In the Final Analysis... Taking Stock of Season Three

Welcome, dear friends! And so, now that we have made our way through all eighteen (!) episodes of Season Three, let us 1) take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for having come so far and done so much, 2) take a moment to muse and reflect over Season Three--what it means, what it was, what it did, what it didn't do, the headaches it caused me/us, etc., and 3) take a moment to recharge our collective batteries before we head onto Season Four (which also boasts eighteen episodes, if you can believe such a thing!)

All right, so--judgment time! One of my very favorite times of all! Surely, it is not Christmas, but rather Judgment, Time which is the most wonderful time of the year!

People of Color Watch: So, as you may recall--or actually, as I am sure you do not recall, as I did not recall, myself--and if I did not recall, no reason why you should recall--Season Two had ten characters of color total, with five of these counting (in your humble blogger's opinion--and who else's opinion do you have to rely on, on this here blog?) as actual characters--i.e., possessing names, personalities, some relation to the plot, etc. And in Season Three we had... nineteen characters of color, five of whom I would say were actual characters. Huh! It felt for a minute there like we made progress! But then... clearly, we did not. My mistake!

Because, alas, as was the case in both Seasons 1 and 2, we still find ourselves, in Season 3, in Lily-White NYC, where very few of the people whom we even see (let alone whom we hear, or get to know in any meaningful way) are people of color. Perhaps... this is not entirely reflective of reality? Perhaps... this is rather distasteful? I'm going to go with yes, on both fronts!

I wish I could say Season Three represented a break-through of some kind on this front--that, for the first time, we had a complex, engaging, fully realized character of color present here. But... nope. We don't. The ladies' lovers are white. Their colleagues are white. Their friends are white. Sigh. Perhaps we can hope for better in Season 4...? [Blogger silently mouths "NOPE" to herself as she types.]

LGBT Folks Watch: But ah, your cheery self says (bless your sunny nature), surely things are better on the LGBT front? Surely, we have some happy news to report there? It cannot be all doom and gloom, now, can it? Oh, gentle reader. You know how I hate to disappoint you. And yet disappoint you, I fear that I must.

In Season Two, we had eight LGBT characters, five of whom I counted as being actual characters (and yes, that does include our good friend Stanford Blatch.) In Season Three, I count... seven LGBT characters, all of whom I would say are actual characters, in the sense of being integral to the episode, given names, given at least the dim outline of a personality, etc.

But before you break out the champagne... may I urge you to save it for a yet more festive occasion, such as the winning of the lottery, the birth of a child, or the christening of a ship? Because the LGBT folks who are here... do not, I think, get treated too terribly well. We have just recently discussed the three transwomen in Episode 18, and how they are represented as shrill, vulgar, hypersexual harpies. (A victory for women everywhere, to be sure!) And if you push your memory back to the early days of Season 3 (ah, they were a more innocent time!), you will recall the truly horrendous ways in which the show treated the bisexual Sean and his friends, depicting them as flighty, indecisive, callow, and immature? (Oh, those wacky, wacky bis! If only they would get their act together and realize that you are either gay or straight, period, exclamation point. Get your hand out of my hetero cookie jar, greedies, and just admit that you're gay already! Geez.)

By representing its most prominent LGBT characters as bizarre freaks for our "normal"
leading ladies to contemplate with bemusement (at best) and distaste (at worst), the show reinforces heteronormativity like there's no tomorrow, while also making a valiant effort to claim that they are in fact "cutting-edge" and "progressive." Nope. Sorry. If that's what the best thing you have to sell, writers, then I ain't buyin'!

And before you say it, yes, I am aware that there is always Stanford. And Stanford is witty, charming, delightful, and undeniably gay. BUT (you knew there would be one), he is also primarily present as window-dressing--Stanford is a silent witness to Charlotte's wedding! Stanford appears on screen for five minutes in an episode in which he otherwise plays no part whatsoever!, etc. Just having Stanford kind of generally around without properly making him a major character... still doesn't cut much ice with me, my friends.

And on the rare occasions when Stanford and his dating life are central to an episode... his romatic escapades are presented exactly the way that Charlotte or Miranda's (non-serious) romantic misadventures are--that is, as a source of rather painful, often humilating comedy. Stanford tries to get fixed-up with a guy who's not interested in him! Stanford's boyfriend turns out to be a weirdly obsessive doll collector!, etc. I guess the writers are equal opportunity humiliators, because Charlotte and Miranda have a lot of similar wince-inducing plotlines over the course of the series (maybe that's a good thing...? The equality of pain...?)... however, we haven't yet seen Stanford and his relationships presented in a non-comedic, "ah, let us laugh through the pain/at his pain" kind of way. But... perhaps one day we will? [Blogger silently mouths "YUP" to herself, as she types.]

Victories! (From the perspective of your humble blogger, that is--your list may be entirely different from mine. Not to worry, it's a free country! But... it's also my blog.)

Victory #1: ADULTERY. Not that I would call adultery itself a victory, mind you, but I do rather like the way that this season handles adultery, infidelity, etc. You may recall me rather vociferously complaining earlier in the series that the show just didn't seem to take cheatin' too terribly seriously--in several plotlines, it got played for laughs in a way which I found distinctly icky. (Always being careful to distinguish between those who cheat, and those who are consensually non-monogamous, polyamorous, what have you--live long and prosper, my poly friends! I find you distasteful, cheaters!)

Carrie and Big's affair is treated in a quite complex, interesting way throughout the season, which I must say gladdened my heart. We can see quite clearly what lead Ms. Bradshaw down the Affair Path, and even feel sympathetic towards her as she strolls along said path, picking poisoned daisies as she goes... but the series happily avoids diving into The Bridges of Madison County School of Adulterous Storytelling, in which everyone learns, grows, and is a better person for having cheated on their significant other. Ummmm, nope, don't think so! The Carrie/Big Affair is shown, not to be a charming interlude which can later be looked back on with nostalgic delight, but rather as a huge, wretched mess, with majorly unpleasant reprecussions for everyone involved. It doesn't demonize Carrie, or even Big (that's my job--boo, hiss! Down with Big!), but it also doesn't shy away from the fundamental ugliness of the situation. Excellent!

Victory #2: MARRIAGE. I also quite like what this season does with its considerations of marriage--while feeling suitably sorry that things didn't work out a wee bit better for Charlotte York MacDougal this time around. Poor Charlotte. She's been a punching bag for the writers since Season One, and when she escapes the loonballs of the single world, it is only to confront one loonball, in the shape of her spouse. Alas!

However. I do think that there's something more interesting than "just how disastrous can we make Charlotte's life this season? Oooh, I'll bet we can do better than we did in Season Two. Sorry, worse, I meant worse--we can do worse than we did in Season Two! Buckle up, Charlotte!" evil designing/cackling on the part of the writers here. As I've said before, I think they do a nice job of respecting Charlotte's heartfelt desire to find a life partner, get hitched, and have youngsters, while also raising major red flags about her "It is better for me to marry someone than no one, even if I know nothing about said someone! MARRIAGE. NOW. Additionally, I would prefer that my future spouse be rich" attitude.

