First question: They mentioned that most of kids lived in the Darling estate. Does this include Patrick and his family?

Apparently yes--all the Darlings live there (now that Juliet has moved back) except for Brian and his family, who live in the parsonage next to the church.

If he becomes Senator, he may even leave his family at the Darling mansion in New York and just take a DC apartment for himself, since it's easy to fly back and forth to New York even on weekends. Quite a few political families do that so that the kids don't have to be uprooted.

Anybody know if DSM is shot in NY or LA?

If it is LA they are doing an amazing job of looking like NY.

Some exterior shots are done in NY, but most of it is shot in LA. Candis Cayne has commented more than once on having to fly out to LA to film there.

What does Natalie do? Is she also some kind of socialite or did she get famous for some other "talent"?

I have not noticed any mention of her doing anything except being rich and married several times (and looking fabulous in underwear).

Whoa, she's been married before? How did I miss that? Eh, she might be done anyway, but I'm curious.

ETA: cpuffin, I love the quick replies. But you're thinking of Karen, no? I'm wondering about Natalie. Juliet-fighting, bang-stealing, simpering, unpregnant Natalie.

I believe Freddy will be her 4th husband.

I don't think it has been specifically mentioned yet, but I do believe that Natalie doesn't do anything except go to club openings. And I do believe that if you have enough tabloid power, you can get paid for that.

Freddy will be Karen's fourth husband, not Natalie.

Wasn't there mention of Natalie launching a perfume line as well?

She and Juliet were working on it together; it was supposed to be called Darling something (maybe Darling Natalie ?), but got changed to Daring something (Daring Natalie?) when Natalie took the perfume idea for her own (right around the time she took Juliet's bangs).

I do get the idea, though, that Natalie's more famous for being young and famous (and being the daughter of her rich mother) than for any particular talent or constructive work on her part. I don't get the idea that she's a "nose" with a talent for perfume creation who was finally able to launch a brand with Juliet's help, but rather that she slapped 'her' name on a perfume to capitalize on her notoriety. So, I guess in the end, I actually agree with what gentleviewer just posted.

Yeah, it was supposed to be Darling (as in Juliet) Natalie (as in annoying screentime waster), which the paps got all excited about because it meant that Juliet was right about Natalie stealing from her.

Oh yeah... Natalie is not Karen.

I keep forgetting about Natalie. I assume she is an actress ala Lindsay Lohan. But I don't recall that being mentioned.

When Jeremy was flipping out over her picture with some actor, Natalie said her agent made her do it. Do wealthy people have an agent just because they're rich? She must have some kind of "talent", else why would she need an agent. Hmmm.

I thought Karen was being bred to take over the empire after Tripp retires.
Since Pat is politics.
Brian-minister
Twins are wastes. (Cute sweet wastes)

Maybe Natalie is one of those rich people reality stars. Which she did so that people could real her. To segue into an acting career. Which would need an agent.

I just think that if Natalie were an actress they would have mentioned it. Like Juliet would have said something about her movies being bombs or something...

From the Media Thread:

If this were any other show, the answer to your question would be fairly straight-forward. But since this is DSM we're talking about, I suspect we'll all be pondering the question of how the various Darlings and Georges are related for quite some time. :-)

According to the legal known relationships that the show has disclosed to us so far, Nick and Karen aren't related. Nick works for Karen's family, and though Tripp said that Nick "is family", that could be taken as him thinking of Nick like family. But, given that Karen's mother and Nick's father had a long term affair, the show has given hints that the Darling children aren't all Tripp's, and folks here have speculated that Nick's father was not Dutch. So, your guess is as good as anyone else's.

I wonder how close Nick has been to the Darlings.

In the pilot, there's a flashback where the Darling kids are in costume (Halloween?), but young Nick is told to stay outside the party. (Ouch.) OTOH, he's been close enough to Karen to make her a mixtape when they were 12 and come along with them to Italy (and propose!) when they were 19. But then again, at least two of the kids (Brian and Karen) knew about Tish's affair with Dutch, probably for some time, while Nick had no idea whatsoever till Karen told him in the present.

