Sex and the City — Classic or Dud

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.

Great. I've been told I look like both.

All HBO original shows are vastly overated.

I love it

Making Samantha monogamous, inexcusable.

Square Pegs and Ed Wood are still SJP's finest hours.

Samantha resembles many big-city male homos, at least in New York.

Oh, and Big lives across the street from me. He has a mustache now, and apparently likes to complain about noise to his doormen quite a lot.

agreed. there was one scene towards the end where carrie and charlotte were sitting in a park, sharing a black & white cookie (something that's specific to NYC/NJ and NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH). and they didn't even make the cookie a seinfeldian conversation piece or anything, they just sat there and ate it while they talked about other stuff. it was a directorial masterstroke, i thought.

Yeah, but let's look at some of those, shall we?

"Friends" was shot on a fucking stage set (and it looks it!), and the main characters lived in a palatial apartment in a prime neighborhood they'd never in a quadrillion years be able to afford given their alleged careers.

"Seinfeld" was shot entirely on a set. The inside of the actual Tom's Diner looks absolutely nothing like the one depicted on the show in question.

What makes "Sex in the City" different is that it is a fairly accurate portrayal of life in the city. Granted, the bars and clubs they frequent don't always exist, but the geographic details are on the money, as are the location shots. For that, I give them credit.

OH WAIT, MORE PEOPLE LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY THAN IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF NEBRASKA

xpost; oh yeah, I forgot that "more heavily populated" always equals "more interesting."

Unrelated: Where was "Caroline in the City" set? Was it the same "City"?

OH WAIT, MORE PEOPLE LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY AND BUY ADVERTISERS' PRODUCTS THAN IN THE ENTIRE STATES OF KANSAS, NEBRASKA, SOUTH DAKOTA, NORTH DAKOTA, MONTANA, AND WYOMING COMBINED

No, but you did make a sweeping generalization that every show since the dawn of television has been set in NYC. I just cited the ones off the top of my head that weren't. So ha!

Let's talk about this: how would SITC be different if set in another city, or in a town or village or burb or whatever? In what ways does "the City" become part of the show?

xpost: Alex, please be assured I'm not really being serious, I'm just wasting time at work by misdirecting my dislike for this show into regional pissyness. I just assumed everyone realized that.

Well, I think the size and scope of "the City" in question has a lot to do with it. If the series were set in Pataskala, Ohio, they'd probably run out of options rather quickly. Whereas, if you put it in, say, Berlin or Hong Kong (or some other teeming metropolis), you have a bit more chance of some genuinely credible and interesting plot developments. And before you ask, yes, I've been to Pataskala, Ohio.

xpost: Alex, please be assured I'm not really being serious, I'm just wasting time at work by misdirecting my dislike for this show into regional pissyness. I just assumed everyone realized that.

I'm kidding too, n/a. That came out sounding more patronizing and imperious than I meant it to. But, y'know, I'm a boring, ugly and (arguably) skinny New Yorker, so what do you expect?

yeah, it's called "Gilmore Girls".

Oh jfc, every time the series had black characters in it it was so bad

BG - that's not the same as coming back ;-)

New title for memoir: Men Explain Sex and the City to Me

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) January 12, 2021

Gulag middle-class women already

sexist. why not middle class men as well?

Glad to know only men have reductive takes on the show. Emily Nussbaum actually wrote a good piece about the show’s retrospective standing back in 2013, which answers the question of the inane original tweet and then some.

Nah just the women. Mao Zedong does not give a shit about SATC, it's in the red book xp

The most famous such conversation took place four episodes in, after Charlotte’s boyfriend asked her to have anal sex. The friends pile into a cab for a raucous debate about whether her choice is about power-exchange (Miranda) or about finding a fun new hole (Samantha). “I’m not a hole!” Charlotte protests, and they hit a pothole. “What was that?” Charlotte asks. “A preview,” Miranda and Samantha say in unison, and burst out laughing.

SATC is Entourage for women

Left...otm

I watched the first episode of Sex and the City thinking it would be about sort of erotic psychogeography

— Rob Palk (@robpalkwriter) January 12, 2021