Hollywood, thy name is fickle

When did the memo go out that rich white women were the one minority it is OK to say, and write, terrible things about? The rich bitch has always been a staple of literature along with other heinous stereotypes -- the cheap Jew, the stupid immigrant -- but while most of these have been smashed and swept away, the social climbing, backstabbing female with money (which she has almost always married) remains. Without a friend to call her own.

There she is front and center in “The Starter Wife,” the miniseries based the bestseller by Gigi Levangie Grazer, who is inevitably, and will be here, referred to as wife of uber producer Brian Grazer. Debra Messing plays the starter, Molly Kagan, a former bushy-eyebrowed, overall-wearing children’s book author turned plucked and coutured spouse of uber producer Kenny Kagan (Peter Jacobson). At least until she is kicked to the curb and learns the hard way that most of those air-kissing, Ivy-lunching, gift-bag-toting people didn’t really like her for herself, they liked her for her access.

So we get to have our fake and eat her too -- Molly is suddenly even better than the classic fish out of water. She’s a fish out of water at a fancy sushi restaurant. (In one scene, literally.)

Cast within an inch of its life and full of terrific Hollywood tear-downs, “The Starter Wife” tries to be good clean mean-spirited fun. For the most part it succeeds, but the chick-lit trend of really sticking it to rich women remains disturbing in its sexism and classism. Yes, yes, “The Starter Wife,” like “The Nanny Diaries” and countless others, is just pure soap. But it too easily offers up the idea that all these “wives” are just as unrelievedly shallow and horrifying as we, the grubby chorus of “Les Miserables,” imagine them to be.

Mercifully, Molly is thrown that former career as well as a couple of friendly life preservers. Her gay decorator Rodney (Chris Diamantopoulos) and flask-sipping society dame friend Joan (Judy Davis) stick by her, and a jaded studio exec (Joe Mantegna) shows a little interest. Malibu (played by Australia) glows, the Pacific Ocean shimmers, but it’s the glare off the shiny plastic people that makes you squint.

“The Starter Wife” spares no local sacred cow -- not the boring star-studded movie premiere, the apres-moi, le deluge children’s birthday party or the fascist maitre d’. At least “Starter Wife” is the product of one who walks among them. Grazer, a producer on the miniseries, is the ultimate insider and so her slings and arrows -- the desperate screenwriter who demands that his wife, Cricket (Miranda Otto), shear off her best-friendship with Molly partly so he can make his totally boring indie film; the various harridans who look right through her when, post-separation, she has the gall to show up at the child’s birthday party, not to mention with that gay decorator -- have flawless aim. If nothing else, “Starter Wife” is a testament to the Grazers’ ascendancy; she can dish her own people and eat lunch in this town again.

Messing, with her perpetually bewildered expression and mystifyingly auburn eyebrows, may be the only actress alive able to say the words “Et tu, Cricket?” and make them stick. A viewer’s enjoyment of “Starter Wife” will largely depend on how sympathetic she or he finds the actress -- because the character, narcissistic and grasping, gives us little to love. Davis, as the alcoholic wife of “Papi,” is channeling her Judy Garland performance (she even has the same hair) though that is not a bad thing; recycled Davis is better than fresh just about anyone. Otto (most famous for her portrayal of Eowyn in “The Lord of the Rings”) is, in the first installment, anyway, as close to a “normal” person as “The Starter Wife” gets. Yes, her multinational children each have their own nanny, and, yes, she does drop her best friend for the sake of her husband’s career. But at least she tells Molly she’ll miss her.

And in Grazer’s world, apparently, that’s as good as it gets.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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‘The Starter Wife’

Where: USA Network

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Thursday

Rating: TV-PG-D (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for suggestive dialogue)