Anyone care to guesstimate ages for the kids, esp. Paddy, Karen and Brian. I get early 40s for Patrick, and somewhere 'tween 38-35 for Karen and Brian.
I get the last two esp. confused--who's older? They both have to be v. close to however old Nick is--I don't know, I always got the impression that Nick and Brian were in the same grade, but if Nick proposed with both he and Karen were 19, maybe they're the same age, with Brian a year younger...?

Patrick and Karen were born in Darling Plaza. I get the impression that if Brian was older than Karen he'd have been born there too.

In the pilot episode Tripp and Leticia have their 40th anaversary, so Patrick as the eldest is probaly 39 but possibly 38 or 40. It seems Karen is the second child, but I think Brian is within 2 years of her. My guess is Karen is 37 or 36, and Brian is 36 or 35.

OK - so if Dutch was maybe around 65 when he died (based on Nick's apparent age, Letitia's apparent age, and his appearance in the flashbacks with Leticia), then how is it possible that he turned in Simon Elder's parents as communists during the red scare in the 50s? That just seems totally ridiculous. Maybe if he was 70... but the actor playing him doesn't look 70!

Someone asked upthread about Natalie's career: I believe in the pilot for Dutch's funeral there was a mention from a paparazzi about a performance of hers being bad.

Maybe I'm imagining this?!

pincipo, I am with you on this question:



Maybe I missed the details, but didn't they say Dutch got them deported to the Gulag camps? Google links say all of those were closed by 1960, and were mostly gone by 1954 when the American McCarthy Hearings happened. If Simon's parents died in the camps, they died before he was born, even assuming Simon is 5 years older than Blair Underwood's official IMDB birth year of 1964.

I am notoriously bad at math, though, so feel free to correct my dates and assumptions.

I think you're referencing the Army-McCarthy Hearings. These were congressional hearings held to investigate counter allegations made by the U.S. Army and Joe McCarthy against each other, originating out of the earlier Red scare.

As for the Gulags, I believe they lasted, in some form, beyond the 1960's. Even though Wikipedia isn't the most reliable, I looked up a reference to Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipeligo -- because it was the first thing that popped into my head -- and there's a sentence there that mentions it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

Another page about the Gulags quotes the dates you mention, but also says:



So, we could fanwank that Simon's parents remained "in the system" in one of these so-called colonies. Or, maybe they were even in "internal exile" like Andrei Sakharov.

*********
I have two simpler, though less interesting, questions. What is "Dutch's" actual first name? They must have mentioned it at one point and I missed it.

Also what is Tripp's name? I'm totally blanking and beginning to make things up in my head, like that he must be Patrick Darling III (thus, the "Tripp" nickname) and Baldwin's Patrick must be the Fourth.

Yes, his first name is Patrick as well.

Kinda a minor question, but with all the minor Kennedy comparisons, I had to ask--are the Darlings supposed to be Irish in decent?

Thanks for the info about the gulags. But still - even if there were labor camps or whatever later into the 60s and 70s, it doesn't seem to me that the US would have still been deporting suspected communists at that time. I had the impression that the "naming names" thing was limited to a short time in the late '40s and/or early '50s. I'm still having trouble buying the timeline. Wonder if they'll come back to it in later episodes?

No your not imagining that. She was an actress in a play, but she found out that Tripp was paying for her to have the lead, by sponcering the play, sso he quit. Then moved out of the house. I don't think there has been any mentioned of this again past this little bit at the beginning of the season.

I don't think you are both talking about the same person. Natalie is not Jeremy's twin sister. Natalie dated him and told him she was pregnant. IIRC, she did sing or perform in some capacity as she just released a new song about forgiveness an episode or two ago and is now BFF with Juliet again.

Juliet was performing in a play, but quit when she realized her father bought her the part. Her moving out of the Darling Mansion was short lived as she was kicked out of the hotel because of her dog (and Natalie....)

Maybe. The original name for the family was "Rooney" and the show was going to be called "The Ruins"...

Your right, I am way off on my answer there. The last time we saw Natalie she was debuting a new song of hers on the radio. So I guess that makes her a singer, but I would guess only the way that "stars go blind" makes Paris a singer.

Does ABC let you watch older episodes online? I've only been able to find the last two. I missed "The Italian Banker" and "The Wedding".

I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this question, but I thought I'd try. :)

In theory, they do, but it looks like they're not keeping the old ones up.

