of the two shows about a female friend group with highly competent career women, (that both weirdly enough, had fashion shows as their defining moments) it’s clear to see why this one & not _lipstick jungle_ (fantastic show, terrible name) was quickly canceled. _cashmere mafia_ is obviously the weaker show in terms of cinematography, costuming, plotting and writing.

the actresses are trying their best, but the writing is mediocre and tired. even lucy liu with all her charming glamour and heart, can’t elevate this series. there are threads of goodness there, and maybe in time the show would’ve settled into something great and found an audience (the ‘finale’ clearly wasn’t planned as it‘s a regular, almost boring issue of the week that wraps nothing up seems they were waiting for a full season order that never came) but as it was, it didn’t really do much in terms of saying anything new or interesting. every episode seemed it was like they were trying to grab the audience with a hook, rather than organically progressing the story and watching that on a binge felt transparent and silly so i can’t imagine how annoying it was on a weekly basis. also, the anti lesbian homophobia was ridiculous, even for 2007. because whey is there a bisexual who calls herself a lesbian [spoiler]who dates a pregnant lesbian who leads her along only to go back to her ex (lol) [/spoiler] and how did the writers make even that boring and stupid!

i did like how the show examined the pervasive nature of misogyny and the pressure on working women to still be subservient to their partners, how it revealed that even the most self assured, financially secure women feel pressure to adhere to female exclusive social norms about marriage and heterosexual rituals, but even that wasn’t explored as deeply as it could’ve been. and looking at the writers of the show (mostly men with 4 women who wrote an episode here and there) the lack of complexity and nuance wrt to womanhood, makes sense. had they gotten more women in the writers room, dropped the homophobia, upped the stakes and taken the show a little more seriously, this really could’ve been something great.

the actresses were fantastic, their chemistry great and the premise had the potential. the writing only needed to rise to their level. i thought the cancellation was premature at the start but having finished, maybe it was for the best.

6/10