The moment(s) when Sex and the City made you want to throw your TV across the room

Cafe Society
1

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Sex and the City. I love watching it, it’s great entertainment and funny, but my god do those girls do and say some fucking incredibly dumb things. As much as I’ll look forward to popping in the DVD of this show it has on numerous occasions made me so angry with the characters that I wanted to reach into the screen and slap them or, failing that, simply hurl my television across the room. I know I know, it’s only a TV programme, but I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way, so I thought I’d start a thread where we can all vent our rage against the fabulous four (and the show itself)together.

Specific moments that made me see red:

Charlotte (believe me, this will be a recurring theme) - meets a new guy and things are going really well to the point where they’ve decided they want to move in together. So they’re shopping for crockery and he says “I like that design” and she visibly deflates and says “You’re kidding!”. Carrie’s voiceover then says “Of course, she broke it off there and then…”. I mean, what the fuck? You break up with someone over their choice of dinner set? You deserve to die alone.

Carrie (there’ll be quite a few of these too) - all through S1 Carrie is dating Big and keeps throwing around the term “emotionally unavailable” as if it were going out of fashion. Clearly he isn’t approaching the relationship in the same way as her as at one point he’s considering moving to Paris fora few months and Carrie freaks out about it. In the last episode they’re about to go on holiday to the Caribbean together and he turns up to collect her and she’s being all moody and he’s trying (along with all the men watching the show) to work out what her problem is and she pitifully says “Just… just tell me I’m the one”. He says that he can’t do that (and given that not everyone even believes in the concept of the one that’s hardly suprising) so she breaks up with him there and then. Good bye any chance of trying to work on the relationship.

Miranda - gets together with a guy and stays at his place and he has to leave early the next morning so he says good bye whilst she stays in bed. Carrie’s voiceover “So Miranda did what all women would do - waited until he was gone and searched his apartment from top to bottom”. Whilst doing this she discovers a porn film relating to spanking that he has clearly hidden, and then promptly invites Carrie over to his guys apartment to watch it and discuss what this means for her future with him. What. The. Fuck. When you stay at someone’s place and they leave your first instinct is to massively invade their privacy? She later mentions spanking hoping that it will get him excited and he looks visibly shocked and apparently the date fizzles out and she never sees him again, cue a shot of Miranda walking behind him holding her hands up in “What did I do wrong?” exasperation. Well I’m guessing the reason is because he knew you were snooping through his flat like a crazy person.

Carrie - starts going to therapy because, let’s face it, she’s completely clueless when it comes to relationships. She protests vehemently that she thinks therapy is bullshit and it’s not going to change anything, even when the therapist immediately points out that the one constant in all her crazy relationships is her (truth hurts, huh Carrie?). She notices a hot man whilst waiting for her sessions as his are before hers and eventually asks him out on a date (as you do). Things are going well and they sleep together and whilst in bed afterwards she asks him why he’s going to therapy. “I have this issue where I completely lose interest in women as soon as I sleep with them” he says. Cue Carrie looking very disappointed, and her voiceover saying “I couldn’t face going back to that therapist again as I was too embarrassed at the thought of seeing him”. 1) How contrived a psychological disorder is that? Anyone else heard of anything remotely similar or was it just conjured up specifically for that episode, do you think? 2) Who starts dating someone that they met at a therapist’s office? You might as well tattoo the word “desperate” on your forehead. 3) If you didn’t want to see him again ring the therapist and ask for a different appointment slot, you stupid bitch, because you desperately need the therapy!

Charlotte - here’s a great drinking game, everyone takes a shot whenever Charlotte says that people should only have sex with people they love, intimates that Samantha is a whore, mentions God, or tells the others that they don’t care enough what others think of them. You’ll be wasted within five minutes.