Charlotte has, from the beginning, been the character who has the most straightforwardly traditional view of love and matrimony in the series--the "find a handsome, wealthy prince to take care of you, and he will ride you off into the Sunset of Happiness Forever" narrative clearly holds a lot of appeal for her. And to the writers' credit, they're finally starting to unpack her attachment to that ideal (and the damage which that attachment might do to her) in a more substantial way.

Charlotte marries Trey, in large part, because he is handsome, aristocratic, and monied. (Ah, shallowness. What a faithful friend and stand-by thou art!) So on paper, Trey is perfect, according to Charlotte's standards. But of course, it turns out that her fairy-tale wedding to a seemingly fairy-tale prince is not quite the fairy-tale she had aspired to and hoped for. Funny how that turns out.

And it's kind of nice to see marriage be the beginning, and not the end, of a heroine's journey and growth--Charlotte thought that as soon as she became a "Mrs.," everything would click into place, and her life would be perfect. Turns out... it's not that simple! And having watched waaaaay too many bad romantic comedies on planes (don't judge, I don't watch horror movies, war movies, or children's movies--and that cuts down your pool a goodish bit when you're trapped at 30,000 feet and too jet-lagged to read, and too crabby to sleep), even this relatively tame subversion... still feels pretty festive to me! Yay, marriage narratives which are not tidy, simplistic, and stereotypical!

Defeats! (You knew I would save the worst for last, didn't you? Do we not know each other at all by now?)

Nothing I am about to say will surprise you--in addition to the dismal showing of characters who are not white as paper, and the unpleasant representations of the bi and trans folks, my number one defeat is... the usual suspect, lazy stereotyping about gender, and proclamations of "what men and women are really like." I. Hate. Those. Not to say that this season is an unmitigated failure in that regard, there were a few flashes of light in the darkness... however, for the most part, we once again face facile declarations about Women, Men, and the Vast Biological Divide which separates them. Charlotte is a lady, and as such is bad at math, and sexually passive! Miranda is reluctant to make an immediate commitment to her boyfriend, and is therefore more like a man than a woman! Sam is very much in charge of her career and her firm, and as such is "the man of the office"! And so on, and so forth. Blurrrg. Pleeeeease make it stop.

So in The End, Season Three... Better than Seasons One and Two? Worse? Same?? What???: Speaking purely as myself (I do not know how to speak as anyone else, purely or impurely), I will say that I like Season Three best of all the seasons so far. Yes, I thought the episodes in L.A. were dreary. Yes, I was sad when they sent Roger Stirling away so precipitously. (Bring him baaaaaack. Why did he have to gooooo?) But I think the series is starting to grow up--starting to tackle some more serious themes, and to do so in a more thoughtful way (something which will only accelerate come Season Four, goody, goody...)

I also think Season Three packs one heck of a narrative punch--yes, both Charlotte's marriage and Carrie's affair are like express trains headed straight to Wrecks-ville--but danged if I could look away from either mangled-mess-waiting-to-happen. I also think that the season handles the story of Miranda and Steve quite nicely--two grown-ups who can't make a romantic relationship work, but who muddle through trying to stay friends in the aftermath, anyway. Yay, complexity! Yay, maturity!

But enough of Season Three. What awaits us in Season Four, you ask? When we've already had marriage, adultery, and the Playboy Mansion, where is there to go from here??? Ah, many intriguing places, my friends, many intriguing places, indeed... return to me on Wednesday, and we shall consider what awaits us in Season Four (we have made it half way through, mes amis! Half. Way. Through. Unless you count the movies which [shudder] for the moment, I am being kind to myself, and doing my best to forget that I shall have to confront, in the end... let us whistle on the way to our doom!)

Season Three, Episode Eighteen: Cock A Doodle Do!

The Summary:

I hate this episode title. Just thought I'd get that out of the way now.

But what of the episode itself, you ask? What's happening there? Well, Carrie is facing two main issues--the first is being that the vets on her block have put roosters on their roof, and said roosters are waking her up at the crack of dawn every bloody morning. (Who among us has not faced a similar situation, I ask you?) Annoyed by this, Carrie initially decides that she'll still put up with it, so as to allow the roosters to enjoy fresh air and freedom. But she subsequently decides that she actually can't handle their racket, and asks the vets to move the roosters into the basement of their building... which they do. This is supposed to be symbolic of... something (the nature of freedom? the difficulties of making peace with our neighbors? the benefits of an outdoorsy life?) but I'm not quite sure what. I don't think the writers are quite sure what, either, to be honest. I think they threw the roosters in here primarily so that they'd have the chance to make numerous "cock" puns. And on that score, at least... mission accomplished!

Carrie's second issue is more significant, in that Big has gotten in touch with her, as he wishes to see her, and talk over The Affair and its aftermath. (What could possibly go wrong there?) Carrie decides that she will, indeed, meet him, which precipitates a huuuuuge fight with Miranda (while they are at a thrift store, no less--lower your voices, ladies, we must not upset the bargains!) Miranda, not unreasonably, thinks that this is a massively bad idea, as Carrie seeing Big... tends to lead to Very Bad Things. Things take an ugly turn when Miranda accuses Carrie of being "pathetic and needy" when it comes to Big (ding ding ding, I do believe we have a winner!), and Carrie counter-accuses Miranda of being excessively judgmental, and having "thrown Steve away." Yiiiiikes.

But all's well that ends well, in the, well, end. Carrie and Miranda make up, and though Carrie does indeed meet and talk to Big, Very Bad Things (for once) do not happen. They talk about the affair, how stupid they both were to engage in something so destructive and damaging, muse on the fundamental disorder and chaos of life... and then Carrie leaves. Big (in typically suggestive Big fashion) says she's welcome to stay... but she does not, realizing that Big as Romantic Prospect/Sexual Partner=Very Bad News. Progress! [Blogger to self, ominously, under breath: "For now, anyway...."]

And speaking of Miranda... in addition to fighting with Carrie, Miranda is obsessed with the idea that the woman who works at her favorite Chinese restaurant is laughing at her, for ordering the same take-out food every week. (Yes... seriously.) She realizes in the end, however, that this is silly (thank you), and that the woman could care less about Miranda and her dining habits.

In addition to this fighting/Big-meeting/Chinese takeout madness, Miranda and Carrie also (gosh, their plotlines just go on and on, don't they?) bump into Steve and Aidan, and learn that both gents have new girlfriends. (And Aidan also has a madly unflattering new goatee, which--yuuuuck.) Carrie and Miranda are appalled that they are both still obsessed with what went wrong in those relationships, while their exes have (seemingly effortlessly) already moved onto new ladies. Are men just fundamentally less obsessive about matters of the heart than women? (Bloggers' verdict: than women in general--no. Than these particular women--yes!)

