Sex and The City - It’s just one of those shows.

I caught this in chunks when it was airing, it was enough to cite it in media class essays. I didn’t watch it religiously but I saw enough to know about Carrie and how it all ended before those insufferable movies came out. I liked how all the relationships were tied up neatly, it seemed like a really nice way to end everything. I’ve gotten sucked into recaps and deep dives on the new and old series, and it put a few characters in a new light, I didn’t see enough of Steve to realise how toxic and childish he is. Big is still the worst, Carrie doesn’t deserve the treatment but she kinda does, I guess. I hated she cheated on Aidan. (I wish I could watch Northern Exposure because I adored Corbertt’s character, he was better than the lead and had a great energy that offset the lead’s cynicism). So I was pro-Aidan only to realise he was pretty needy and judgemental and fell victim to the need to make the non-endgame love interest look bad enough you root for the other guy/girl to get the main character back. Carrie is an awful human being, but she was human enough to relate to. I grew up thinking I was alone in my concern about having bodily functional issues around an intimate partner would be met with disdain, so I had to cover all that up, I didn’t know it was a common concern for women that you don’t be a human being in a man’s space. Women are shamed for being human, usually by other women, most men don’t care. But feeling comfortable on that level was so important and I felt seen by the show, it gave me a degree of respect for its content and what it was achieving in terms of discourse. It was also as guilty of missing the point and being horribly prejudice against certain demographics much like Queer as Folk did, and it would’ve been as ageist too.

But it’s also horribly dated now, I know what a diaphragm is, and I also used to be concerned about that stuff before I had sex. I wasn’t sure what to expect from it, I at least met someone who was reasonably mature, I did decide to avoid inexperienced guys in that regard to spare myself any embarrassment. I’m glad I didn’t date many guys or had experiences that would result in STDs. Pregnancy scares, however, are par the course, shit happens and I wasn’t a fan of the pill. I’m still not.

Sadly, I think the show got permanently stuck in a time-warp. The characters are in their early 30s, but the actors are closer to 40, so I’m finding a lot of boomer/gen x- cuspers (like me being a millennial-gen-X cusper) tend to have boomer mentalities and can’t seem to progress into the 21st century. I thought this was a strictly 2000s show but it began in 1998, so it was a postish Melrose Place show (including Darren Star), it leaned on relatability over soapy drama, but it was also supposed to be comedic. Dragging it into this era is an obvious mistake, it’s being slammed for how out of touch it is, the lack of diversity has to be overcompensated for, so they created a detestable non binary character then blamed the hatred from the audience on homophobia. The original show was transphobic, biphobic and racist, it was the victim of the late 90s, but to drag it into this era and act like the characters never evolved with its audience is absurd. There’s also a fierce sense of technophobia and neo-luddite behaviour that people in their 50s shouldn’t be exhibiting. I also don’t believe an entire podcast would be shut down from one person refusing to do one ad read. Was it imperative Carrie do it? Give it to someone else. You should only lose the sponsorship, not the entire show. I didn’t like the movies existed, that they’ve dragged Aidan through the whole thing once Big’s dead, that Samantha’s just a parody of herself by the second movie. Kim Cattrall’s unfair treatment considering she’s the best part of the show and arguably the best actress of the four is so over the top for how much of a fan favourite she is. I don’t hate Sarah Jessica Parker, but I dislike her and her attitude to the entire thing. I felt bad for Kristin Davis trying to promote her humanitarian efforts on a morning show and getting goaded into discussing the show and be involved in being a dumb skit, so her coming back seemed weird, she’s not the greatest, she was kinda fun in Melrose. Cynthia Nixon’s also a good actress, I thought she’d have shied from more of this considering she turns into an insufferable simp for the non-binary character. She’s supposed to be the most mature and the voice of reason, she devolves into a lovesick teenager and I refuse to believe this totally mirrored Nixon’s own late-stage homosexual awakening.

There were too many cringe moments for me to ever want to watch this in full, I can watch these recaps coming from younger audiences who can call out the problematic shit with no qualms about the obscene backlash people in my generation give for them being that offended, I am so defending their stance and I support their reactions, they’ve not been cursed with our weird sense of stupid propriety over being “polite” and “unaffected” by offensive statements. So when you have 50/60 somethings trying to appeal to the 20/30 something crowd now, it misses all the marks. Stuff that’s a clear violation of bodily agency, or clear sexual harassment, gets treated with slapstick humour rather than alarm. Again, I’ve noticed older women who had to put up with that shit when they were navigating the corporate world in the 70s and 80s expected us to put up with that same bullshit from men when it was an obvious HR violation. I hate being stuck where I am generationally because I don’t have the younger generation’s conviction calling that shit out.