Unfortunately for 27-year-old stage manager Arthur Moreira, employees of one of the show's featured fashion labels noticed that some of their lent pieces had turned up on the auction site, and promptly contacted the authorities.

[He] was arrested Friday in a sting operation that included officers buying stolen goods from Moreira at his apartment, according to a statement from the district attorney's office.

Among 16 items stolen from Brooklyn-based Broadway Ventures, which owns the production and storage facilities used by "Lipstick Jungle," were sequined mosaic clutches, an Oscar de la Renta snakeskin bag and Gucci coats, the office said.

Moreira's lawyers plan to argue the items had been useless props that would have been tossed out had he not salvaged them— but prosecutors point to a highly suspicious eBay posting touting one "Hardly Used: Andrew McCarthy's Career! But It Now for $4300" as hard evidence the stage manager had been pulling long-forgotten items out of Lipstick storage and selling them at grossly inflated prices.

• Stage manager accused of theft from 'Lipstick Jungle' [CNN]

We mean to say that in a ratings battle that was historially waged on Friday night, Dupre's much ballyhooed Diane Sawyer 20/20 interview handily trounced Lipstick Jungle (which aired, on a Friday for some reason, in the same slot as the interview) with a 8.2 million to 3.3 million point spread. So, though series star Brooke Shields might deny it, Jungle is ding-dong diddily dead. And Ashley Dupre is famous(ish) again!

Jungle has plenty of sex, sure, but it's mostly about the clothes (there's a character named Victory who is a fashionz dezinerz!) and the Baudelaire lifestyles the garments imply. Dupre was all about where the sexing will get you—money! in New York! fleeting, squirrely third-hand fame! Both gluttony and lust are strong ass sins, to be sure, but I guess in the end the carnality, unlike the consumerism, is free. Well, not free. But...

Oh, you know what I mean.

Two days after the cancellation stories made the rounds, the show went up 17% in the adult demo from the week before. And the previous week's episode went up 20%.

Those are big gains ... but they're big gains from small numbers. Friday had 3.6 million viewers and 1.4 rating among adults 18-49. Unless Shields is willing to work pro bono, that's still too low for a scripted drama in primetime. The show does better when DVR use is factored, but so does any scripted program suddenly moved to a Friday night.

...Only one more "Lipstick" episode is currently scheduled to air — on the next two Fridays NBC has scheduled other programming. NBC hasn't decided whether to run the remaining four hours. The network would probably love a couple more weeks of data to see if those Friday numbers keep rising, but given the holidays and the 13th episode wrapping this week, the network's final-final "Lipstick" decision, whatever it is, might have to be a leap of faith.

Sadly, by that time, a timid Ben Silverman will have scapegoated every single employee at NBC, leaving him the only one left to break the bad news to Brooke personally. "Brookie... ding ding ding! Beijing Ben here. Sorry babe, bad news: we're replacing Lipstick with a brand-new, rejiggered Manimal. But at least it'll give you some free time to work on that upcoming Estelle Getty project! Oh, sorry — too soon?"

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Brooke Shields says 'Lipstick' not canceled [THR]

We're so popular with DVR. We have such a following. The problem is people aren't watching it live and that affects advertisers and that means money. So, basically, they're just trying to figure out a way to reconcile our huge fanbase with advertisers and making sense for them financially.

Huge fanbase? Really?

Brooke urges you send lipstick to NBC prez Jeff Zucker! You should! Because it would probably annoy him and it's the least he deserves for scooping out some graying pink muck from Candace Bushnell's Birkin brainbag and slopping it on our plates and telling us to eat up, dammit.

Booke Shields Says Lipstick Jungle Isn't Dead Yet [New York Observer]

NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman isn't going to get all the blame for the network's lackluster fall schedule.

With yesterday's cancellation of two NBC shows produced by sister company Universal - "Lipstick Jungle," which starred Brooke Shields, and "My Own Worst Enemy," which featured Christian Slater -culpability falls on Universal Media Studio President Katherine Pope, who oversaw both doomed series.

"They call her the black widow. Every program she touches turns to death," growled our source. "She is on very thin ice." Pope also produced flash-in-the-pan series "Bionic Woman."