Miranda later bumps into Steve AGAIN (you would think Manhattan was the size of Little Tinysville, Indiana, population 362, the way this show carries on), and they have a pleasant, friendly conversation, in which Steve reassures Miranda that she didn't "throw him away," and they chat amicably about his new girlfriend. Hooray for showing the potential which exes have to act like grown-ups, and even to be friends! Excellent!

Okay, I think we can now safely move onto Charlotte and Samantha and their shenanigans... phew! So, Charlotte, as we know, has separated from Trey, moved back into her old apartment, the whole nine yards. She proclaims that she has sworn off men, is done with romance and sex and love, etc., etc. Ummmm-hmmmm, I totally believe her! Except... I don't, at all, and I am quite right not to do so. Trey comes to her apartment in the middle of the night one night, tells her he can't stop thinking about her since she left him, and they sleep together. As in, actually sleep together... all of Trey's issues when it comes to Bedroom Matters seem to be magically gone! Nice how that works out.

If this was your typical romantic comedy, I reckon things would stop there--Trey finally realized what he'd lost in Charlotte, and miraculously gets his act together both emotionally and sexually, and now they can live Happily Forever After. But the show does something a little more interesting and complicated with this scenario... neither Charlotte nor Trey is sure of what their next step should be here. Do they want to try to get back together? Do they want to be married--to each other, one, or at all, two? They don't know! And so, we don't know! Nobody knows! UNCERTAINTY. And there Season Three leaves us, with Charlotte poised somewhere between singlehood and married-ness...

Samantha, meanwhile... sigh. This is the most painful plot line of the lot, which might be why I saved it for last--delay the pain as long as possible. So, the street on which Sam lives is also a street on which three trans sex workers (Destiny, Chyna, and Jo by name) pick up their clients. This trio is rowdy. Said rowdiness distresses Sam not a little--she wants a quiet life, a quiet neighborhood! So she gets into an increasingly unpleasant feud with the three women, which finally results in a detente after Sam throws a party for them. (???) This might not sound too horrendous on the surface, but trust me... it is. There is enough talk of "half-men, half women" to choke a horse/make your humble blogger want to hide under the covers until the horror has passed.

The Analysis:

People of Color Watch: The three trans sex workers whom Sam battles with in this episode are all African-American, and (as we shall see)... they are not represented too terribly positively! Two of the women whom Miranda interacts with at the Chinese restaurant which she goes to/freaks out about are (perhaps not entirely shockingly) Asian. They both have very few lines, very minimal parts to play in the episode, and relentlessly get referred to as "the Chinese take-out lady," and similar. If I have learned nothing else from SATC, I have at least learned that that all Asian women are either a) dragon ladies, or b) work in Chinese restaurants. Good to know!

Marriage: Some Actually Not Entirely Uninteresting Reflections About It, Yay! Watch: First, to the good stuff. Because soon enough, we're going to have to dive into the Sam plot line and let me assure you... that is alllll bad stuff. Okay, so, discussions of marriage. I think this episode actually does some neat stuff in thinking about marriage and our society's ideas about/pressures surrounding it here--goody!

As Charlotte laments to her friends about her newly separated state, she declares that "the only thing worse than being 34 and single is being 34 and divorced!" To which Miranda quickly replies that actually, being 34 and trapped in a miserable marriage is worse than either of those things... a sensible perspective which I think that we, as viewers, are actually supposed to agree with. (Excellent!) Perhaps being happy (whether that happiness comes through being married, partnered, single, whatever) is more important than avoiding the "stigma" of not being married/being divorced--a shocking concept! And... one point to Ms. Hobbes.

Charlotte and Trey also have a pretty interesting conversation about their marriage specifically, and about marriage generally, in the wake of their tryst--Charlotte asks Trey why he agreed to marry her in the first place, if he wasn't sure that he was really the marrying kind/interested in being married, and (in addition to noting that she is a splendid and wondrous person--nice touch, sir), says "I thought it was time--I'm of a certain age--people expect you to get married," to which Charlotte replies "Sounds familiar..." Eureka! An acknowledgment that our society pressures both heterosexual women and men to get married! Can it be true???

I surely do appreciate seeing Trey note that, though he'd been perfectly happy as a single 40-something gent, he nonetheless felt considerable pressure to marry, just because he was at (or even past) the age at which he was expected to be paired off by his family, his friends, and the world in general. And said expectations, of course, had the unfortunate effect of prompting him to actually get married, even though he didn't think that he was suited for, or inclined towards, the married state. Nice to see the writers highlighting the fact that our society's notions that singlehood past a certain age is undesirable (at best) and unacceptable (at worst)... can have some adverse consequences! And nice to see Charlotte and Trey actually talking about this stuff--maybe if Trey had opened up this line of communication at the beginning of the season, we all could have been spared all of the grisly Miseries of the MacDougal Marriage stuff?

"Chicks with Dicks": Wince-Inducing Discussions of Trans Women, Sex Workers, and Humanity in General Watch: So the stuff between Sam and Destiny, Chyna, and Jo in this episode... is a little unpleasant. How is it unpleasant? Well, dear readers, let us count the ways:

1) All four SATC women clearly regard these three women as amusing (at best) and icky (at worst.) When Sam helpfully provides her own definition of a "transsexual": "chicks with dicks--boobs on top, balls down below," Miranda says, "I don't see the appeal there." Because goodness knows, the most important thing here is what you do and do not find "appealing," Ms. Hobbes. (That point I gave you before? Taking it away now! So there!) Showing our four, cisgendered female leads talking about these women and their bodies as though they are absurd (at best) and distasteful (at worst) plays into some rather unpleasant attitudes and ideas about trans women and their bodies as "unnatural" and "disgusting" which I find it truly unpleasant to see on display here.

2) The show also definitely plays Destiny, Chyna, and Jo's sex work for laughs here--Sam amuses the other three ladies by recounting their conversations about their clients, which Carrie and Miranda meet with uproarious laughter (and Charlotte hears in appalled silence, naturally.) Given the fact that numerous trans women (especially trans women of color) turn to sex work because of their difficulties accessing other types of employment, and that they face a disproportionately high rate of sexual assault and abuse while doing that work, I find that this whole "ha ha, how amusing these ladies are, with their dirty mouths and their amusing sexual practices" angle here a little distasteful. Maybe Destiny, Chyna, and Jo freely chose to become sex workers, and enjoy their work. But given the realities of systematic discrimination against trans women, the high levels of poverty among trans women, and the fact that these three women are shown working on a street corner being harassed by cops... my tendency is to doubt it.

3) And just to pile it on, the episode also engages in some truly (say it all together with me now) unpleasant gender essentialism, as well. Because goodness knows, the best way to respond to trans people, and questions about the inherent untidiness and fluidity of gender identity, is to staunchly insist that the gender binary is REAL and UNSHAKABLE, dammit! I defy you to even attempt to shake it!

