ABC
Last week fellow Clacker Keith posted a list of the biggest fictional douchebags on television. I thought it was fairly complete and accurate. However, as I was reading it, I realized that there is someone else who is headed for this list. If you watched Dirty Sexy Money last week, you must have seen it too. Nick George was acting like a huge douchebag! I think Nola may have been right when, earlier in the season, she told Nick that he was “the Darlingest Darling of them all.” He’s definitely taking a trip down the dark side this season, and I don’t like it.
There were signs that this was coming. Ever since his wife, Lisa, was caught kissing Jeremy Darling, Nick has been downright nasty. He hasn’t taken their marital counseling seriously, often fielding phone calls from one Darling or another. When Lisa had a chance to get the art studio of her dreams, Nick said “no” because it meant her working with Jeremy Darling without so much as a conversation. How much of a double standard is that? He doesn’t trust Lisa enough to have her work with Jeremy, but he sees Karen almost everyday as the Darling family lawyer. He and Karen didn’t just share a kiss – they were an item back in the day, and Karen has made it very clear that she still has a flame burning for Nick. So how big of a hypocrite is he for telling Lisa how to run her life and business? If I recall, Lisa even cited this as a reason that he shouldn’t take the job with the Darlings at the beginning of season 1.
Now, obviously there are trust issues between Lisa and Nick, so if that were the only evidence, I think I could forgive him. However, these are not the only recent examples of his douchery. In order to win Letitia’s murder trial, he willingly destroyed Nola’s career. Not only did he do it without reservations, he did it with a great big smile on his face. In order to do it, he even roughed up Jeremy. What a douchebag! Seriously, the Nick of last season would not have done any of this crap.
Finally, last week’s episode had one more example of Nick’s douchey behavior. After leaving his wife, he jaunted right over to Karen’s place and attempted to hook up with the man-eating floozy. WTF Nick? Is he so insecure that he is letting one (completely justified, in my opinion) kiss ruin his entire marriage? Maybe it’s just because I have a huge crush on Lisa, but this guy is a moron. No wonder he had to resort to dirty tricks to win his case; he was probably too stupid to win it on his lawyerly merit.
Now, I may be jumping the gun a bit. I’m not sure if this is a calculated attempt by the writers to show Nick going down the wrong road as he gets more ingrained into the Darling’s world. Maybe he’ll see the error of his ways and turn his life around. In any case, I’m not liking the direction. There were enough amoral, Machiavellian characters on this show already. Nick was the everyman that was trying to navigate his way through their web of lies and betrayal. Now he’s just another spider….
What does everyone else think? Am I way off base here? Do you think Nick will have a change of heart soon? Wouldn’t you take Lisa over Karen?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Nov 10, 2008 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
You know, I was thinking the same thing when I watched this episode. The behavior is very out of character for Nick, and I looked at Nick’s and Lisa’s relationship as the rock amidst all the Darling drama. I feel nervous that DSM may go the way of shows that premiere string then lose their way (The OC is one that comes to mind).
I think that this is a natural progression of Nick’s character. His association with the Darlings is changing him from the wide-eyed idealist that he was into a pragmatist. However, I do believe that Nick’s basic decency will win in the end.
I may be the only one, but I think Nick has more chemistry with Karen than he has with Lisa but I don’t think they should go there just yet. The character of Lisa is starting to annoy me. All she does is whine about how Nick has changed. She needs to accept those changes or move on with her own life.
I have to say, I really loved the first season, cut short though it was, of Dirty Sexy Money. I had high hopes for the second season, but week after week I am appalled by the douchebaggery committed by Nick! The thing that I loved about the show was that it was soapy, but still had honest, quasi-believable characters, especially in Nick and Lisa. Kiki too, but now she’s nowhere to be seen, unless its on the back of a milk carton maybe. The thing that is most unbelievable to me is not that Nick is being a douche (he’s a man, after all) but that Lisa plays the victim to his bs and refuses to put him in his place and point out all of the double standards that are so obvious to we, the viewers. This show is getting worse and worse with the way that they portray women. I honestly don’t know if I can sit and watch the male lead of a tv series who is supposed to be a stand-up guy take such a nasty, misogynist turn when there’s absolutely no reason for it except to excite the viewer. It’s one thing to have a male lead like House, who maybe has more tendency to be an asshole than a douchebag, but who cares and is unable to show it, but it’s a completely different thing to have this idiot have opportunities to redeem himself thrown at him left and right and refuse them all because the poor little baby doesn’t know what he wants. Boo hoo hoo. He needs to take some hints from his half brother Brian about how to be an ENDEARING douchebag, and if not, I can’t take much more of this show.
Love Brian!!! lol
Last episode Nick was a douche regarding the gallery, but i really don’t like Lisa, she is sooooooooo whiney!!! At the beginning she was in Nick’s face all the time for nothing (at the time he wasen’t changed yet), and now that she was motives to bust his ass, she just… let it be… WTF!!!
Nick is becoming more of a douche as the timem pases, but im with Kim in that one, is the natural progression of the character. He should man up and stop playin safe to find out who killed his father.
Nola had it comming, plus she is not a inoccent girl as we saw in the las episode.
Nick is a douche. Lisa wasn’t whining from the beginning, Nattyff, without reason. If you recall, Nick was being dragged into a life he condemned. His relationship with his father was on the rocks because of his hatred for all things Darling. He felt that his father chose the Darlings over him, and that colored everything in his life with that family. Then his father dies and he steps right in thinking that he is a bigger man than his father and can do it in a way that will keep his personal and professional lives separate. Lisa knew her husband well enough to know this was a huge mistake. Guess what! She was right! Everything in his life has gone downhill since he took over his father’s role in the family, including that with his own.
Karen is a skank. She is absolutely worthless. She has nothing. She’s lacking brains, looks (she dresses like a floozy, at best), empathy, humility, compassion. The only thing she does have is a past with Nick. A past that must have been his way of trying to get closer to his father, or digging at his father…something. Because in no way can I believe that a person of the character that WAS Nick would have ever found anything attractive about that cheap woman.
I want the season finale to show Nick hanging by a thread…realizing what the hell he has done to himself. To see himself through his (ex) wife’s and daughter’s eyes. To get his damn balls back.
This is the third post on this page that uses the term douche! If the writers of this blog keep it up, the douche count may surpass the equally annoying “clack” count.
DoucheClack coming soon! Bob, not only was I thinking the same thing I was thinking almost the same article. I was working on one about how there’s almost nobody genuinely good left on the show, spearheaded by Nick’s collapse into douchebaggery.
“Douche” may get old, but “douchebaggery” never does!