Of course, none of NBC's other new shows - "Knight Rider," "Kath & Kim" and "Crusoe" - has become a hit, either. But Silverman, 37, has been able to cut costs at the network and seems to be satisfying his bosses, particularly NBC chairman Jeff Zucker.

If this "it's her fault, not Ben's fault" maneuver seems familiar, it's because people were blaming his EVP Teri Weinberg for NBC's problems a mere two months ago. How can Silverman be responsible for hiring people who are bad at their jobs, or be expected to actually watch and oversee the shows the network creates? He's busy throwin' back brewskis with Seacrest, people! Quit harshin' his buzz!

• 'BLACK WIDOW' EFFECT AT NBC [Page Six]

The cancellation comes after both shows dropped to new lows in the ratings in recent weeks, with the Christian Slater action series sinking to a 1.8 among adults 18-49 (4.3 million viewers) on Monday night and "Lipstick" falling to a 1.2 (3.3 million viewers) on Friday.

Some of the blame for Enemy is being directed at Heroes, a lead-in that's been quickly losing viewership as it gradually dawns on fans that it always sucked. One online source is reporting that both series will finish their runs, with Enemy's last episode airing December 15, the same date as the Heroes "fall finale." Lipstick, meanwhile, will run to January, when it will be replaced by new episodes of Friday Night Lights—the cult football favorite breaking itself free from the DirecTV tyranny that has hoarded new episodes until now.

• NBC cancels 'Enemy' and 'Lipstick' [THR]

Last month the show made mention of something called The Hummingbird sex position. People were so curious about what this wife-pleasing technique could possibly be that they made it the top Google Trends search of the day. The crusty old ladies at wowOwow even got in the game! (Though it's still kind of unclear what, if anything, it actually is. I'm assuming it means really fast sex against a window.) Oh and it bears mentioning that Lipstick Jungle did invent the Cougarnaut Position, which can only be done with a two year old pair of Manolo Blahniks and a bitter sense of life having pretty much passed you by.

So yeah, two once buzzy shows now lost to the ages. We expect more beloved but pretty much as little-watched shows like ABC's Pushing Daisies to follow fairly soon. Pie Maker Position or not. (Blackbirds required.)

If you go back to the great big whopping granddaddy of recessions, the Great Depression, you can clearly see that the misery of the people was offset or in some way mitigated by an influx of popular musicals and screwball comedies and swoony romances. Movies like Anything Goes and Love Affair were giddy, romantic delights, while The Wizard of Oz and You Can't Take It With You presented the penury of the times through something of an aw-shucks, zanily hardscrabble lens. Escapism at its finest. You turn then to the films of the supposedly-idyllic 1950's and there you have Rebel Without a Cause and A Streetcar Named Desire and the myriad alarmist science fiction movies plaguing the cinema. The American mind was free to look under the rock and see what bugs were underneath.

Fast forward a few decades to the early 1980's, that time when the country was still reeling from its urban centers being evacuated in the 1970's, leaving little but a grim, impoverished anger lurking their streets. And on television? Shows like Dallas and Dynasty. Even 1970's shows that depicted a blue collar lifestyle, like All in the Family or Sanford and Sons did so with a strangely warm slant. Of course artier fare was always there to reflect things as they were, but it does seem that in unpleasant times, people turn to mainstream entertainment that is silly and frivolous.

And so it is with these television shows now. The American taste seems to be increasingly obsessed with wealth and privilege, as such a lifestyle becomes more and more foreign to more and more people. But a couple of these new shows could be seen as correctives, in my mind. Gossip Girl, for example, shows the blind excess and awesomeness of wealth, yes, but there are also "poor" characters like Dan and Jenny who do look on that world with a healthy (for a teen soap opera) amount of skepticism. 90210 has always quietly mocked its characters' silly wealth, and hopefully this new iteration will do the same. And, look at a show like Exiled, in which the hideous brats from MTV's hit My Super Sweet 16 are sent to far flung, not-so-wealthy places and taught "valuable lessons." Yes the show isn't perfect, but it is giving the rich a rap on the knuckles. And also consider FX's The Riches, in which a family of Gypsy Travelers pretends to be rich and subverts the culture from the inside out.