Carrie - starts seeing Aidan again after her fuckwitted wrecking of their first relationship by cheating with Big (you know, the guy she acknowledged she had no future with). Things are going really well and then he gets on one kneee and proposes to her. Her response: I’m not sure if I’m ready to commit. I don’t think my blood pressure has gone up so far and so fast before or since. I’m sorry, is this the same Carrie who through the previous three series moaned and bitched constantly about Big’s inability to settle down, how men don’t want to commit, how she’ll never find anyone etc etc? Again, woman, you deserve to die alone (and probably will).
Some general things that the show did that just got on my nerves:
[ul]
[li]The show was desperate to show that no-one was really happy. The single people weren’t happy because they weren’t coupled up. The couples weren’t happy because they weren’t single anymore. The people who didn’t have children felt they weren’t complete. The people who did have children were carrying a millstone around their necks. Why not just change the title of the show to “Unfilfillment and the City” and be done with it?[/li][li]If there’s a moral to this show it’s that honesty destroys relationships, because no-one actually says what they think or feel to the opposite sex (you only do that with your friends, of course) and as soon as you do the relationship will collapse immediately and (probably) inexplicably.[/li][li]For four women (with the possible exception of Samantha) who complain that they just want to settle down and be happy they seem to do everything in their power to stop it happening.[/li][li]How the HELL do they get to date so many people? It’s like every single week they’re all seeing someone else! I live in a city similar to them and none of my friends have anything remotely like the frequency of relationships they do.[/li][li]How do these people have any money? You almost NEVER see them working. Miranda, for a workaholic, is barely in her office. You see the occasional shot of her running around the office yelling into her phone to demonstrate that she’s incredibly busy but then she’s shopping/eating out/clubbing/at the gym the rest of the time. And yet they all live in Manhattan (yes I know this is probably the most unrealistic part of SATC, but it still bugs me)?[/li][/ul]

End rant. I’m having a pretty crappy week and this felt like the most productive way of chanelling that! :slight_smile: So come on everyone, let’s find some hate for SATC.

2

I tried. Oh Lordy, I tried. My wife has the series, and I tried. I couldn’t even get past the first two damned episodes. I hated them all, even Charlotte, who was the only one I found attractuve (why do I know their names? WHY DO I KNOW THEIR NAMES?!?)

You have more strength than me, because I think I would have gone beyond wanting to throw my TV across the room.

3

The one thing that really annoys me is Carrie’s complete disregard for anyone’s happiness except her own. (see cheating on Aiden with Big for a prime example) Her utter selfishness is just amazing.

Charlotte - Yes she’s sweet, but her demand for perfection is just irritating.

Miranda - Can’t get a lot of hate on for her in general. She turned out to be a great mom.

Samantha - The ONE character who was completely honest about her goals in life and what she wants. She wants money, power and sex and doesn’t hesitate in going after it.

4

All the characters made stupid mistakes. It was part of the show’s charm, for me anyway. Every time their heads got too big, they would do something really dumb or shallow and get taken down a notch. I think it did a good job of showing how all the girls sabotaged their own happiness at times. The grass is often greener on the other side, no matter where you are.

Carrie pissed me off the most. For someone who claimed that her friends were the most important thing in the world, they were never as important as whatever guy she happened to be obsessed with.

5

My moments were mostly fashion related. They also involved a lot of shrieking on my part.

6

I’m not the person you want to answer this, because I only saw maybe 4 or 5 episodes of this show and never really liked it all that much. A toss-the-TV moment for me would have been this episode where Miranda brings her newborn along to one of their get-togethers (or maybe they all came to visit her at home, forgive me if I’m sketchy on the details) and none of the other 3 women showed the slightest bit of interest in the baby. I could buy that Carrie and Samantha were that self-absorbed, but the supposedly-sweet one? She seems like the type who’d dote on someone else’s infant, for practice if nothing else. I seemed kind of false and forced to me, and just made them all look like awful people.

7

I only watched a couple of episodes, and the thing that I found weirder is how a woman that literally writes about sex seemed to have the sexual knowledge of a nun.

In one episode they were all astonished at the idea of gasp uncircumcised men, and the other had her considering breaking up a relationship because shudder he wanted her to pee on him in the shower, a practice she’d never, apparently, heard of.

8

The show is kind of like Seinfeld: four main characters, all shallow, selfish and not too bright. The difference is that Sex and the City pretends they’re sympathetic characters instead of losers.

I guess it was the stupidity of Carrie that bugged me the most. Is there a market in which somebody with her lack of ability could actually get paid to write that moronic column? And apparently paid well enough to spend $40,000 on shoes (although she was incapable of doing the math necessary to multiply the number of pairs of shoes she had, 200, by the average price, $200, and arrive at the figure above).

