Sex and the City — Classic or Dud

I've enjoyed SATC when it has matured into a character-driven series and like the fact that Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte have all had generally well-written story arcs that take them beyond the walking stereotypes they started out as - Slutty, Bossy and Prissy - and give them colours and facets that make themselves be human characters.

Charlotte has a rose-tinted view of life and love, and during the series has the perfect fairytale marriage to Trey - on the surface. In actuality, the relationship is utterly sterile and unfulfilling. It's when she meets someone who doesn't fit her criteria of a "perfect partner" (Harry) and abandons her obsession with (surface-level) perfection that she finds true love and happiness.

Miranda grows from being a rather cold, cynical, hard-edged career woman to embracing the idea of blissful domesticity with Steve and being a mum to little Brady. The scenes where she takes care of Steve's senile mother show her as a woman who now allows the side of her personality that genuinely cares for others to come through, having recognised the value of a rich and rewarding emotional/personal life without loosing any of the intelligence and drive that made her a successful lawyer in the first place.

Samantha shifts from being a genuinely amusing "sexual free spirit" to gradually warming to the idea of being in a loving and caring relationship with Smith. Of course, the idea of Samantha becoming monogamous opens a whole can of worms debate wise, since she was often admirable in her essential honesty about her sex drive. But nevertheless, Samantha is given storylines that expand the character, and afford her a degree of personal growth.

And here's the down side:

Carrie sodding Bradshaw. Try as I might, I cannot see anything of value in this shallow cypher of a character. To laugh at the clothes Carrie is wearing in each episode is a valid excuse for watching, but it's a pity to have and put up with what goes with it. The excruciatingly hackneyed scenes of Carrie sitting at her laptop and musing on "this week's issue" are what kept this show unsatisfyingly formulaic. It also doesn't help that Sarah Jessica Parker looks so smug as she delivers her supposedly witty dialogue, which always seems completely measured and deliberate; and totally unlike anything that a genuine human being would say.

And whereas the other women in the show have problems and difficulties but basically get on with life, Carrie is locked into a permananent naval-gazing (see the laptop scenes above) and whingeing "me me me" demeanour. How can you really have any sympathy with an adult woman who spends $40,000 in shoes and then bemoans the fact that she cannot afford to buy her own apartment, going on to basically emotionally blackmail Charlotte into giving up her wedding ring so she can afford a deposit.

Carrie basically comes across as false, immature and nauseatingly self-absorbed. An utter contrivance of a character, that detracts from the good work that the other actresses put in.

SATC's good intentions to provide a space for women's desires on TV, to show that friendship is very important and that getting older than 35 doesn't mean that you should stop having fun and hoping to meet the partner of your dreams, and the performances of Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis = Classic.

Carrie Bradshaw/Sarah Jessica Parker = Dud.

if she is these things, why are they false? you know no one with these qualities? why sympathy is a necessary quality in a character, as you suggest, is beyond me. are we supposed to sympathize with the sopranos? and if we do, the corollary would be that they are better people than Carrie Bradshaw. i think the real problem here is not to an inability to sympathize but a revulsion against such sympathy.

i love this show a lot

oh i so knew you had revived this!

ha!

maybe my favorite character is carrie but that's a tough decision. samantha can really crack me up like no one else. and miranda's just so good.

please delete sex and the city

Karen's post from 6 years ago is so OTM it deserves another airing:

It's lame WITH all that URST and RST. How tedious would it be without it...we'd be comparing it with the absolute death-throes of Murphy Brown or 90210. The fact that this time the plastic yuppies are female and 30-something and rich as a Murdoch fails to make them any more interesting or make me identify with them any better than Dallas or Dynasty, or Home and Away or Neighbours for that matter. Noisy mediocrity is a still a sure fire winner. Just call it 'cutting edge' or 'confrontational' and it's instantly critically bulletproof. The sex angle is just another layer of armor, making it easy to put any criticism in the PC or 'moral police' bin.

Overpublicised, over-rated DUD.

charlotte = way hott

Yeah, I once watched a biopic of John Denver just because she was in it.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy :'(

Back to the roots:

I hate all characters, SJP's character dresses like a Chess King employee, but I keep watching. Is it cause the Sopranos are off till next March? WHat keeps you coming back for more / avoiding show at all costs? And was Aidan's attitude towards SJP this week a perfect snapshot of post-heartbreak ex-boyfriend coldness or what? Do you wax your bikini line? Pube-trimming for guys - dud or just creepy?

1. Me too. I especially hate Sarah Jessica Horseface.
2. I come back for more because I'm gay and sometimes that means being subjected to some seriously awful culture.
3.Pube-trimming for guys is ESSENTIAL. Period. Full Stop. Exclamation point.

It's lame WITH all that URST and RST. How tedious would it be without it...we'd be comparing it with the absolute death-throes of Murphy Brown or 90210. The fact that this time the plastic yuppies are female and 30-something and rich as a Murdoch fails to make them any more interesting or make me identify with them any better than Dallas or Dynasty, or Home and Away or Neighbours for that matter. Noisy mediocrity is a still a sure fire winner. Just call it 'cutting edge' or 'confrontational' and it's instantly critically bulletproof. The sex angle is just another layer of armor, making it easy to put any criticism in the PC or 'moral police' bin.
Overpublicised, over-rated DUD.

the thing is i never looked at the show as something for me to identify with, or to take comfort in or be challenged by. i always knew it was just about humor, sex and image.

it's certainly possible for a show wherein all the characters are rich and unbelievable to be funny - i think it really just boils down to what you find funny, or sexy, or interesting. certain people need to be able to relate to something to find it interesting, i think.

actually tho, i do think SATC has instilled a lot of really positive messages about friendship, and that is definitely something i can relate to. though to a lesser extent than other shows of the four-friends-in-it-together variety, it did speak to the idea of alternative family units. until all of them shacked up in the last season of course!

