‘Hot Properties’ has a lot to sell
Realtors, as we all know, travel in threes. Often there’s a blond, a redhead and a Latina. The women of “Hot Properties,” a new sitcom that ABC has slotted at 9:30 p.m. Fridays, following the Kelly Ripa/Faith Ford sitcom “Hope & Faith,” are like the women of “The View” -- overgroomed chatty Cathys gathered in a semicircle around a nice tea set, going: “I know it’s not PC anymore, but I loved one-night stands. There’s just something about the first time you reach to unzip a man’s pants, and that cute way they always tighten their abs.”
Has Barbara or Meredith or Joy ever said that? Tell you this, Gail O’Grady says it on “Hot Properties,” says it loud and long and proud. “Hot Properties,” created by Suzanne Martin, stars O’Grady, Nicole Sullivan and Sofia Vergara as three women who talk about sex or, more accurately, talk about it in the way that sex gets talked about on ABC at 9:30 p.m. Fridays, before “20/20.”
The talking about sex is occasionally interrupted by the showing and selling of Manhattan real estate.
On paper, that’s basically the show. On paper, O’Grady’s the former sexpot who’s married to a 25-year-old, Sullivan’s the hard-up, hard-bit one and Vergara the statuesque Latina, used in the interest of vaudeville, her breasts preceding her into jokes. When Vergara talks she talks “lie dees.” The word “slutty” comes out as zloty, the Polish currency, although I fully understood her when she said: “I’ve spent my life surrounded by men with wood.”
She’s talking about the men in her family who are cabinetmakers, you see! We’re to believe that Vergara has just ended a 10-year marriage after discovering, finally, that her husband was gay. We’re to believe these women can banter about breast implants and threesomes but get all squeamish and prudish around the notion of a sperm sample. We’re to believe ABC took a look at all this and said, yes, yes and yes. We’re to believe that a new client walks in, a country club Muffy named Emerson Ives (Christina Moore), and announces that she and her fiance are virgins. We’re to believe that Ava (O’Grady) and Chloe (Sullivan) have slept with said fiance, and we’re to believe that instead of sending Lola (Vergara) to meet the fiance and show the townhouse herself, all three of them go. We’re to believe that at the end of it, the client becomes a pal.
We’re to believe.
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‘Hot Properties’
Where: ABC
When: 9:30 tonight
Ratings: TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language)
Gail O’Grady...Ava Summerlin
Nicole Sullivan...Chloe Reid
Sofia Vergara...Lola Hernandez
Christina Moore...Emerson
Evan Handler...Dr. Sellers Boyd
Executive producers Suzanne Martin and Jay Daniel. Creator Suzanne Martin.
