EDITOR’S NOTE: Judy Bachrach writes for Vanity Fair, and is the creator of thecheckoutline.org, an online advice column for friends and relatives of the terminally ill. She’s a regular friend of wowOwow, offering her provocative opinions on topics from politics to literature. Now, she gives us her views on television entertainment.

Every time NBC threatens to cancel it dramatic series "Lipstick Jungle," my first reaction (“What took you so long?”) is always dashed by subsequent network pronouncements of a dispiriting nature. On Friday, the most depressing pronouncement yet came from NBC head of entertainment Ben Silverman.

“’Lipstick Jungle’ is so strong and has such a passionate base among a coveted demographic,” he said that the network absolutely cannot bear to vaporize the series. In fact it will almost certainly never recede from view. Like Sarah Palin, maybe, or lengthy documentaries on penguins.

I suppose by “a coveted demographic,” Silverman means ladies over 35 who, in defiance of common sense, believe they can actually identify with the show’s heroines. There are three of these – all created by Candace Bushnell, the show’s executive producer and author of the novel with the same title – and to a woman, they have names that seem to have been inspired by a tribe of lap dancers. Victory Ford. Nico Reilly. Wendy Healy. Dahlia, for a wannabe heroine.

Even the male characters have names from hell. Griffin. Kirby. Unsurprisingly, these are men who look exquisite, wear expensive suits and talk endlessly about romantic relationships, just like guys in real life never do. My favorite guy-line from this series: “You can’t find the words to define us …” By now I’ve lived a long time, and I never heard a man worry about defining anything more intricate than a GoDaddy Superbowl commercial.

I think what Bushnell and NBC were hoping to do with the series was bring the kind of perky characters seen on “Sex and the City,” Bushnell’s earlier work, into middle age and maybe even beyond, without sacrificing fashion tips, sexual ardor or, most especially, product placement. Hell, Victory Ford (played by Lindsay Price in fuchsia skirts and blood-red sweaters) is supposed to be a fashion designer, so the possibilities of giving brand-name plugs in that field alone are endless, even if her talent is not.

The problem lies not in what the three close women friends do for a living, but in how bumbling and pathetic they are on the job. It’s fine for women to be bumbling and pathetic in their love lives, because everybody is. It’s certainly part of what accounted for the triumph of “Sex and the City,” which I truly loved, even though to this day I haven’t forgiven it for making unfortunate footwear the series co-star.

But the whole point of “Lipstick Jungle” is to demote shoes (and even men) and demonstrate how seamlessly the bonds of friendship can co-exist with extraordinary success. And yet the success of the show’s three heroines in the job world is totally incomprehensible. A top New York magazine editor (Kim Raver) who’s dumb enough to sleep with her boss? Who – while she’s still involved in the affair with the boss – discusses her passion for another, much younger man with Kathie Lee Gifford on the "Today Show"?

Nor has the casting been inspirational. Brooke Shields as a movie industry dynamo is bad enough. But who’s going to give a lot of credence to a film dynamo who, on entering a bidding war, arms her lawyer with the advice, “Give him whatever he wants”?

That’s so not this economy.