It's hard for me to put my finger on why I hate this show so much, but I think one reason is that the things that the characters are really unlikeable, and not in the way that J. Ignatius Reilly or the characters Arrested Development are unlikeable--as in other Candice Bushnell stuff, these women are portrayed as living a special kind of life (sexy, racy, rich, New Yorky) and one that the viewer is meant to admire and ooh and ahh over instead of seeing the folly in it. It seems written for Midwesterners who want a peek into another life.

I blame this show for corrupting high school girls everywhere, and portraying their vapid lives as somehow being worth aspiring to. I hung out with three other girls in my first year of college and one of them insisted on assigning us as either one of the four satc identities. I wanted to shoot her.

to be completely fair though, Ben upthread is quite right about how the show can be quite good sometimes. Miranda especially went from being completely unlikeable to perhaps the most human person on the show - her struggle with weight, having a baby, her relationship with Steve and Steve's mom, and balancing all that with her career and ambition all ring completely real and true. And it's sometimes quite funny but gah, I've known too many girls who basically worship this show for all the wrong reasons - essentially using it as an excuse to be completely slutty and shallow.

And it's strangely insular which bugs the hell out of me - apparently, hell is everywhere but New York.

NY-centricity is a fact of life.

I would not say that the show is devoid of a single redeeming feature, but I agree that a lot of girls (and gay men) love it b/c of its celebratory portrayal of these women's lives.

Another thing that bugs me is the pat format of each episode with its excruciatingly overly-clever word play, analogies, and little morals.

If this show were reworked into an American AbFab, THEN we'd be onto something!

OK, so it's another episode of Jesse Gets a Beau:

I asked Dude (who is out of town still, but returns tomorrow) about what was up with the mixed signals and was pretty direct, asking if there was a problem with our sexual connection. He said, "I'm just stressed out b/c of moving, looking for a job."

Since we're going to be seeing each other in a couple of days, and I hate to have A Talk, I left it at that, but that did not answer the question!

i just put the fourth season on, good disc. jesse shouldn't that be on the other thread? should i respond to it here or there?

OH SONOFABITH.

lol for a moment there I was like, did Jesse just compare his LIFE to satc? and then I realized the gay friends thread is right next to this one.

lol Samantha: "well, i'm dating someone - someone i actually like. Maria."

lol the gay friends thread... it's like sesame street for the fags

sorry i think i can say fag since i'm gay, not quite sure what those rules are at this point

lol classic carrie quote: "I wondered, what comes first, the chicken or the sex?"

What do you mean "at this point"?

Are you newly a fag?

lol nothing i just wanted to clarify that i wasn't using the term negatively... no i'm a pretty worn fag by now

RAWFFFFFLZ

I'd like to be a worn out fag. But SOMEONE is too flakey to wear me out.

lol lol, well i'm not THAT worn out...

I blame this show for corrupting high school girls everywhere, and portraying their vapid lives as somehow being worth aspiring to. I hung out with three other girls in my first year of college and one of them insisted on assigning us as either one of the four satc identities. I wanted to shoot her.

So you blame the show for that? That seems a bit rich. You can't blame a show for what a viewer does with it. What if someone watches the show and thinks: Shit, this is a vapid lifestyle, I'm becoming a defender of *whatever good cause*. Suddenly you think the show's okay again? I'm not a terribly big fan of the show. I like it. it's quirky. I certainly don't identify with the characters. It certainly isn't realistic nor would I look for that because IT IS TELEVISION DUH. Also, you gotta love how terrible the clothes turned out to be. They didn't age that well at all.

I'm sure Pish Posh Beckham has watched it religiously, but only for the fashiontips.

haha... some of them aged better than others (the clothes)

xpost um i didn't say it was the sole cause of it - but just the way this program was received in general made it seem like this was something that "all women can relate to" and this was how life was supposed to be for "strong intelligent empowered women". That was the message that I got at least. I was in high school when this came out and trust me, this show was huge among the girls (and some boys, though mostly they watched it for nekkid Samantha). I get it's just a tv show, and people can have any number of opinions on it but it's kind of ridiculous the kind of impact it had in terms of just making girls think that owning a closet full of Manolos is somehow a birthright and not something that 0.02% of the population can afford.

Anyway, i do find Satc entertaining and funny and I did watch it quite regularly at one point, I'm just uncomfortable how it seemed at one point like the ultimate definer of what a successful woman should be like.

um i love when u find out that charlotte and trey eat out each other's asses on a regular basis

"well, trey likes to do it - we're married."

"i'm carrie, you're miranda, you're the woman watching it at home."

is there any way the movie will not totally suck (and bomb)? They're waaaaaaaay too late.

If it's anything like the show....

i think it could only work if done quite differently from the show. cutting the v/o and not having carrie as central character would be the thing to do. i'd start with a funeral and flashback.

i do not like this show. esp b/c it could've been way better - it is somehow either not real enough or not fantastical enough to me - so it is a humdrum frustrating middle ground and it is no the o.c. or battlestar
(have only recently watched the first 6 episodes though. will prob watch more but i think it is just not my thing)