Cashmere Mafia: 1.1 ‘Pilot’ Recap
Original Air Date: January 6, 2008
After the episode opens with publishing executive Mia Mason’s (Lucy Liu) boyfriend Jack Cutting (recurring guest star Tom Everett Scott) proposing to her on a crowded New York street one morning on their way to work, the couple learn that they’ll have to compete one-on-one for a promotion to U.S. Group Publisher for the Barnstead Magazine Group. Their boss Clive (Daniel Geroll), whom Mia snarkily refers to as Lord Voldemort (the main villain of the Harry Potter series), explains that one of them will move up and the other will move out based upon their performance results up to Friday of the same week, just a few days away. Mia must then decide what’s more important: besting her brand-new fiancé or climbing up another rung on the corporate ladder. She gives the second option her all, predictably misbelieving that Jack will be able to handle it if she beats him at this promotion game.
While Mia deals with her job competition, harried investment banker and married mother of two Zoe Burden (Frances O’Connor) deals with the horror of having her nanny lured away by a neighbor’s offer of a six-figure salary, plus substantial perks (I am definitely in the wrong line of work). Her solution to the dilemma is to hire the first nanny that comes along, a young woman named Brooke Adaire (Anna Camp), despite her work-at-home architect husband Eric’s (Julian Ovenden) justified concerns over Brooke’s many trivial demands. For instance, in addition to a hefty salary and her own bedroom with premium cable, Brooke wants a cell phone with unlimited texting. My question is what is the salary for, then, if she can’t even pay for her own darn phone service? Where do the rest of us get a job like that?
At work, Mia suffers equally under the similar indifference and sense of entitlement of her assistant Katherine Cutler (Kate Levering), another young woman who seems to think that she’s doing Zoe a favor by letting Zoe give her a paycheck. Why an executive of Zoe’s stature would continue employing such lazy and disrespectful help is never clearly explained. Zoe describes the situation as being held hostage by Generation I.D. (I Deserve), but it seems more to me like being a pushover. Grow a backbone already and fire both of them.
As soon as Mia learns of the death-match competition with her fiancé at work, she emails her three girlfriends to set up an emergency group meeting to break the news about it and Jack’s proposal. While the women are chatting and eating, a woman of a comparable age named Cilla Grey (Noelle Beck) walks up to ask marketing executive Caitlin Dowd (Bonnie Somerville) if she can help speed up her application to rent a penthouse in the exclusive building where Caitlin lives. Of course, after Cilla walks away, the women start gossiping about her immediately. Not only is Cilla a serial divorcée, but we later learn that she’s knocking boots with hotel COO Juliet Draper’s (Miranda Otto) husband of 15 years, Davis (Peter Hermann).
Later, the women and their men meet at a bar to celebrate Mia and Jack’s engagement. That’s where Mia’s girlfriends warn Jack that he’d better not break her heart, or they’ll break every bone in his body. Moreover, Zoe and Juliet’s husbands advise him never to say the “r” word, which stands for “relax.” Of course, Jack does say the word soon enough when he and Mia catch a cab to go home afterwards, and she gets into a predictable huff over it. But, for some reason, she’s not the least bit miffed that the gathering broke up early so that Caitlin can make a Tokyo conference call, Zoe can get to work finding another nanny, and Juliet can have sex with Davis before he leaves on a business trip the next day.
Of the four friends, Caitlin is the most interesting thus far. After numerous unsuccessful relationships with men, she finally suspects that maybe they’re not the best option for her when she’s instantly attracted to Alicia Lawson (recurring guest star Lourdes Benedicto), a woman she interviews for a position at her company. The pair later meets at a bar for drinks, and Caitlin knows that her feelings are reciprocated when they kiss outside. It’s a sweet scene that also happens to be the most genuine one in the episode. Even Caitlin’s priest brother (Darren Pettie) advises her that after 15 years of dating, it’s all about finding the right person, whatever their gender.
It becomes time for another group meeting when on the way to work, Zoe spies Davis kissing Cilla meaningfully on the sidewalk outside of the hotel where she’s living temporarily. Zoe quickly contacts Mia and Caitlin, and they decide to confront Juliet before a benefit where she’s scheduled to receive an honor. To their shock, however, Juliet reveals that she already knows Davis is stepping out on her, but he’d always done it out of town and with women she doesn’t know. She puts up with it because she doesn’t want to be a single mother and because she thinks men have it hard being married to women like them who earn more money and move up higher in the corporate world.
Still, Juliet does get her “revenge” eventually when she quietly informs Davis at the benefit that she’s going to have a hot and heavy affair with someone he knows so they can start their relationship over even. One aspect of this plotline that’s supposed to be funny is the fact that all four women wear black dresses for the occasion because “it’s New York.” Yet, Mia, Zoe, and Caitlin convince Juliet to change into an eye-catching red number following their discussion about Davis.
The benefit is still underway when Zoe leaves and races to her daughter’s school to see her dance performance. Next, Mia gets the news from her boss Clive that after many machinations with her friends to score exclusive time with clients, she has beaten her fiancé and landed the promotion. Surprise, surprise when he reveals that he can’t marry her after all because he thought he’d win and she’d throw herself into planning their wedding to feel better. But, since Mia came out on top instead, she’s no longer the kid-obsessed and fawning type of wife he sees in his future. All of this leads to one of the funnier exchanges of the episode when the women meet for drinks yet again.
Zoe: Mia got the job, and Jack called it off.
Caitlin: Oh, my god! I’m so sorry! And screw him!
Mia (looking around): Well, not anymore…
The episode comes to a maudlin end with a dewy-eyed Mia telling her girlfriends she doesn’t know what she’d do without them, just before they begin determining the best new man for her. The necessary qualifications? Someone with a personality identical to Mia’s, who also has hair and is over 5'9" and under 210 pounds.
MY TAKE: All in all, the Cashmere Mafia pilot was watchable if far from compelling. There’s tons of room for improvement, so here’s hoping that both the drama and the comedy get better in the next few episodes.
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Tags: ABC, anna-camp, Bonnie Somerville, Cashmere Mafia, comedies, comedy, daniel-geroll, darren-pettie, darren-star, drama, dramas, Dramedies, frances-oconnor, julian-ovenden, kate-levering, lourdes-benedicto, Lucy Liu, miranda-otto, noelle-beck, peter-hermann, pilots, premieres, Recaps, Series Premieres, Television, tom-everett-scott, tv, Winter 2008Related Stories
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