Sex & The City

So. I finally went to see this movie.

Sex & The City is one of the few tv shows that I actually sat down to watch tv for. When I say "few," I mean the only one, actually. The only other tv series I watched regularly was Ally McBeal, & I watched it standing up & walking around, because it was on the tvs at On The Rocks Cafe every Tuesday night & I was cocktailing at the time.

There are reviews of this show all over the web by now. I refuse to brave theaters during the 1st week of release so I see everything when it's already been chewed up & spit out. But here's my review.

Great movie. I don't usually go in for stuff like this, being partial to Scifi Adventure (Iron Man was The Shit.). I knew it was going to hurt at some places & I knew I was going to cry, which really didn't sit well with me, but thankfully theaters are dark.

Sex & The City is from the Brad era. There, I've said it: the word most of my close friends (I do have some) avoid saying around me. Like EQ, S&TC was a point of ridicule for my HBA boyfriend until he accidentally saw some of it over my shoulder (I could only watch it at his house, not having a tv of my own), & then he ended up on the couch with me, laughing at the girls' antics & pondering awkward situations. Like EQ, it was another thing that bonded us. Or bonded me, anyway.

But Carrie & Big ended up together while Brad & I parted ways. So a return to S&TC, knowing that it would culminate in a wedding (of course it would; are you stupid??), wasn't necessarily attractive to me. However, there was no way I couldn't attend. I had to attend.

In the beginning of the movie there were some flashbacks of Carrie & Big's previous break-ups, one of them in which Carrie begged Big: "Just tell me I'm The One. Just tell me... I'm The One." Which, we know from history, he couldn't do, & so they broke up.

I only vaguely remembered that episode, probably because it was too close to home at the time. When Louise, Carrie's new personal assistant, confided in Carrie that her ex-boyfriend had broken her heart telling her that he loved her but just didn't feel she was the one, I wanted to throw my soda at the movie screen.

I'm much less permeable now. But I can still get pissed.

I had never understood our break up (Break ups. There were 5 of them.). His explanations never made sense, nor did his behavior. If he would have just told me that he simply wasn't in love with me any more it would have made it easier for me. Would make it easier for me. But instead, as he extricated himself from my life, Brad insisted, like his life depended on it, that he loved me, really loved me. Gimme a pain sandwich with extra confusion & a side of ambiguous bullshit please. Yummy!!

After failing to meet her at the altar, Big sends Carrie a series of love letters. They are all (fictitiously), but one, quotes from famous love letters, because he can't find his own words & doesn't know what to say but still had to say something. Fortunately, Big did write one letter on his own. So. He did really have thoughts of his own. Thank goodness, since she took him back.

When I think back to all the different break up excuses Brad came up with, it's actually pretty funny. To this day I still don't know why we broke up. But part of me has been walking around all this time puzzling over not being The One. What would make someone The One. How someone knows when someone else is The One. Who I know that recognized The One. How could I have thought he was The One. Etc etc.

But maybe I can get off the hook here. Because maybe Brad was just saying whatever he could come up with to validate our break up. Maybe he was just quoting a break up expert because in actuality he didn't know what to say. And here I've been trying to figure this shit out for 3 years. And 30 days.

I know that using a movie to invalidate my last relationship is cheap, but maybe it's appropriate. At least there was one love letter that Big composed on his own. He did eventually find his own words.

Grats, Carrie. And grats me.

And THIS, my friends, is why I don't go to these kinds of movies.