News

‘$treet’ smarts

Trading stock tips to strippers for sexual favors, cheating on your fiance with the new girl in the office, finding out your girlfriend was in a lesbian soft-core porn or sucking up to your boss only to find out he is gay and likes you. Only on Fox will you see Wall Street as a backdrop to sex, love, greed and deception with laughs thrown in every few minutes. “The $treet” offers a distorted view of life on Wall Street, but if someone wanted to watch a more educational show with stock reports and IPO talk, they shouldn’t be tuned to Fox in the first place.

Darren Star, producer of shows like “Melrose Place” and “Sex and the City,” entertains us with a sexy and energetic yet stereotypical cast that can be seen on any soap opera. However, the characters go beyond the stereotypes and amuse us with their quirks and amazingly hyperactive behavior. The cast is full of horny, attractive 20-somethings that work at Balmont Stevens Inc., with IPOs such as Ivygene.com, which sells the sperm and eggs of Ivy leaguers on the Internet.

There is the financial whiz Jack (Tom Everett Scott, “Boiler Room,” “That Thing You Do!”), who is also a natural with the ladies. Freddie (Rick Hoffman, “Providence”) cannot keep his perverted comments to himself and exchanges stock tips for sexual favors. Bridget (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, “Billy Madison”) is the typical Heather Locklear character, who uses her quick profit stock undertakings to get ahead and gets by on pretty looks and using guys to give her information. She has Freddie tied around her finger. Mitchell (Adam Goldberg, “Saving Private Ryan”) plays the part of the adorable geek, although, on this show, even the geek gets laid a lot! He dates a Xena-esque stripper only to find that she has also starred in lesbian soft-core porn (Is that really a surprise though? She was a stripper in the first place). The office intern, Sherman, (Christian Campbell, Neve’s brother) is harassed by Freddie when he gets the office to bet on the size of his package, and is mistaken as a homosexual by a gay department head.

In this show, there are about 10 subplots in each show, but it still seems smooth and easy to keep up with.

This show can be easily called a male version of “Sex and the City,” with the men dominating the bathroom gossip and getting it on with anyone from coworkers to waitresses. The show degrades women to an extent, but in a way makes the women powerful by the way they can control the men. Bridget says to Jack, “Don’t take it personally…but all guys are suckers.” The men fall over the women and the women seem to get by on looks, cleavage and slick comments. Basically, sexual innuendo lurks around every corner.

The show has a style all its own, with great transitions from one subplot to another and more footage under the covers than in the office. If you expect real drama, tune into “ER,” because, while they deal with issues like homosexuality and the disillusionment of the business world, the show is more about exchanging phone numbers than stocks. It makes Wall Street look dumb, with the office coming across as a circus ring where pranksters show sex tapes and bring in feng shui to increase productivity. With its “Ally McBeal” type dialogue and antics, fancy camera work and “Melrose Place” sexual action, the show is sure to be a hit with the Fox audience.

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.