Ladies First Curse: Getting Ahead but Flirting With Dead

Cami: Mudd, Kohl's; Skirt: Material Girl, Macy's; Boots: Simply Vera, Kohl's; Bag: Betsey Johnson, Macy's; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon

Hairpins, Rite Aid

Midnight Magic Necklace

One of the reasons I love blogging is that it gives me a chance to play with outfits I like but would never wear (for yes, there are some, even for me).  Just like watching TV gives me a glimpse of exciting but dangerous things I'd never do.  Enter today's Goth club kid ensemble and NBC's Good Girls. 

If you've seen Good Girls (or even a commercial), then you know that the dark dramedy, which is in its fourth season, is about three ordinary women who turn to crime when faced with financial hardships.  Set in a suburb of Detroit, it straddles the no woman's land between the mean city streets and the cul-de-sac.  Ringleader Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) is a domestic diva and mother of four married to her high school sweetheart (Matthew Lillard of Scream fame).  Yet when she finds out that her dear Dean's serial philandering and financial mismanagement have landed them face to face with foreclosure, she's forced to expand her repertoire from baking to burglary.  Beth convinces her sister Annie (Mae Whitman), a wisecracking supermarket cashier, and their lifelong friend Ruby (Retta), a happily married but struggling waitress, to join her in her crime spree crusade.  But no sooner do they commit their first felony than they learn that they've trespassed upon the turf of career criminal Rio (Manny Montana).  Like it or not, "gang friend," as Ruby calls him, soon becomes a fixture in their lives.  Yet as Beth plunges deeper into Detroit's underworld, she discovers that illicit entrepreneurship is the road to not only financial freedom but the kind of fulfillment that she can't get from the PTA.   

Good Girls isn't all back door deals and social commentary, though.  It's also funny.  Annie slings some first-class zingers, and the situations in which the "girls" find themselves are often so ludicrous that you can't help but laugh.  Even the background music is French noir cute reminiscent of A Simple Favor.  Finally, there are more than a few Cloud Nine references, which are an Easter egg of a reminder that the dearly departed Superstore is a fellow Midwestern star in the NBC universe.   

Layered and nuanced, Good Girls is masterfully crafted to make you think twice about everything.  Like this unabashedly badass outfit, it starts off as starkly black and white but eventually reveals shades of gray.  And it's the gray that urges you to question the difference between right and wrong, to wonder what you would do if you too were caught in a catastrophic cashflow catch-22.  Just as it's the gray that makes this sensational story not only entertaining but familiar, becoming the silver lining we seek. 

Still, whenever Rio pops out from the shadows, I can't help but think that baking -- which I usually loathe -- looks pretty good.

Movie Moment: I Don't Know How She Does It

I Don't Know How She Does It made me a little bit nervous.  As I'm sure it was meant to.  According to Mindy Kaling's list of romantic comedy stereotypes (even if this movie isn't exactly a romantic comedy), its heroine Kate Reddy (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a cross between the beautiful klutz and the busy working woman who is obsessed with her career and never ever has any fun.  As a finance executive, wife, and mother of two, Boston-based Kate is relentlessly plagued by a never-ending to-do list that catapults her into one fiasco after another (enter beautiful klutz syndrome) and makes her the subject of smug stay-at-home-mom Wendy Best's (Busy Phillips) barbed commentary (delivered documentary-style from a treadmill at the gym).  Although Kate's freelance architect husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is mostly understanding, we sense that he is one play date away from a meltdown.

The heat is turned up on Kate's pressure-cooker life when she scores an account designing retirement fund plans for hotshot New York financier Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan).   Far from being put off by Kate's klutziness, the widowed Jack is charmed by it, a feeling that grows as Kate shuttles between Boston and New York for their meetings.  Kate is soon in the precarious position of forging a workplace friendship with a colleague who has a crush on her, a situation that causes her to unwittingly serve as emotional caretaker for Jack.  In this way her career resembles an illicit affair, not because she reciprocates Jack's feelings, but because it usurps her time and attention from her family.    

Of course, Richard lands a plumb design job just when Kate begins traveling, creating the kind of intense conflict for which movies like these are made.  Now, Richard is a pretty good guy.  Certainly not some stereotypical tyrant who would lighten the load of Kate's dilemma by way of his sheer awfulness.  It's his very mild-manneredness that complicates things, echoing the mindset of the husbands in those Second Shift studies.  Which is to say that he seems to think that it's fine for his wife to work - as long as it doesn't get in the way of her real work, which is in the home.

It should be noted that not every part of the movie is serious.  The plot is laced with classic Carrie Bradshaw-style narration that "Sex and the City" fans will enjoy, if only because it reminds them of Parker's plucky appeal as an authority on angst.  There is also plenty of witty dialogue, punctuated by well-placed jokes.  Finally, the spoiled and catty Wendy Best is funny.  Yet at the heart of her quips is a bitterness that I can't help but feel channels the movie's central message, which is this: Kate may travel a treadmill of never-ending conflict between work and home, but Wendy is trapped on a treadmill of catering to her kids and in-laws.  She's angry because she's jealous of Kate.  Although stressed and conflicted, Kate never comes off as angry.  The comparison between Kate and Wendy poses the question: What do these women really want, and how stressed are they willing to be to get it?  At first I had trouble answering this question.  During most of the movie, I just wanted Kate to quit her crazy-ass job already.  But ultimately I understood that for her, her job was her identity and therefore worthy of fighting for on her terms.

So, a lot of deep thoughts swirling around here.  I Don't Know How She Does It, by the way, got terrible reviews. (It closed fairly quickly after opening this past September.)  I admit that it wasn't great.  But I don't think it was as bad as people made it out to be either.  It was just up against the challenge of tackling an unpopular topic and falling somewhere between light fare and full-fledged drama in the process.