Well, this season is quite the stunner. For starters, Tish Darling (Jill Clayburgh) gets arrested at Nick George's (Peter Krause) impromptu birthday bash, and for what? Try the murder of his father, Dutch George. But this is only the icing on the cake. The day before, Senatorial wannabe Patrick Darling's (William Baldwin) wife Ellen (Bellamy Young) blows up when she discovers her husband is still searching desperately for his missing transsexual mistress, Carmelita (Candis Cayne). In a fit of rage, she attacks him while he is in the shower with a fireplace poker, only to slip and fall, cracking her head on the bathroom floor. Instead of calling the police, the Darlings call Nick to clean up their proverbial mess. The chauffeur is sent to dispense with this unpleasantness and Ellen's "dies" in a tragic fire at the summer house. Can't have anything jinxing the Senate race, now can we? Now, Patrick's inaugural speech is a whole other story as Ellen's unstable brother Chase (who thinks Patrick killed his sister) brings a gun and has a shootout, with a fairly pivotal character getting shot and killed in the process.
In the meantime, with Nick being monopolized by the Darlings, he misses his special birthday dinner with Lisa (Zoe McClellan) and her tears are dried by Jeremy Darling (Seth Gabel) and the two end up kissing, which Nick witnesses. Their marriage is put further on the rocks when Lisa can't get the gallery space she wants without Darling clout and Jeremy becomes her silent partner. Needless to say, the secret gets out and this is a breaking point for Nick and Lisa's marriage. There is a really awesome catfight between Lisa and Karen that is lots of fun.
Jeremy finds love this season in the form of vicious prosecuting attorney Nola Lyons (Lucy Liu). Too bad she is the one responsible for prosecuting his mom for murder. All's well that ends well when the Judge gets wind of she and Jeremy's love affair and the case is dismissed. Then Nola sets her sights on becoming Patrick's Chief of Staff once he secures the Senatorial position. This can't be good, as we find out she is secretly working for Simon Elder since he has her little brother hidden away from her and she is under duress.
As you can see, Simon Elder (Blair Underwood) is up to his old tricks and he and Karen Darling (Natalie Zea) are hot and heavy, despite his status as daddy Tripp Darling's (Donald Sutherland) mortal enemy. Sadly, even though Karen is madly in love with Simon and agrees to marry him, he only wants control of Darling Enterprises and makes a deal with Tripp to leave Karen at the altar in exchange for controlling interest. Could Tripp be that sentimental and foolish? Let's just say he pulls a fast one and soon, he and Simon are partners, much to everyone's chagrin! When Nick and Karen finally declare their love for each other, it looks like things might just calm down... until Karen finds out she is pregnant.
Brian (Glenn Fitzgerald) spends a good portion of the season fighting his ex, Andrea (Sheryl Lee), for custody of Brian, Jr. only to find out she has cancer. This revelation brings the two together like never before and in a surprise to everyone, Brian marries Andrea when the guests for Karen's wedding are told no wedding would be taking place. Naturally, Brian can't stay happy for too long and tries to muck things up, but at least he convinces Andrea to take part in a medical trial where her cancer goes into remission.
As for special features, there's not a lot there but the bloopers were fun and I enjoyed the featurette on Natalie Zea. Directing the Darlings had some interesting parts to it, but also seemed to drag on. Deleted scenes were wisely omitted, but were still fun to watch and Dirty Sexy Crafty, about the food service guy on set, Josh,was just silly. Still, I'd rather have special features to complain a little about rather than none at all.
Sadly, this is the last season of the Darlings and of Dirty Sexy Money. I was really hoping that they would wrap the show up in some fashion, but I guess they found out they were canceled too late in the game to do that. Things were definitely left hanging and a bombshell revelation is dropped in the final episode. I wish the show would have continued because this family is just fun to watch and is chock full of talented actors. This season did get a little ridiculous as it seemed they pulled out all of the typical "soap opera" plotlines (murder/cover-up, cancer/remission, pregnancy/baby daddy confusion), but it was still fun to watch. If you followed Season One, you'll want to see what happens next. But when the curtain closes on this one, it closes for good. So long Darling family. We'll miss you all.
