This week’s finale of Lipstick Jungle (Carpe Threesome) offered an important lesson about female friendship. We all need friends who will be there for us when we fall.
Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields) had been extremely critical when she found out about her friend Nico Reilly’s (played by Kim Raver) extramarital affair with a young stallion named Kirby (Robert Buckley). In fact, her remarks were so irritating that Nico accused her friend of acting like “Mother Superior.”
Was Wendy too judgmental? Too heavy-handed? Too strident? Whatever she felt and said wasn’t persuasive enough to make Nico change her mind---which is true to life. When friends we respect question our morals, it’s not that we ignore them completely. We hear them. On the other hand, when a close friend---or even a best friend---tells us what’s “right” or what they think is “right”, it usually isn’t enough to make us change our behavior.
People are only capable of making changes when they are emotionally ready to do so. In the (literally) steamy opener of the episode this week, which began with Kirby and Nico showering together, Nico still wasn’t ready to listen. Hours later (or minutes in TV series time), she finds out that her husband Charles hae suffered a sudden heart attack. When his life seemed to be hanging in the balance, Nico realized that her true allegiance was to her husband and her ambivalence was resolved for the moment. “I just want my marriage back,” she said.
Hospital waiting rooms are pretty lonely places (having been in one a couple of weeks ago myself). The third friend in the threesome, Victory Ford (Lindsay Price), left a pair of new clients to rush to be at her friend’s side and then Wendy showed up in tears soon after, giving Nico the hugs and understanding she needed.
The takeaway messages from the first season of Lipstick about friendship:
- Friends have a moral responsibility to be honest and forthcoming when they feel a friend has done something that seems self-destructive or unethical.
- Dishonesty among friends has the potential to destroy intimacy and lead to estrangement.
- Yet, we can’t expect friends to change on a dime just based on our say-so. Change has to come from within when the timing is right. Good friends understand that and are there without saying, “I told you so.”
