I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the women of Sex and the City, but they make it awfully hard to feel the love these days. Like a copy of a copy made on a bad machine, each episode or movie since the last year or so of the TV show has been cruder than the last. Sex and the City 2 is close to unwatchable.
Twelve years after the TV series debuted, the four best friends are still a collection of one or two character traits each—Samantha the sex machine, Miranda the type A lawyer, good-girl Charlotte, and perky Carrie, the writer who’s spinning these stories by twisting together strands from their lives. A lot has been written about how the four—especially Samantha—are really gay men in drag, what Seattle Stranger reviewer Lindy West nicely summed up as “giant Barbie dolls” being manipulated by their gay creators. (Columnist and novelist Candace Bushnell based the characters on herself and her friends, but they were reworked for the screen by Darren Star and Michael Patrick Smith, who wrote and directed Sex and the City 2.)
A certain kind of gay sensibility probably does account for the show’s focus on 24/7 fabulousness and high fashion, which leads to ludicrous situations like Charlotte wearing a “vintage Valentino” skirt in SATC2 to bake cupcakes with her pre-school-age daughters. It probably also explains why these BFFs defend each other so fiercely, in a world that can’t be trusted to appreciate or nurture them. As Samantha puts it, in SATC2, “We made a deal ages ago. Men, babies, doesn’t matter. We’re soulmates.”
That unshakeable bond is what I’ve always loved about SATC. What woman wouldn’t love to be part of a posse for life who can be counted on to run to her side whenever she needs them? It’s the female version of Entourage.
Here’s my review of it for TimeOFF.
This article was originally published on The House Next Door.
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