So Sam is initially able to have pleasant dealings with Destiny, Chyna, and Jo because (as Carrie's voice-over notes) "Samantha always knew how to get her way with men--even if they were half women." I see. Please pick up your ever-present notebooks, and scrawl down the following important concepts: "A person cannot truly be transgendered. Similarly, a person cannot transition from being a man to being a woman, or define themselves as being a woman, while still in any way being biologically male. If you are a transgendered woman who has not yet had/does not intend to have bottom surgery, then you are not trans nor a woman, but rather 'half man, half woman.' " How useful this is to know!

Similarly, things eventually go wrong between Sam and these three women because... they are "half women" after all, and as such (I'll bet you can guess!)... really bitchy! Seriously, women. Even when they are not "real" women, they still cause lots of trouble with their bitchy, bitchy ways, am I right? [Blogger goes to lie down, to dream of a world in which the only trans characters in the series were not represented in such a simplistic, reductive, negative, and distasteful way. Oh, sweet, sweet dreams...]

Next Up...?: Coming up on Monday, we take stock of Season Three--what were its highs? What were its lows? Why did that whole "wearing giant flower pins on one's shirt" fad actually take off, when it is so inherently loopy, impractical, and potentially fire-causing???

Season Three, Episode Seventeen: What Goes Around, Comes Around

The Summary:

Ah, karma. Sometimes you are such a friend to us, sometimes... such a foe. (I, for one, must have really abused socks in a past life, because seldom do I leave the laundromat without having lost at least one to the vagaries of the washing machine. Oh, socks! Can you not forgive those old, unremembered wrongs??? Can we not live in peace together???)

ANYWAY. Enough about me and my socks. The miserable lives which our four leading ladies are currently leading, I am aware, are surely more interesting. And so... to those miserable lives let us now turn!

So Carrie, it transpires, is having rather a rough time of it. (All together now: "Again, still.") She bumps into Natasha at a restaurant, and Natasha looks at her... well, the way one might look at the lady who had amused herself by sleeping with one's spouse. Carrie is devastated. Carrie learns that Natasha and Big's marriage is, indeed, officially over (and that Natasha has gone back to working at Ralph Lauren... a job, I guess, which she had given up when she married Big? Because I guess being married to a wealthy businessman and being a full-time socialite is job enough for a 26-year-old newlywed? Seriously, all we ever saw Natasha do was shop at expensive boutiques, and go to the Hamptons. And... blogger stifles yawn, contemplating such a life--while at the same time wishing that she had access to that kind of cash.) Learning this not-so-fun fact, Carrie is even more devastated.

And on top of her devastation/ongoing, painful sense of guilt and remorse about l'affaire, Bad Things start to happen to Carrie. She gets mugged, and loses her favorite pair of Manolo Blahniks. She falls down the stairs, and scrapes up her arm. Clearly, karma... is gunning for her. She decides the only way to clear said bad karma is to go to Natasha, and plead for her forgiveness. [At which point blogger slaps her palm smartly against her forehead. Really, I did.]

Now, when Carrie was contemplating whether or not she should tell Aidan about the affair, she wondered if spilling her guts to him about her adulterous shenanigans was the "ultimate selfish act," which would help her to assuage her guilt, but at the cost of inflicting tremendous pain on the innocent Aidan. In that particular case, I thought this line of reasoning was malarkey--Aidan had the right to know that she'd taken a stroll down Affair Boulevard, and I think that she was quite right to tell him about The Most Ill-Advised Affair of All Frickin' Time (hyperbole, I know, but I shall let it stand), and let him decide whether or not he still wanted to be with her. That was only just.

However, I think that Carrie's "maybe discussing the affair with the injured parties isn't about me wanting to do right by them, but about me needing their absolution, and not caring if I have to twist the knife in their wounds to get it" line of reasoning could have profitably been applied to her angst over Natasha. Natasha, unsurprisingly, hates Carrie. Natasha, not entirely shockingly, never wants to see or speak to Carrie again. This seems fair to me! Perhaps Carrie leaving Natasha alone, then... not a bad idea?

But leaving Natasha alone does not seem to be something which our Ms. Bradshaw is capable of, alas. What she IS capable of is bombarding Natasha with phone calls (which go unanswered, surprise, surprise), and eventually stalking her to a restaurant (again with the restaurant encounters!), where Carrie vomits up a flood of self-recriminations and apologies onto the unwilling Natasha. After listening to Carrie's floods of self-reproach, Natasha makes a rather nice little speech, in which she basically says that she wishes Carrie hadn't bothered to come to apologize to her, because the damage which she's done is so dire that even a veritable landslide of "I'm sorrys" isn't going to cut it. Carrie subsequently slinks away, reflecting that the affair, and its aftermath, surely are messes of the first order. No disagreement here!

What other horrors await, you ask? Well, Miranda (rushing to Carrie's aid after she gets mugged) meets a gorgeous, charming cop, who asks her out. He seems like a delightful fellow--smart, funny, and very focused on and interested in Miranda. What could possibly go wrong? [She asked, as she reached to queue up the ominous music.]

What goes wrong, alas, is all in Miranda's noggin. She is convinced that this beautiful man is waaaaaay out of her league, and that her unremarkable self looks ridiculous with him. (Because Miranda Nixon is so. Darned. Plain. PLEASE.) Consequently, she gets massively drunk on a date with him, and he concludes that she is an alcoholic. Buh-bye, Lovely Cop! And try to snap out of it, Ms. Hobbes!

Samantha, meanwhile... sigh. So, Sam's been getting floods of calls for one "Sam Jones" (not herself) which is sooooo annoying to her that she tracks down this alternate Sam, to get his friends to stop calling her all the bloody time. Turns out, Sam is a fetching young college student, and a virgin. (Perhaps you can already see where this is headed...?) Samantha accordingly decides to sleep with him, "to give him the great first time I never had." Ummm... great idea?

You will be shocked to learn that this backfires in quite spectacular fashion, with young Sam subsequently believing himself to be in love with Samantha, bombarding her with hysterical phone calls, and showing up at her door every hour of the day and night, to plead for her love. Fantastic. Turns out, seducing innocent youngsters decades younger than yourself... can have some downsides! I AM SHOCKED.

Charlotte, happily, is not sleeping with 18-year-olds... but that's about the only happy thing happening in her next of the woods. Her sex life with Trey is still a disaster, and he's pretty much given up on even trying to make it work. A sad, frustrated Charlotte takes to wandering disconsolately around Trey's family's gorgeous country estate, happening across a lovely young gardener whilst doing so (as one does), and eventually sticking her toe into Lady Chatterley waters by making out with him. Of course she does.