9

That would be “the moment the opening credits role across the screen.”

Sorry, but if I wanted to listen to a bunch of crazy 30+ year old New York bitches complain about their relationships, I could just go outside.

The characters represent the four archtypical psycho women:

Carrie - Clingy - So does she get with the one guy who seems to not give a shit about her?

Samantha - Cougar - Do a lot of 30 year old investment bankers actively seek to get with a 50 year old chick? I don’t know.

Miranda - Bitch - As the ugly friend, it’s not surprising that she is also has the most unpleasent personality.

Charlotte - Snob - Oooo I really hope Princess finds that special guy that will keep her in the style she is acustomed to.

10

The one episode that made me want to pull my hair out was the one where Carrie wanted to put a down payment on her apartment, so she could buy it now that she’d broken up with Aiden. Being so tremendously in debt herself, Carrie lacked funds.

So, what did she do? She threw a temper tantrum because Charlotte wouldn’t give her the wedding ring from Charlotte’s recently broken up marriage. Eventually, Charlotte relented and gave Carrie the ring. What the fuck? Seriously? The fucking gall.

The Sex and the City movie really made me want to throw shit because it was so incredibly stupid.

11

I hated this show as well. I could hardly stand being in the room when it was on…

(slight hijack) Did anyone see the Family Guy where Brian had to watch it for some reason? His comment “So it’s a show about 3 hookers and their mom?” All I can think of now when I think of it…:smiley:

12

About 10 minutes into the first episode I ever watched, which was maybe somewhere in the 2nd season, after such a big fuss had been made over it. I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to love this show about four snotty, clueless, idiotic bitches.

I’ve somehow (through no effort on my part) managed to learn which name goes with which character, but for years I thought of them as Horsey-face, The Redhead, The Cute One, and The Slut.

13

A friend who’s an ardent SATC fan has sent me a couple of YouTube links to various favorite scenes. Having now watched a cumulative ten minutes or so, I’ve seen just enough to know that the show holds zero interest for me, for the reasons so succinctly set forth by msmith537.

:: checks character name on Wiki ::

Charlotte’s hawt, though.

14

Don’t forget the episode with Alanis Morissette where Carrie was just shocked at how ‘the kids’ have make out parties where they’ll kiss people of either gender. The snippets of her column were unbearable. It always made me wonder how shitty the actual thing must have been (of course, then I read Candace Bushnell…)

Still, the show was funny and entertaining most of the time, and I think it helped a lot of girls and women talk about sex in a more frank manner.

It is funny how 99 percent of real-life men can’t stand anyone but submissive, girl next door Charlotte.

15

Let’s just hope they discussed it in a slightly more informed way than the SATC girls did though.

16

I have to say I went mental thinking about the amount of money Carrie, the one who whined about money most frequently, spent on shoes and dresses. People complain about rappers and their bling, but this is the kind of crap that is making 18-year old girls charge up $5K before their 21st birthday on Manolos and Birkins.

17

There were actually a few interesting episodes addressing this. In one, Carrie wants to buy her apartment and realizes how much she’s spent just on shoes ($35,000, was it?). In another, she comes face to face with a pack of spoiled, charmless teens who ‘fucking love her’ column (though one of them did have a great line, something like: ‘I’d fuck him and his fag friends’).

18

:rolleyes:

Way to wave that broad brush.

19

I admit, I watched it all. And I liked it most of the time. There were some genuinely funny (or at least highly amusing) moments, lines, and scenes. However, the main character is an absolutely awful excuse for a human being with no redeemable characteristics whatsoever. So, yes, if you ever plan on empathizing or sympathizing with Carrie, the TV will need to be thrown across the room.

I do find that I can’t re-watch it. It wasn’t sidesplittingly funny, there’s no classic scenes, and quite frankly it hasn’t aged well.

20

Amen brother.
My wife borrowed the DVDs from a friend and coaxed me into watching them with her. After the first episode she asked “Which one do you like?”
Me: “Uh, I don’t know, Charolette I guess, she’s at least attractive not like the fugly others.”
After watching season one she asked again “Which one do you like now?”
Me: “None of them. Absolutely none of them. They are all men’s worst nightmares.”