PremiereWatch: 'Lipstick Jungle'

Lipstick Jungle is back for season two, emerging as the victorious show in the network battle between soapy dramas revolving around forty-something, powerful women in New York with fabulous wardrobes. The question is, will this victor get the spoils it's earned, or is this entire concept just spoiled?

It's been a long time since we've seen these lovely ladies, so let's start with a quick recap, shall we? Last season, Nico had a torrid affair with hot young photographer Kirby and it was hinted that her husband Charles may have had a few extracurricular activities of his own with one of his students, but all that was moot at the end of the season when Charles had a heart attack and Nico vowed to get her marriage back on track. Wendy's life got more complicated when her husband went back to work and she worried if she was too busy to be a good mother. Victory was stunned when Joe secretly bought her company and she insisted he sell it, but seemed to have a change of heart until she discovered him in bed with another woman.

Now that we're all refreshed, on to the new stuff! Instead of picking right up where last season left off the show starts with our three protagonists sitting together in the front row of a church, obviously at a funeral, incongruously laughing their impeccably dressed butts off. What could possibly be so funny at such a somber occasion? We don't get to find out this, or even who is dead, as the scene quickly fades to black and a title card reading "Five Days Earlier" comes up. Guessing games, fun! Although I'm not sure this game is quite so difficult, considering last season's finale ended with someone having a heart attack. (Oops. Spoiler!)

The five days earlier in question pick up with Nico and Charles at home and doing very well. It's obviously been some time since the heart attack, and although Charles mentions having a doctor's appointment all seems well with his health. He gives Nico an "I was just thinking about you" gift, a gift that turns out to be none other than the post-coital photo Kirby took of her last season. Yikes! Nico immediately goes into panic mode, conspiracy-theorizing that Charles knows everything about her affair and he just bought the picture to mess with her head. Wendy and Victory tell her she's being insane, but Nico can't let it go and visits a very hot and very shirtless Kirby at the basketball court to ask him to somehow get the picture back because she can't stand to look at it hanging on her wall. They share a smokin' hot finger graze (and you know your actors have chemistry when they can make a little finger graze hot) and Kirby promises to do what he can.

Nico's encounter with Kirby is causing her more problems, however, because now she can't get him out of her mind when all she wants to do is forget him and get back to how her marriage used to be. She even goes so far as to visit a plastic surgeon who, um, enhances a certain spot in her nether regions so she can have assisted mind blowing sex with her husband instead of the unassisted mind blowing sex she was having during her affair. When she approaches her husband to get it on, though, he's cold and distant. She even goes so far as to admit her affair to Charles and say it's over and all she wants is him. Charles is angry, and Nico responds that he must have had an affair or two over the years, because after all she was his student back in the day. Even if her husband seems shady, that's a horrible way to make yourself feel better. Nico kind of sucks sometimes.

Nico's desperation continues until her husband goes into the hospital for a double bypass (a remnant of the heart attack) and she sees his student a.k.a. "groupie" Megan at the hospital and kindly asks her to leave. At this point Megan goes into bitch mode, saying she is the one Charles wants there and revealing her very pregnant belly. Oh no he didn't! Nico does some investigating and learns that Charles has been having an affair with Megan for years, even putting her up in her own love nest. He knew about Kirby all along and was planning on leaving Nico as soon as he built up enough of a case for abandonment against her that he could score alimony. You stay classy, Charles. In the end, all of this crazy soapy treachery almost doesn't matter because Charles dies on the operating table before there can be any sort of big confrontation. The episode ends after the funeral we saw in the opening minutes (which Kirby kindly and somewhat inappropriately attended, but Megan was there too so what do I know?) with Nico wandering the streets of New York trying to figure out what to do next. Will she go back to Kirby? I certainly hope so, because he is a good looking dude and I am shallow.

With all of Nico's drama taking over the hour, Wendy gets a smaller role than normal in the premiere, basically filling the hour wearing gorgeous clothes and dealing with the criticisms of her mother (played by the legendary Mary Tyler Moore). It seems her mother was a career woman herself and doesn't approve of Wendy cutting down her hours at the studio in order to be home in time for dinner with the kids every night. Seeing as Wendy caught her teenage daughter sneaking into a bar with a fake I.D., I have to say I disagree with MTM here. They have the same argument for the entire episode until MTM reveals that she is in town to visit a headhunter in NYC who advised her to "go back to Connecticut and open a yarn store." Harsh, but really. What was she expecting? Wendy gently reminds her that she wants to be different and spend more time with her family, and MAN this story is very socially relevant but very certainly boring. I prefer Wendy's ridiculous Hollywood plots to this.

As for Victory, her business appears to be booming which is just what she wants so she can turn a profit and therefore get Joe to sell her business as he promised. Joe obviously just wants Victory back, but Victory is still smarting from her discovery of another woman in Joe's bed just as she was ready to trust him again. Joe makes the very 1990's case that "they were on a break," and honestly, I see both sides of this argument. Victory still isn't ready to let him back into her heart but she is ready to stop letting him run her life, so she allows herself to rent the perfect studio space from him despite her misgivings. There was also an entire subplot here with Rosie Perez as her new publicist, but I can't quite get a handle on where that is going yet. Right now she's just sort of there to be Rosie Perez and freak everyone out. I just sort of miss her awesome assistant, who only has one little scene. Less Rosie, more assistant, please!

What did you guys think? Are you happy the show is back? Can you believe they killed off Nico's husband so quickly and made him such a demony rascal right before they did it? Do you want Nico and Kirby to get back together? How about Victory and Joe?

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