Lipstick Jungle: Chapter Six: Take The High Road (Episode 6)

Just when I start liking this show, it turns out the season's practically over. Damn strike! I mean, I love you, WGA members! Glad to have you back!

Anyway.

Wendy gets the scoop on a "Harry Potter" prequel from another mom at Taylor's school who was blabbing about it on her cell. Wendy spills about it to Nico over coffee at Victory's, which is buzzing with new staff and supplies ever since her mysterious investor came in to safe her business. Nico, in turn, spills to the girls about her glowing complexion -- the Hollywood cookie diet! The girls totally buy it.

Later that day Nico, in a fit of desperation about the paltry numbers for the new Bonfire web site, tells Hector about Wendy's find (with credit given to Wendy of course). Hector orders them to do whatever they can to get a movie deal and excerpts for the mag. "Whatever they can" being the corporate jet to Edinburgh, fancy hotels -- dammit, I knew I should have gone into producing.

When Wendy balks, pleading family obligations (which are growing now that Shane's picking up more work as a composer), Nico charges ahead on her own. But not alone -- she invites Kirby to Scotland for a lover's getaway (when she's not dealing with the Warner Brothers lawyers, of course). Naturally, Wendy ends up tagging along after all, which makes for an awkward Nico and a confused Wendy on the six-hour flight.

Wendy gets the clarification she needs when she and Nico and Kirby meet in the lobby. To her credit, Wendy is nice to Kirby until she figures out who he is, and then scampers off to call home. Kirby is all grace and charm, and takes the first flight back to New York. Wendy can't shake the fact that Nico's been lying to her (and to Victory, too!) about her affair, culminating in a showdown where she insinuates that Nico could never be a mother with morals like hers. And did I mention that this is after they find out the meeting's been cancelled for reasons yet to be revealed? Worst. Trip. Ever. They both make it back home in one piece, but their bond of friendship may be broken.

Victory, meanwhile, is short on space ever since the business got back up and running. In her house. Diego the investor, though mysterious, is generous. Happy to approve a two year lease, land for a sheep farm, rare Chinese birds for their feathers. The last two were two requests just to test him, just to see if Diego would blink and tell her to stop. He does not. To add more fuel to the mental fire, Joe invites Victory to move in with him. Though she's a bit surprised, the sight of almost an entire floor of his mansion redesigned into a hot apartment with her, including a closet full clothes and shoes, is too much for her to resist. Who cares if she has her own bedroom? Some sexy making out takes care of that, as well as a lovely dance in Joe's new ballroom.

Too good to be true? Definitely. Victory figures out the deal with her investor at an auction where Joe outbids a former romantic rival on a Van Gogh painting -- it's the rival, Allan Farrow. Her logic is that if Allan was all about getting whatever Joe wanted, then he must have bought the company. When she presses the issue, Joe finally cracks and admits (just like we all knew) that it was he who bought the company. Victory is devastated -- she doesn't want to be dating her boss, a possession like his new $50 million dollar painting. Joe insists, though, that while he didn't want to lie, he did what he does best -- he bought a small struggling company to make it thrive. He protected her from other investors who might have taken advantage of her. He invested in her talent. But she can't be bought by him. So when Joe refuses to sell her company immediately on the grounds that it is not yet profitable, Victory tells him that it's over.

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