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Sex and the Sitcom: Tepid 'Hot Properties'
Nicole Sullivan, Gail O'Grady and Sofia Vergara play three highly sexed career women in the Manhattan real estate office of "Hot Properties."
(By Vivian Zink -- Abc)
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Lola: "Pretty good." (Pause) "Well, let's face it -- you guys are kind of slutty."
Chloe: "Excuse me. I am not slutty. I am easy. It's subtle, but there's a difference."
And that's the setup for the premiere. What will they do? Tell Emerson her husband-to-be is a cad? Pretend they don't remember him? Something else even loonier?
Well, they could take the advice of Dr. Charles Thorpe (Stephen Dunham), the randy plastic surgeon down the hall who frequently pops in with a lewd remark: Keep quiet, he tells them, and show the couple the house. It's a win-win, he says -- "like sucking fat outta somebody's [bottom] and injecting it into their lips. I do it 10 times a day."
"Hot Properties" is reminiscent of several past series, most obviously the female quartets of "Sex and the City" and "Designing Women." It isn't fair to compare long-running shows with a new one, but those two offered considerably more character delineation than this one seems to aspire to. (The second episode hangs on Lola's grief over the death of her pet chicken, which more or less changes the subject from sex, at least briefly.)
Another show it brings to mind, oddly enough, is "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." That too featured a sane central character surrounded by a cast of eccentrics. But Mary Richards was a lovable creation and a very interesting one. A big problem with "Hot Properties" is its hollow core -- Ava exists as the beautiful, has-it-all ideal, the counterpoint to the imperfect others, and that isn't exactly arresting.
Sullivan and Vergara are playing stock characters, but even that gives them more to do than poor O'Grady. Together they're another version of the Empowered Woman we've been seeing so much of on television. For the show's sake, they might consider trading a little empowerment for a dose of originality.
Hot Properties (30 minutes) airs tonight at 9:30 on Channel 7.