For a while they had the most recent 4 episodes available, but lately they cut back to two (though the have more than 2 episodes of other shows up on their site). I have no idea why.

atlanta, no big deal posting it here. It probably belongs in the Ratings & Scheduling thread, but it's fine here. I'm thinking they will probably repeat stuff if the writers strike continues for very long.

Was it ever stated how rich the Darlings are? And if Tripp is the "empire builder", does that mean he doesn't come from wealth the way Tish does, or that he does and built on/increased his family's wealth?

I'm remembering it as two separate things. Dutch got them run out of the US, things went poorly in the USSR and they ended up in a camp. But I don't think the dates quite work out either way...

His name is Devlin. I don't remember now what episode it was mentioned in. Probably in the pilot. Maybe it was the cop investigating the case and using Dutch's legal name.

Just the fact that Tripp is Patrick Darling III suggests to me that he came from a wealthy family originally, although he must've built on it.

I just rewatched the pilot - darn you, hot, evil priest, this was supposed to be a watch 'n' wipe! - which actually turns out not to be a bad thing to do when you've watched a few episodes, it helps fill in gaps, and you catch details that you missed first time around. One thing I noticed is that Ellen and Patrick appear to have two kids in the pilot. Have they just vanished now?

No they had two kids as of the family dinner scene a few eps back. The Bridge maybe? But they weren't at Thanksgiving. Good thing too.

Just tonight, Jeremy, in his newfound honesty with Sofia, says his family is worth $35 billion. But it's not like he's the family accountant so his numbers may be skewed.

Actually I'm fuzzy on the timeframe concerning when Tripp found out about the affair and about Brian.

At first I thought Tripp only found out about the 40 yr affair recently, and that's when he blackmailed the ob-gyn expecting to discover that the twins were Dutch's. Instead he discovers that its Brian.

So I thought all of this was real recent - coinciding pretty much with when Tish told Dutch about Brian - which seemed to be just before Dutch's plane crashed.

But Brian's and Tripp's speeches last night make it seem like Tripp has known most of Brian's life that he's Dutch's.

Help, anyone?

I think Tripp was saying that he spent Brians life looking for some of Tripp in Brian and could never find it. He recently learned why he could not find himself in Brian. I don't think that it meant anything beyond that. Tripp learned that Brian was his when Tish told him a couple of months before hand (I have no idea how much time passes in between episodes so it is hard for me to judge the exact length of time that Tripp knew about Brian).

So is it understood that Tripp's grandfather built the wealth and that Letitia's family was also wealthy due to the money the twins got from their grandparents when they turned 25? Because i thought at one ponit there was a mention of Tripp's father being a coalminer but then he called himself a 'wealth maintainer'.

Also did Dutch work for the Darlings before Nick was born?

Yes Dutch did work for the Darlings before Nick was born. Which I why I don't understand Nick's mom being such a bitch about it. It took, a marriage, a pregnancy and 7 years to realize the Darlings were trouble?

Tripp said him and Dutch went to college together and when Tripp was asked to take over the business he hired Dutch. Unless, of course, Tripp didn't take over the business until after Patrick and Karen were born. Then Dutch would not be working for them before Nick was born.

I guess I just broke my own theory since we don't know when Tripp took over the business.

I don't know. Sometimes when somebody finds out that their husband has been cheating on them, they aren't so willing to be a happy wife. There are some exceptions of course (See: Ellen).

Anyone know why they recast the role of Kiki after the first episode? I noticed that Dakota Fanning's younger sister played the role in the pilot, but an actress who is a lot older replaced her in the second. It did kind of bother me see 'Rapid Soap Opera Aging Syndrome' happen in the second episode of a prime time drama.

I'd heard that Elle Fanning, who played Kiki in the pilot, wasn't available to do the series. And you're right, the new actress who plays Kiki (Chloe Grace something or other) is a few years older than Elle Fanning, at least according to imdb.

Not sure if anyone's still reading this thread...but what's up with the red thread that Tripp has tied around the lapel on every single suit jacket we ever see him wear?! It must be some sort of symbol, but I have no idea what it is. Anyone?

I always figured that little bit of embroidery was just his personal flair... like a monogram, but both subtler (in that it's not his initials) and flashier (since it's bright red).

It could be the French legion d'honneur.

Quick question: Is it Samaire Armstrong doing the voiceovers for the current promos?