It isn't even Central Park West.
While not searching out "good trash" on TV, O'Connell edits copy for Business Week Online Edited by Beth Belton
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