So yeah, maybe we're turning our recession-era obsession with the wealthy into a social corrective! Look at how dim and vapid these people are! We don't want to be like them. Wouldn't that be pleasant wishful thinking! Really, people have always been obsessed with wealth and status, back to the days of the Greeks. Everyone's always been miserable! And when all of the practical stakes—shelter, food, etc.—are low, then the frothy dramatic ones can be raised.

Right, The Wire? Right?

According to the News, the ladies of Darren Star's Cashmere Mafia on ABC are not going to be blessing us with their rapid, frantic chats, supposedly enviable lives, and tired slurping of Cosmos for much longer:

A source...tells me the suits aren't confident the show will stick around. 'He just said about the show, 'Yisgadal v'yitkadash', the Jewish prayer for the dead,' laughs the ear-witness."

But perhaps the reason behind Cashmere's reported demise has more to do with casting? While Lipstick marked the return of sorely missed stars Brooke Shields and on-set dreamboat diarist Andrew McCarthy, Cashmere relied on the always dependable character actress Lucy Liu to hold down the court as his glossy heroine. And the man candy (handsome but dull Peter Hermann and bright young thing but dull Julian Ovenden) didn't stand a chance in comparison. But in the end, all the suits care about are ratings: with the News reporting the latest numbers as Lipstick's 6.4million viewers to Cashmere's 5.7 million, the rumored shutdown may be a simple case of disappointing numbers.

• 'CASHMERE MAFIA' MIGHT BE TAKEN FOR A RIDE [Gatecrasher]

There are men, too, most notably Andrew McCarthy as a suitor for Victory, who states with a cocked head and a wry smirk "They say all men are asses and all women are crazy." Oh. Oh okay. The whole thing is even more dreadful than you'd think and exactly as awful as ABC's doppelgänger series Cashmere Mafia. Really, the only two likable bits are the sort-of sexy wooing of Nico by a younger man and the reasonably pleasant Brooke Shields. Can these women "have it all"? I suppose you'll need to tune in to find out, though I don't recommend it. If you are strangely compelled to watch, I suggest you get blindingly drunk on something beforehand (not cosmos). It's really the only way I could stomach another round of watching these dopey neurotics teeter off, in heels too high, into oblivion. Here's a clip of the ladies shopping and gabbing and learning. Welcome to the Jungle. You're gonna diiiiieee.

McCarthy reminds us of a seasoned romance novelist in that he has a knack for describing mundane shooting situations (crossing the street on a cell phone!) with outright glee. After wrapping a make-out scene outside an Upper East Side townhouse at night with "the pavement glistening with the fresh sparkle of a wet-down," McCarthy says he's officially added the corner of 79th and 5th to his "list of private landmarks." While we doubt one of the busiest corners of New York is "private" enough, we'd gladly meet McCarthy there to re-shoot this scene once LJ comes to its swift (but romantic!) death.

• LIPSTICK JUNGLE: SHOOTING ON THE STREETS OF LIPSTICK JUNGLE [Slate]

TedSez's new line beats out the original, Brooke Shields Goes Home

1. Lucy Liu is Mia in Cashmere Mafia.

2. Lea Duffy played a cartoonist in Caroline in the City.

3. In a darker role, Courtney Cox plays the editor of a celebrity tabloid, in FX's Dirt.

4. Just Shoot Me: Laura San Giacomo was a journalist at her father's glamor magazine.

5. Ugly Betty features a naive Hispanic secretary trying to make her way at — of course — a fashion magazine.

6. And as a journalist at a San Francisco Magazine, a familiar face: Brooke Shields. The actress must be tired of playing the same role. Next time round, in a decade or so, maybe the networks will give make her a web producer.

They were requesting the possible use of the building—perhaps the tackiest-looking place in Greenpoint—for an exterior shot for NBC's version of Bushnell's book, "Lipstick Jungle."

"The series depicts three successful, dynamic executives as they balance the myriad aspects of the professional and personal sides of their lives," the missive explains helpfully.

The building is not well-known for its successful and dynamic executives.

What was it that attracted them so—the many eagles adorning the building, or the eerie white horse heads lining the gate? Either way, NBC promised, "if selected, you will be compensated"! Well, it's almost the end of the month. Film all you want for, say, $675?