When Trey's family finds out about this extramarital smooching, they are totally blase about it--apparently, it is the done thing to liplock with one's staff in the MacDougal household? Only Trey is ticked, but he tells Charlotte that he's okay with "looking the other way" while she seeks out other gents. Charlotte decides that this doesn't really sound like a great deal to her, and tells Trey that she thinks that they should separate for awhile. This... seems sensible! And so, buh-bye, Lovely Gardener! Buh-bye, Trey! (For now, anyway...) Buh-bye, Annoying Pseudo-Celtic-Flute-Music-Which-Played-Every-Time-The-Gardener-Appeared! (WE GET IT. He is a vaguely Irish man of the earth. GIVE IT A REST.)

The Analysis:

Seducing the Barely Legal=Creepy Watch: Let's get the easy one out of the way first, shall we? Sam's casual seducing of the young, virginal, stripling Sam creeps me out. I will give the show credit to the extent that they do, indeed, show that Sam (The Lady) deciding to deflower Sam (The Lad) was an Extremely Bad Idea (TM), but revoke much of said credit as they do, nonetheless, play this plotline for laughs. Ha ha, it is HILARIOUS that this poor kid has been emotionally scarred by his first sexual experience, and that (Female) Sam has clearly introduced him to sex before he was ready to be thus introduced. Yeeeeesh.

Maybe I just feel protective because Sam is my own students' age [pauses to find that strange--I am old enough to feel protective towards 19-year-olds???], and he's clearly a sweet kid who, if left to his own devices, would have found his own way, in his own time, into the Land of Sex, and most likely with someone a smidge more age appropriate. It seems like a bummer, rather than a source of amusement and hilarity to me, that his first sexual experience was ultimately so traumatic and upsetting for him. Bad (Ms.) Sam, bad!

I don't want to go down the Cougar-Shaming Path here, but I will note that I do find something distasteful in a sophisticated woman in her 40s casually bedding a lad in his (at most) early 20s, who is clearly not mature enough or emotionally ready to handle said bedding. I would find it similarly distasteful, of course, to see the genders reversed in such a scenario--more distasteful, actually, given our culture's fetishization of female youth, and its relentless pairing off of young women with older men in films, TV, etc. (And yet... one of my favorite novels is Jane Eyre, which eroticizes the age gap between Jane and Rochester like it's goin' out of style. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. But it was the nineteenth century, and Jane is clearly more than a match for Rochester, maturity-wise, and I just love Jane Eyre, okay???)

Self-Esteem for the Ladies... Shall We Take Up a Collection? Watch: And from near-stautory rape, let us now turn to Miranda Hobbes and her raging insecurity. In sum, it makes me sad. The cop in her plotline is clearly attracted to her, clearly likes her, clearly enjoys her company. But Miranda just can't believe in any of that, because, as she puts it, he's "too good-looking" for her. His interest in her unleashes a whole flood of insecurities about how she looks, and how she could never "measure up" to someone so gorgeous. She's obsessed with how other people see them (imagining them sniggering about a guy like him being with a woman like her), and is anxious because of all the female attention and admiration which he attracts (surely, her humble self will never be able to hold his attention, with so many lovely ladies lusting for him? Even though... she does--he totally ignores the other women who try to flirt with him when he's with Miranda.)

First and most obviously, such anguishing is absurd because Cynthia Nixon is, herself, quite conventionally beautiful. Second and most sadly, Miranda's anxieties and neuroses seem all too real here--her sense that she simply isn't pretty enough, that she would need to be much prettier to snag the "right" kind of guy, that she simply doesn't understand what this guy sees in her, because she's not as "beautiful" as he is. Sigh. Woman feeling the need to reach an unattainable standard of beauty? Check. Woman feeling that her looks are one of the primary determinants of her romantic prospects? Check. Woman not believing a man's interest in her is genuine, because she's not "pretty" enough to deserve it? Check. Thank you, patriarchy, and toxically unhealthy media and pop culture, for making the torment in Miranda, and her loss of a nice guy, possible!

Ladies Being Quite Tough, Excellent, Watch: So one of the most entertaining parts about Michael Patrick King's commentary on this episode (though all of his commentary is consistently entertaining, I note... I am very angry with him because of the truly appalling messes which he created (and refused to clean up) in the SATC films, but I cannot deny that he makes a charming commentary-provider for the DVDs of the series... so thanks for that, anyway, MPK!) is when he talks about the character of Natasha. He notes (as I'm sure Bridget Moynihan was delighted to hear) that they picked Moynihan to play Natasha pretty much entirely because of how she looked--I'm guessing, because she looked like the anti-Carrie--tall, dark-haired, and conventionally beautiful. But surprise, surprise, as the series unfolded, they found out that this lovely young woman could actually act! (Next you will tell me that a lady can also be at once beautiful and smart, at once plain and alluring, at once intellectual and feminine, and other such unthinkable combinations. Who'da thunk it?)

And I like the fact that Natasha does, indeed, become (however briefly) a woman of substance in this episode. Before, she'd just been Carrie's beautiful, often silent, foil, about whom we knew virtually nothing. (Apart from the aforementioned, "My only goal in life seems to be fashionably drifting from one fashionable spot to another" stuff.) In this episode, however, she shows herself to be both dignified and feisty. (And I like dignified feistitude! Feisty dignitude?) She gives Carrie a good dressing down about the silliness of thinking that a mere apology could undo the pain of her affair with Big, and the selfishness of Carrie for inflicting her company on her, when she knows very well that it is unwelcome. She doesn't yell or get nasty, she just tells Carrie off in a measured (but deadly) way. Good for Natasha, I say--refusing to put up with Adulterous Spouse, or to soothe the conscience of the Repentant Partner of said Adulterous Spouse. Her, I like. Pity that we never see or hear from her again. Buh-bye, Natasha! Hope that your next gent proves to be less slimy than Big!

Undoing the Raging Shallowness of Charlotte York MacDougal: A Progress Report: In this episode, I am pleased to note that young Charlotte Y M has taken yet another step away from her previous dwelling in the Land of the Unendingly Shallow. Hooray! You will recall that earlier in the series, Charlotte declared that her ideal spouse would be well-bred, good-looking, and rich (I guess the state of his heart and his intellect... insignificant?), and that she rushes into marriage with Trey in large part because he seems like the "right" kind of guy for her--i.e., handsome, rich, and from a fancy-pants family.

Happily, Little Lady Fauntleroy is starting to realize that just because you have a nice-looking husband and gobs of money, doesn't mean that you have what you need to be happy! (Well, color me flabbergasted!) At the end of the episode, Charlotte looks around the MacDougals' perfect, posh country house, and her posh, seemingly perfect husband and realizes that "the only thing that was missing was that connection with an imperfect person."

Ohmigosh, you guys, you guys, Charlotte actually wants something imperfect and genuine, rather than seemingly perfect and fake! She'd rather hold out for something real, with someone who actually loves and cares for her, than the seemingly ideal life of being Mrs. Trey MacDougal. I think that those in the dictionary business would file that one under "p" for "progress." Hooray!!!

