A friendship lesson from the Lipstick Jungle finale
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.”
Category: KEEPING FRIENDS
