Sex and the City — Classic or Dud

My idiot brother charmingly informed me on my last birthday that I could tell if I was getting old and past it as I would stop laughing at SatC and start empathising. Thanks bro.

La Vreeland (a woman who shared many traits with my fashionista grandmother, the least of which would be sleek hair in chignon) would not have been so impressed by the mall rat's locks, and would be with me in thinking SJP had nicer hair in Square Pegs.

She's not even as cool as Kay Thompson (author of the Eloise books) who played the Think Pink! fash editor in Funny Face.

Also, if you take a look at the girls having cigarette breaks in front of Vogue House, they all look like Charlotte. Especially in the hair department. SJP in Carrie Bradshaw mode looks like she works for Marie bloody Claire.

Sorry about this, I joined the Fashion Police at a very early age and with my punkywave friends in Mpls, used to actually issue citations to feather-cut Minnewegians in those ghastly Forenza sweaters from The Limited. We made the doormen at Taboo in London (who would hold up a mirror to the style-unconscious, then ask 'if you were me, would you let this come in?') look like Salvation Army workers. V. naughty I know...

Sex And The City is shit, I've never been able to watch it because Sarah Jessica Parkers face is so pointy I fear she may break the TV Screen. How does that Ferris Bueller put up with her at home?

I think my FP activities were a direct result of having my clothes dissed at school, by badly dressed folk of the type I described above (stonewash...don't get me started). We actually had girls who would go around saying things like 'HER Calvin Kleins/Gloria Vanderbilts/ Sassoons are forgeries' but I think I've explained about Junior High elsewhere so I'll stop!

The other great thing about the show is that they really aren't particularly gorgeous women (or even remotely attractive, in the case of SJP, who looks like a haggard Bette Midler, as if Bette Midler was a great comparison point to begin with). I mean, they look like people I'd know. Kim Catrall is pretty but a bit beaten up looking these days, Cynthia Davis is a touch gawky, Kristen Davis is pretty but has a pretty "real" figure, definite hips and thighs. I find that great, it makes the show very easy to identify with, I think. At least for me, but I'm a boozy NYC slutty girl, so I guess I would.

And yes, Carrie dresses like a total crackhead. SJP, no matter her face, has a great body and I don't see why they dress her up in tutus and awful clashing patterns. She's like an expensive homeless person.

Sex and the City is fun in small doses, but I find SJP/Carrie so obnoxious/annoying it puts me off becoming a real fan. The worst part is you know she thinks she looks adorable when she's wearing kitschy little capes or necklaces with her name on it, when in fact she looks like a major twit. Chess King was a spot-on call, Tracer.

But the point is moot because I no longer have hbo anyway.

Everyone I know that's gay seems to have taken the who are you in SITC test online.

For the record, I am apparently Samantha:

Well, well, well… it’s no mystery what subject matter occupies the majority of your thoughts. You are certainly one sensual lady, who knows exactly what she wants from that other gender and isn’t about to waste her time diddling with the accompanying bullshit. Your power exudes beyond the bedroom as well. Whether it be at work or with your friends, beating around the bush is a foreign concept, it’s nothing but direct, frankness with you. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the odd, manipulative mind game… Nevertheless, you are the poster girl for a new kind of feminism, where a plunging neckline and colourful personal life are by every means compatible with an influential, professional position.

Hell, you can call me Senor Wiencis for all that means. (My hair is a lovely shade of red, though.)

However I was put off during the test due to the bizarre description of London as a holiday destination and therefore my result was skewed. Cucumber sandwiches? Eh? Eton? That's not London, it's somewhere in Berkshire goddamnit. These interweb quiz folk should pull their collective fingers out.

FYI - if you watch Absolutely Fabulous, it becomes clear that Carrie will turn into Edina and Samantha will turn into Patsy.

this is the new prism through which i shall view all life.

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.

i know :/
i am caught up
i can't control it

these paris episodes are ridiculous i gotta say

I'm surprised, Robyn -- I remember liking the first season or so when it was on, when it was still trying to be sharp and clever and HBO-y. It was the gradual descent into soap-com ridiculousness after that that made it really laughable.

We should compare this to the Girlfriends thread -- the first bit of that show is so wildly aping Sex+City that it's kind of uncomfortable. You spend the whole time imagining a pitch meeting where people are like "Black Sex and the City!" "Black Sex and the City?" "Sex and the City -- black!" "City black Sex and!"

at certain times i have a soft spot for soap-com ridiculousness, believe it

i liked the sharp & clever of the first couple of seasons but i don't know, maybe it wasn't my kinda sharp & clever, also somewhat alienating to me. or maybe that was b/c it was so very late-90s. i can see why i had no interest in it in the first place but also why it makes sense that i got into it now. anyway, it's all watched now! i can see how regular viewers would get choked up at the finale - i mean, most people watched this over many years; i watched it over a couple of months, and partly as distraction/procrastination. it worked! and now it is over

I like some soap-com ridiculousness, too -- I was gonna say that I prefer it to be more camp or knowing than this show tended to be, but then I realized that (a) this would have really blown if it had ever attempted camp or knowingness, plus (b) Bring It On is still on my favorite-movies list. (I prefer it like that, but I don't know what that is: "seeming like it's going to be knowingly campy but then it's actually scarily earnest and thus unintentionally campy?" Sex+City might actually age into that category, it'll be poignant and hilarious to the teenagers of the 2040s.)

