Wednesday: May 10, Chapter 9: Sex and the City

SEX AND THE CITY
Marlie and I had some wonderful wasted time last night watching Sex and the City. We don’t get television, but through the DVD thing and a daughter who likes to bring her Pa up to speed, we finished watching the last season. What a trip.

Four pretty women, each taking their turn thrashing around in bed with someone, and spending most of their time talking at restaurants over the How Can I GET problem. They all supposedly work, but that is never shown, because the real work is the quest to GET.

The blond slut, wants to get: yes, laid. Okay, that sets us up for lots of fun, except that something interesting happens with her over the season.

The only one allowed dark hair falls in love with a Jewish man, and after the obligatory thrashing around, she must be in love, and to marry him ( after thrashing/love what can possibly be next but getting the guy legally?), she must convert to Judaism. So that keeps her busy, until they marry, and then her next GET project is the get a child thing, and she has trouble and has fun acupuncture treatment and so on.

The bright red haired, garish almost, is a single Mom, and she really wants to GET her ex-husband, or father of her child, back. I’m not sure which he is, but he’s kind of a nice, nerdish guy, and since he apparently finds someone else, she has to GET the handsome black doctor, so we see some black on white thrashing. Big thrill.

The star, who works two minutes a show typing in the writers’ ideas of wisdom, some of which actually are pretty smart, is another blond, though in the deal at the beginning of the show it’s more red, but what’s important is that she’s a doll, more or less in the Playmate mode, as explained by a recent New Yorker article. The ideal Playmate was the sweet, innocent girl next door with gigantic jugs. Doris Day in the face, Jane Mansfield in the body. She has the most trouble with her GET project and that gives us something to root for, and a fun lie to believe: there are no good ….( fill in the blank, men if you are a woman, women if you are a man) out there.

Trouble is this. In the second to last episode, she finds herself happily kissing her former high school sweetie, and they even get to Go All The Way ( more thrashing), but he has a problem. He’s checked himself into an open mental institution. She goes to visit. Does she ask him what’s bothering him? No. Does she ask him what he’s been doing in his life? No. Does she try to see how deep his problem is and how she can relate to that? No.

Instead they talk about him not really being available for her GETTING project for the ten months he’s in the institution, which, except for the obligatory, catching the nut scene, seems like a country club place.

So, in all this getting, who among the four actually does what we all need to do sooner or later: figure out how to get along with and love someone once all the buzz of brand new thrashing is over? The slut! She settles in with a younger actor, and they learn that talking about what’s going on can actually be beneficial. And she learns to hold hands. ( Dostoyevsky, this isn’t). But she actually works a few things out.

The red head finally says, I love you to her ex-, and so she GETS him, but the working out: not around. The dark haired one has problems with her GETTING the child, but by imitating Elizabeth Taylor, she’s apparently up for another try. The star GETS or DOESN’T GET the handsome Russian. Who cares? Or, let's be more nice: what a pity, a life devoted to getting.