Notable Quotables: Carrie, musing about herself, Big, Natasha, and the whole hideous "Big is now single again, because of my adulterous affair with him... but because of said adulterous affair, I don't actually want to be with him anymore" headache-making mess: "The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor."

Next Up...?: "Cock-A-Doodle-Do!" Yes, really. That is actually the name of the episode, complete with offending exclamation point. I would not, and could not, invent such a thing, I assure you. The episode, you will be glad (?) to know includes both Carrie grappling with chickens, and Sam grappling with the transgendered sex workers who work on her street. Angels and ministers of grace defend us, that can only end in tears.

Season Three, Episode Sixteen: Frenemies

The Summary:

Ah, enemies who sometimes pose as friends, and friends who sometimes feel more like enemies, let us discuss them!

So, Carrie has been commissioned to teach a class on dating and relationships at the Learning Annex called (prepare to groan with me now) "Bright Lights, Date City." Oof. She sails into her first class ready to take the world by storm, but ends up having rather a rough time of it, as she faces a room which is 30 percent dead-eyed and 70 percent hostile. (Been there!) The hostility comes in large part from her students' anger that they have paid to take a class all about snaring a fella... from a lady who has, notably, failed to snare a fella herself. I see.

Having been interrogated by her students about her marital status and romantic history during her first class, and learning that the majority of these students dropped out and demanded refunds after said interrogation, Carrie is dispirited, and plunged into self-doubt. Maybe her students are right! Maybe she doesn't know anything about men, relationships, or anything! But then she rallies--just because she's not currently married or partnered doesn't mean that she doesn't have valuable insights to share, after all!

And so she marches back into her second class, and uses her teaching salary to take the small handful of students who remain out to a local bar, and matchmakes away. She tells her students that though she may not have all the answers when it comes to matters of the heart, she does know that half the battle is just being willing to go out into the world, take some risks, and hope for the best (no matter how much of the worst may have happened to one in the past.) Seems sensible to me! (All but the part about using one's teacherly salary to ply one's students with drinks, that is. Just try to pry me away from one PENNY of my adjunct's salary for such a purpose, I DEFY you.)

Meanwhile, a guy Miranda had been all prepped to have a first date with... dies. Sad! Miranda subsequently gets stuck attending said guy's funeral, where she meets Jim, who seems all things charming and delightful. You will note, of course, sharp-eyed readers, that I use the word "seems"... for Carrie, it transpires, knows Jim, having dated him herself some years ago, and she warns Miranda that he is an asshole of the first water/highest order, and that she ought to stay the heck away from him. Miranda shrugs this off. Jim seems so wonderful! Perhaps Carrie is wrong?

Alas, no, Carrie is not wrong--turns out, Carrie is, in fact, quite right, and Jim is, in fact, an asshole of the most dedicated variety... who, because of said assholery, consequently finds himself dumped by Miranda. Buh-bye, Jim! Our lesson from the day from the School of the Obvious? If your best friend tells you that she knows for a fact that a gent is bad news, then... said gent is, in fact, bad news! Got it.

Samantha and Charlotte, meanwhile, are fighting. The subject of said fight being, surprise, surprise, sex. Charlotte (grappling with the ongoing sexlessness of her marriage) is infuriated by Sam's continous, explicit recounting of her encounters, and of her whole-hearted embrace of a casual, non-strings-attached, no-emotions-involved model of sexuality. She insists that sex ought to be about love. She hints that Sam is a slut for not having sex in which love/affection is at least a factor. Sam, in turn, tells Charlotte that at least she's having sex, at all. Yeouch. Nasty stuff.

They patch things up, however, after having bad experiences with other would-be friends. Sam becomes friendly with the sassy, Southern Claire-Anne, who is sexually venturesome as Sam herself is. Though perhaps Claire-Anne is rather too sexually venturesome... Sam breaks off their friendship after Claire-Anne goes down on a bloke in the middle of a restaurant. (As in... in the middle. She is under a table at the time, I grant you, but would this not still lead to arrest...?)

Charlotte, correspondingly, reconnects with her old sorority friends, but subsequently breaks off her friendship with them, after they tell her that she's being vulgar and inappropriate for trying to talk about her sex life (or rather, lack of one) with them. Charlotte learns that she actually values having someone who is so candid about sex in her life. And Sam, correspondingly, learns that she values having someone who does not commit acts of public lewdness in her life. And so... buh-bye, Claire-Anne! Buh-bye, Sorority Friends!

In this episode, we also venture further down the path of Charlotte Trying to Fix Her Marriage... the whole "incorporate yourself into your husband's porn" thing, shockingly, does not seem to be working, and Trey and Charlotte still have not had sex. Sam (pre-fight) suggests to Charlotte that this is because Trey has a Madonna/whore complex, and sees her, not as a sexual being, but rather as "his virginal wife." (And... welcome back to the nineteenth century! Can I interest anyone in a lack of birth control information and a cultural ideal of female passionlessness, while we're at it? No?)

Charlotte decides that one solution to this potential problem would be to do a radical makeover on herself, sexing herself up to the point where Trey would feel more comfortable putting her on the "whore" end of the "Madonna/whore" spectrum. (Charlotte, as she flips through racks of very out-of-character, racy undergarments in a sex shop: "I don't want to be me, I want to be someone else!") Greeeeeat.

In the end, however, she rejects that approach, retaining the sexy undergarments (ones more in line with her taste in the end, mercifully), but rejecting the whole "Madonna/whore," "seeking to become someone else to please one's spouse" concept, and decides to actually directly tackle the problem head-on, making one last-ditch effort to communicate with Trey. (Charlotte, to Trey, wearing a transparent nightgown which I am sure Kristin Davis was delighted to see on her costume list: "I'm not a Madonna, and I'm not a whore... I'm your wife, and I'm sexual, and I love you.") He initially shrugs her off, says she looks ridiculous... but changes his tune a bit after Charlotte sheds the nightgown, and starts masturbating in front of him. Unlike the porn-redecoration plan, this more direct approach... actually seems to work! (Carrie's voiceover: "That night, Trey successfully screwed his wife... for a full minute and a half.") Not worthy of champagne, to be sure, but perhaps... sparkling cider? Seltzer?

The Analysis:

People of Color Watch: Three of Carrie's disaffected students are women of color--two are African-American and one is Asian-American. They each have about one line of dialogue, and are super-minor characters. Of course they are.

Rejecting the Virgin/Whore Dichotomy, and Asserting One's One Sexual Needs, Hooray, Watch: I must say that I like Charlotte's little speech about how she is, in fact, neither a Madonna nor a whore, but simply a sexual woman, who wishes to be regarded as such by her own husband. (This... does not seem unreasonable!) Nice to see her, in the end, rejecting the idea that she needs to become someone else to get her husband's sexual attention, but rather embracing the idea that she will simply be herself to do so... the sheer nightgown might have been rather uncomfortable for Kristin Davis to wear (certainly... drafty), but it does seem to work in a nice symbolic way here--in the end, Charlotte decides not to dress up like a naughty schoolgirl or similar, but simply to show Trey herself--standing before him naked (both literally and figuratively) and articulate her own sexual needs.

