This hasn't been a great season for new sitcoms—Everybody Hates Chris is virtually the only one in which the execution cleanly fits the concept—but Hot Properties has a loose, engaging silliness. When a show's second episode is about a pet chicken that chokes to death after mistaking a bath-oil bead for a kernel of feed—well, you take heart, that's all. Properties is set up along the lines of Sex and the City, a giddy fashionista party about sexy Manhattan real estate agents, but the tone is closer to that camp hoot Designing Women. In the ensemble, the standout is Nicole Sullivan as sex-hungry middle-aged Chloe. She's the sort of sitcom character who wraps up a scene by chiming in with a put-down, but Sullivan has a weird little shiveriness that gives her lines a soft zing.
COMEDY
