Staircase Wit

In Netflix's Hollywood, everyone is sexy, glamorous, and gorgeous. Everyone is miraculously talented. Everyone is in love. There are no real bad guys (except lawyers). Everyone wants to protect the civil rights of the minorities. Everyone does the right thing. The series starts out great--savvy and interesting. But then it slowly becomes cheesy, and ends in a cute Oscar awards show where everyone gets their happy ending. It's like the ending of the film/novel Atonement, where the writer fantasizes about an alternate reality in which everything turns out perfectly in the end, just because she felt bad about the actual events in real life.

Thanks to my HBO Go subscription (probably one of my most sulit purchases during the quarantine period), I was able to re-watch Season 1 of Sex and the City. I grew up watching SATC. All throughout my years in undergrad, I tuned in to HBO weekly to watch Carrie Bradshaw and her friends traipse all over New York City. I was a just a teenager back then, and as a teenager I thought Carrie and her friends knew everything there was to know about life and love. Watching SATC again, and now in my mid-thirties, I realized that Carrie’s maturity when it comes to dating and relationships is that of a woman in her early twenties. I mean, who else would: (1)  date a guy who clearly didn’t see her early on as someone he would want to marry eventually; (2) actually whine to the same guy about not being taken seriously; (3) actually arrange a meeting with the same guy’s ex-wife; (4) go to the church where the same guy accompanied his mother, hoping he would introduce her as his girlfriend;