I love Bring It On so much.

whatevs dudes, seasons 1 and 2 are good but seasons 3 and 4 are fucking amazing when it comes to entertainment value (plus carrie's fucking hair). not to mention season 5.

season 6 rocks but baryshnikov's character is a schmuck, charlotte's baby storyline and samantha's cancer storyline are pure schmaltz and the paris episodes are way too fucking cute.

but the thick of the 6th has Harry marrying Charlotte and Berger breaking up with Carrie, which is priceless ("this will no longer be known as the day i got broken up with on a post-it -- it will now be known as the day i got arrested for smokin a doobie!")

fuck

Yeah, except I saw that episode recently and I couldn't help thinking that if my friend kept shiting on about being broken up with on a post-it in that annoying way, I would just go home.

The thing, even though I don't love every tiny thing about it, I still really like the show.

Harry is my favourite, though.

so great

Especially his pride in walking about the apartment naked.

hahaha yes so funny

on that beautiful couch

Just the thought of the way she says "doobie" is grossing me out.

i think season 6 was when miranda finally got a normal, or at least not hideous, hairstyle.

steve seems like a bro

total classic

we really haven't had enough SJP here yet

can you imagine what the opening night of that movie in Chelsea will be like? The Rocky Horror Asshole Show.

i still love this show. carrie is still one of my favorite characters ever. but i really hope she's less whiny/codependent in the movie than she was toward the end of the show.

i know, i love her too. i'm excited! hoping my friend can sneak me into some opening night premiere bla bla bla cuz of her job. but it probs won't happen.

sometimes this show makes me incredibly angry because it is so unrealistic but then there will be little things that happen that are so spot-on re: being single in nyc. blahhh.

As if anyone anywhere has enough money to open a bar in Soho or wherever.

SJP is a horseface.

challops

calstars man you could take this topical humor on the road, maybe talk about how moses' beard is getting a little shaggy

you should take being butthurt on the road

was watching sex and the city the other night

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7099/7137020989_3321a10831_o.gif

Emily Nussbaum on the fashionable running-down of the show:

Although the show’s first season is its slightest, it swiftly establishes a bold mixture of moods—fizzy and sour, blunt and arch—and shifts between satirical and sincere modes of storytelling. (It’s not even especially dated: though the show has gained a reputation for over-the-top absurdity, I can tell you that these night clubs and fashion shows do exist—maybe even more so now that Manhattan has become a gated island for the wealthy.)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2013/07/29/130729crte_television_nussbaum

speechless

pretty much OTM this piece, i came here to post it! i like this;

The show’s basic value system aligns with Carrie: romantic, second-wave, libertine. But “Sex and the City” ’s real strength was its willingness not to stack the deck: it let every side make a case, so that complexity carried the day. When Carrie and Aidan break up, they are both right. When Miranda and Carrie argue about her move to Paris, they are both right. The show’s style could be brittle, but its substance was flexible, in a way that made the series feel peculiarly broad-ranging, covering so much ground, so fleetly, that it became easy to take it for granted.

surm, what left ya speechless?

Yeah good piece. She has a point about the genuine character growth

What I wouldnt give to hear richard nixon expounding on this show

"And these women... they just fuck like a buncha streetwalkers..."

rewatching this in dribs and drabs as I do every few years and God, season 4 is really the worst as a whole. Though there are some moments I really like (Carrie and Big dancing to Moon River until the record starts skipping, Trey doing the photo shoot with Charlotte, the Lucy Liu cameo!) but Carrie is INSUFFERABLE this season. There’s some great fashion but so, so, so much cringe. What the fuck was Samantha at giving Richard that hideous heart print? Has Carrie ever been more loathsome than when she’s browbeating Charlotte to lend her money for her deposit? Also, am I supposed to believe Carrie would start working at Vogue and not knock a column about accessories out of the park? She spent a deposit’s worth of cash on shoes alone!

oh no

HBO Max has officially revived #SexAndTheCity https://t.co/st3CaB9MQf pic.twitter.com/IfjgbSkRTI

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 10, 2021

Fellow original star Kim Cattrall (Samantha) is not involved in the HBO Max incarnation. The actress has openly feuded with Parker and, more in October 2017, was vocal about seeing her part being recast in a bid to improve the original comedy's inclusivity.

For his part, creator Star told The Hollywood Reporter in October that he had no interest in returning to the series today. "I May Destroy You is the Sex and the City for now," he said as part of a Creative Space interview pegged to his Netflix comedy Emily in Paris. "Girls was the Sex and the City for its moment. I wouldn't be doing Sex and the City today. Twenty years ago, I knew those people that I was writing about. I understood the time and I understood the characters and also what needed to be said."

Continuing my commitment to being the only person posting itt,

I find it fascinating that Sex and the City - a show about a bunch of white women making jokes and shagging - is considered embarrassingly retro and borderline offensive, but The Sopranos - a show about a bunch of white men killing each other -is considered an untouchable classic

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) January 12, 2021

One reason why Sopranos is an untouchable classic compared to SATC us that it's not coming back

there is no take so shitty it cannot be topped by a shittier one

i think my hell would be having to watch people like this discuss art pic.twitter.com/flUwzdyHYK

— Shaun (@shaun_vids) January 12, 2021

which SATC character blacked up ?

One reason why Sopranos is an untouchable classic compared to SATC us that it's not coming back

The Many Saints of Newark is an upcoming American crime drama film directed by Alan Taylor and written by David Chase and Lawrence Konner as a prequel to Chase's HBO crime drama series The Sopranos.

Baddiel's two fave bands is Morrissey and Al Jolson

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