And the fact that she chooses to masturbate in front of Trey also seems important here, given that Charlotte had said earlier in the series that she felt ashamed of even thinking about masturbating while in her husband's presence... our Mrs. MacDougal seems to have come a long way, in terms of her willingness to quite fearlessly articulate and express her desires. Hooray! I mean, modified hooray, because things... clearly still not perfect on the MacDougal marriage front. But... partial hooray nonetheless!

Next Up...?: "What Goes Around, Comes Around," in which karma does, as advertised, indeed prove to be a bitch. Sam is punished for sleeping with a college boy. Carrie is punished for her affair with Big (again/still). Miranda is punished for daring to date a man "more attractive" than she is. (I use the ironic air quotes because this is Cynthia Frickin' Nixon, people.) Charlotte is punished for kissing the MacDougal family gardener. Punishment all around!

Season Three, Episode Fifteen: Hot Child in the City

Welcome back, dear readers! How gravely I have missed you. During the long weeks in which we have been apart I have 1) graded a mountain of papers, 2) dealt with a mountain of snow (THIRTY INCHES of it, which arrived in one mad rush of a blizzard--"mad" being the operative word), 3) ate mountains of holiday-themed food, and 4) enjoyed mountainous clusters of holiday-themed festivity. I hope that your lives have been equally delightful... if rather less crammed with snow. (Seriously--THIRTY INCHES of the stuff. I really do not see the point of snow when I am already on vacation, and there is no chance of me getting to cancel class.)

And so, as we look forward to a new year (2011... has a nice ring to it, no?), let us pick up where we left off, hip-deep in Season Three. To recap: Carrie has just pulled herself out of a disastrous affair with the married, undelightful Big (an affair which ended her relationship with the unmarried, delightful Aidan--boo, hiss!), Charlotte is now deeply enmeshed in a marriage which, alas, has proved to be sexless, Sam continues to be deeply enmeshed in her campaign to not ever be involved in anything sexless, and Miranda is... deeply enmeshed in yet more severe and unflattering pantsuits. All right, then! Onward!

The Summary:

So Carrie is dating Wade, a profoundly laconic/deeply mellow comic book store owner. Turns out, Wade still lives with his parents, and that his primary interest in life (apart from comic books) is smoking "the pot." I see. What a fine prospect he seems to be for long-term romantic involvement! (Or... perhaps not?) In any case, Carrie is amply enjoying his company in the present--his parents have a gorgeous apartment, he has a festive scooter which he lets her ride around on (yes... seriously), and he is perpetually in possession of what I believe the kids nowadays call really high-grade "mary jane." I... suppose people have dated people for worse reasons?

So everything is rosy in the garden for Carrie and her pothead love--until one day, when Wade's parents come home earlier than the happy couple expect, catch Carrie and Wade getting high as kites, and consequently kick Carrie (whom they feel is a bad influence on their bonny boy) out of their apartment/Wade's life. All right, then! Buh-bye, Wade! Good luck with all of your future artistic endeavors/drug use!

Miranda, meanwhile, has found out that she has TMJ, and that one very effective means of treating this unpleasant disorder is to get braces. And so... get braces she does! Seems like a very sensible medical move... but of course, this being a Miranda plotline, it is also an embarrassing disaster. She gets food caught in her braces whilst on a date. She thinks her co-workers are laughing at her braces during a meeting. She feels madly self-conscious and unattractive in general. And so... she gets her braces removed. All right, then! Buh-bye, braces! And good luck, Ms. Hobbes, dealing with the chronic pain of untreated TMJ!

Meanwhile, in the Land of Samantha... Sam has a new client, the 12-year-old Jenny Brier (who will grow up to become Nora of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, notably--a film of which I am fond of primarily because of its stalwart Jersey-centricness) who wants Sam's P.R. firm to handle her bat mitzvah party. Hooray for a deeply meaningful ceremony, designed to honor a young woman's intellectual and spiritual coming of age! Or--wait, sorry, my mistake--Jenny is interested in her bat mitzvah purely and exclusively because of the excuse it provides to throw a decadent, star-studded, over-the-top party. (My Super Sweet... Religious Maturation Soiree?)

Sam is infuriated and appalled by the behavior of, and ideas expressed by, the extremely spoiled, hyper-privileged, deeply cynical, and potty-mouthed Jenny. She is also quite jealous of the gobs of money which the not-quite-13-year-old Ms. Brier has at her disposal, as opposed to the complete lack of cash and material goods which she had, when she herself was a lass on the eve of adolescence.

But in the end, Sam realizes that Jenny deserves, not to be envied, but rather pitied, since she has been catapulted into adulthood waaaay too fast. Jenny has never gotten to be a kid, but has instead embraced/been pressured into a shallow, hypersexual version of womanhood much too early in her life. Hooray for noting that the pressures placed on pre-adolescent and teenage girls in our society are deeply messed up! And... happy bat mitzvah, Jenny! Mazel tov!

Charlotte, in the meantime... is having rather a rough time of it. Are we shocked? She and Trey are still having rather dire problems in the bedroom--in that... nothing sexual is happening there. At all. Or so Charlotte thinks, anyway... one night, she awakens to find her husband (who had previously insisted to her that he just wasn't a sexual person, and that she just had to accept that), deeply engaged in what my friends in the nineteenth-century would have called "self-abuse." And using a magazine (which I hope is fictional, but I am not looking it up to check--there are limits to the research which I will do) called Jugs to do so. Lovely!

Charlotte is appalled by this "I'm not a sexual person, oh, wait, sorry, I guess I just meant that I'm not interested in being sexual with you" behavior. The marriage therapist whom she and Trey have started seeing, however, is encouraged by it, since it at least confirms that Trey isn't gay. (Shall you pour the champagne, or shall I?) Said therapist (whose methodology seems a mite questionable to me, but no matter--I didn't have the wit to study anything so practical as psychology when I was in school) suggests that a productive way forward would be to make Charlotte part of Trey's current sexual routine. (Lady being asked to integrate herself into her gentlemen's sexual routine, but not vice versa? Check! Lady being asked to adjust herself to her gentlemen's sexual needs, but not he to hers? Double check!) This involves Charlotte cutting up pictures of herself, and pasting images of her face over those of the ladies in Jugs. A proud day for any woman, to see herself in such a prestigious periodical, I am sure! It must be just like Dorothy Parker first seeing her byline in The New Yorker! [Head reintroduces itself to desk.]

