Salient

Big City Life

By Miyuki Mcguffie | 5 May, 2008

What has happened to me? As I sit on the sofa eating chocolates my boyfriend is on a bus back to Napier. It’s raining outside and I’ve got Sex and the City going on the DVD player. When did my life become such a cliche? It’s enough to make me cry. Wouldn’t that top it all off. I’d have to top myself off. When did this column become a diary?

To be honest, about 20 minutes ago when I put my dinner in the oven and the first episode on. Sex and the City confounds me. It has one of the most contrived scripts on television but I never noticed that until watching the series a couple years after following the show through to the finale. Now I must have been 12 or 13 when I discovered the show and was 17 when it finished. At any stage between those ages I would have called it one of my favourites. Was the show always so strained? How could such a ridiculous show get such a following?

I liked Sex and the City during my teens. But I don’t think high school students were their target audience. So what does that say about the 20-40 year olds who did love it and continue to love it? Does the average 20-40 year old woman identify with these stereotypical, one-dimensional characters and their bromide dating situations? Does the average 20-40 year old woman aspire to be or live lives like these characters? My wordcount’s not high enough to go into this in the depth I’d like to but there’s one niggling hole in the show’s premise that I think most fans could relate to.

Carrie Bradshaw is a writer. And unless she is a trust fund baby or a player on the stock market, we are led to believe that writing is her primary source of income. Despite this, you’ll never see her on a PC (or a Mac). This is a character who is meant to have written a book by the end of the fifth series. Did she do this on her laptop? I’d like to see the professional writer who doesn’t own a proper computer. Maybe I’m a traditionalist. I’m certainly not a pro so what would I know?

One more thing. Carrie’s hair just grew about 30 cm within an episode with no mention of extensions. Being such a fashion orientated show you’d think someone would have said something. Or used it as an excuse for a product placement. Fuck knows they milked it with TiVo. I wish we had TiVo. I like tv. I really think I’d like TiVo.* *this is not a product placement for TiVo. TiVo does not pay me. Noone pays me. Keep it real y’all.