The Analysis:

13 Year Old Girls Being Hypersexualized and Feeling Compelled to Grow Up Super Fast=Bad Watch: So as you are likely already aware, one of the things that I like about this show is that it deals with the lives of actual adult women--yes, adult women on the younger side of things, in their 30s and 40s--but still, women who are older than your average TV Gossip Girl. I loved all the shows about teenagers which were on when I myself was a teenager (IN THE 1990S, THERE, I SAID IT)--but it's kind of nice to have a really popular show which revolves around women who are already adults (and not simply "I am the hot, smiling wife and mother in this 'Vehicle for a Failed Stand-Up Comic' sitcom" type adult women) and centers on their lives and experiences--their joys and frustrations.

That said--I like the fact that they tackle, and the way that they handle, teenagerhood here. Initially, the women of the show are a bit envious of Jenny, who is just sticking her very first toe in the pond of adulthood (the lake of adulthood? The ocean of adulthood? Whatever.), while they are already wading through its challenges and disappointments.

But then they realize that this seemingly blessed Child of the Gods actually has quite the tough row to hoe. Yes, she has seemingly boundless wealth--but with that seems to come a life which is centered purely on surface things--on throwing the hottest parties, wearing the hottest dresses, being the hottest girl in the room. And that kind of life, focused purely on looking good (according to very narrow standards of what "good" is, of course), and being the most famous and rich person around... ultimately doesn't seem that interesting, or fulfilling? (Cough, Paris Hilton, cough.)

And of course, there is the fact that Jenny is, at her oh-so-very-young age, already enmeshed in a very distasteful sexual milieu. She and her friends make several remarks in this episode about how giving blow jobs is the only way to get guys to like you, how they all started having sex when they were 12 purely by default, etc. Yeeeeesh. Hardly the beginnings of a joyful, autonomous, freely-chosen, self-directed sexual life, methinks.

I think the episode does a nice job of avoiding "you kids today, with your sex" type moralizing, making it clear that the problem here is that these lasses see sex as a commodity to be traded for popularity and affection (rather than as... I dunno, an expression of actual desire?). These girls (who are, let's face it, still bloody children) dress in a hypersexualized way, and are sexually active... but they're completely disconnected from their own bodies, and their own experiences. They see both their bodies and sex purely as ways of earning approval, securing popularity, gaining love... which would not seem to be the greatest beginning, for them to mature into adults who shape their sexuality around how they feel and what they want--rather than what sex will "get" them with other people.

Perhaps there is some hope, though (it's a New Year, after all, let us not be entirely gloomy!)--after all, SATC itself focuses on four grown-up women, who managed to make their way through a culture in which "authentic expressions of female sexuality" are all too often conflated with "make yourself into a sexual object (along the narrow and rigid lines which pop culture/the media/our nasty patriarchal society set out) for other people's consumption and pleasure--forget your own" to become women who are actively and delightedly in charge of their own sex lives.

Not that this is shown to be anything other than messy and imperfect, because it's surely both... do the women of SATC sometimes still experience their bodies as sites of anxiety, rather than pleasure, worrying more about how they look than how they feel? Sure. Do they sometimes have trouble articulating what they want sexually, not only to their lovers, but also to themselves? Absolutely. But still--when it comes to sex, these are women who know what they want, and pursue it, and know what they don't want, and don't accept it. Hopefully Jenny and her young friends will get there one day, too. (When they are older, though, for the love of Pete, they're only 12. Slow it down, kiddos! And by the way... get off my lawn! Kids today.)

Ladies, Please Accommodate Your Men, Part 9,345 (Will It Never End???) Watch: Okay, so, I kinda hafta do a 180 degree spin here, because you know how I was just talking about how SATC provides such a nice vision of sexually empowered adult women? Yeah, about that... I still think that it does, overall, but the Charlotte plotline in this episode... maybe not entirely helpful, in supporting that point? So... just forget the essential contradictions between what I'm about to say, and what I've just said, 'kay? Good.

I mean, it's not all bad here. I give the episode some points, because despite the extreme discomfort and difficulty of the situation, Charlotte does keep bringing up the whole "soooo... we've never had sex!" thing with her new spouse--she wants him to talk about it, she wants them to go to therapy, she wants them to make their sex life work. Good, good, good--fighting for the not-unreasonable goal of wanting to consummate her marriage! I'm with you so far...

I guess my issue here (and you knew I would have one--you haven't forgotten about me and my issues already, I hope?) is with the advice that the therapist gives the MacDougals, which they obediently adopt. Clearly, if the situation is that a gent favors porn over his wife (refusing to even touch said wife), the solution is to... make her part of said porn? I dunno, does that really... get to the root of the problem? And remind me again while the whole goal here is to make Charlotte part of Trey's sexual habits and preferences? Should we also think about Charlotte's sexual habits and preferences here...? Shouldn't we also care, just a little bit, about what Charlotte needs and wants, too? I suppose not. My mistake!

Next Up...?: "Frenemies," which centers on... well... frenemies. (For once, the writers didn't get cute with their episode titles--what you see is what you get!) Though I suppose that the episode is really more about friendship troubles more generally (i.e., Charlotte: offended by the nature of Sam's sex talk. Sam: offended that Charlotte is offended by the nature of her sex talk. Carrie: troubled by Miranda's decision to date one of her creepy ex-boyfriends. Miranda: troubled by Carrie being troubled by her decision to date one of her creepy ex-boyfriends. And around and around we go, where we stop, only the writers know!)

A Call to Feminist Bloggers

So as you may already be aware, in addition to being the chairwoman and CEO (Chief Entirely-Unpaid Officer...?) here at Back on Carrie’s Stoop, I’m also an academic. And in addition to my usual scholarly fare of nineteenth-century women’s history, I’ve been thinking a goodish bit lately about the feminist blogosphere—specifically about feminist bloggers who write about pop culture (or pop culture bloggers who tackle said pop culture through a feminist lens…whichever you prefer--you say potato, I say potato, etc., etc.) What motivates such bloggers to blog? What do they hope to do through their work and their criticism? How are they responded to by their readers? What potential do feminist blogs have to not only speak to, but also to transform culture?

To help me get some answers to said questions (apart from my own answers, of course--I already know what those are, and I must admit that I do not find them terribly interesting), I’ve put together a questionnaire, and hope to circulate it far and wide to feminist pop culture bloggers across, well, the feminist blogosphere, and get their (I am sure far more interesting) answers.

I’m going to be presenting at two quite delightful conferences (on pop culture and feminist activism, respectively) about this research later this year, and hope that I'll have some neat responses to talk about by then.

Which is where you come in, dear readers—if you yourself are a blogger, or know someone fantastic who is, or know some fantastic blog or book or article which I might want to read on the subject… please do let me know! You can e-mail me with any and all thoughts or questions, or interest in filling out my magical questionnaire (fingers crossed that some of you wish to do the latter!) at backoncarriesstoop@gmail.com. It would delight me to hear from you!

And just so you know, I am treating these questionnaires much as though I were a sociologist/journalist (used to dealing with the living) rather than a historian (used to dealing with the dead)—confidentiality and anonymity assured and guaranteed, there will be full disclosure about how I intend to use the info, I get, etc., etc. You’d think I dealt with the living all the time!