Shortly after I graduated college, while I indulged in a life of leisure, living in my own apartment with a boyfriend down the street and a restaurant job that allowed me to go home every night with cash in my pocket, I quickly established routines for myself that gave my otherwise static life some direction. I set a strict(ish) gym routine, took singing lessons, made myself a regular at a downtown piano bar, all to offet the lack of momentum I felt at the time.
I also discovered Sex and the City on DVD. Every Tuesday, my day off from work and classes, I would go to the gym late in the morning, pick up takeout from Chili's on my way home, and then binge on chicken tacos and vicarious trysts for the rest of the afternoon. Often, in order to pace myself so I don't blow through an entire season in one day, I would rewatch certain episodes, relaugh at my favorite scenes, and reconsider my identity: Am I Charlotte, the starry-eyed optimist? Miranda, the hard-shelled realist? Or Samantha??
But of course, no matter how I shuffled the characters, how I viewed their traits, I would always have the same answer. I was Carrie. Of course I was Carrie. I've dated the same men, asked the same questions of myself, cried over the same relationships.
Only later did I fully realize that everyone thinks they are Carrie simply because she is the embodiment of all the characters, designed to be that way and thus the most relatable. Nobody is always optimistic, always emotionally distant, always sleeping with the hottest and most eligible bachelors within a certain zip code, but we all can be at some point (with any luck). Carrie is the most well-rounded, the closest thing to a mirror that the show has to hold up to us; she is our sherpa, guiding us through what can be an uphill climb on our way to relationship bliss.
The show worked best when it was a love letter to singlehood, to all the people in the world searching for love. And though I grew further apart from the girls of Sex and the City as time went on (didn't even bother to watch the second movie, and I wasn't a fan of the first), and I stopped thinking of myself in terms of "which one am I?" (even though I am clearly Miranda), I still felt a faint pang of nostalgia when I stumble upon it on TV, as Sam and I did last night.
Though Sam swears that all he hears on the show is a bunch of women squawking at each other, he still managed to sit through two and a half episodes, even making insightful commentary along the way. I have often joked that if Sam were a Sex and the City character, he would be a "single-episode boyfriend," doomed to stand in for an old and familiar archetype of a person we all have met, loved, and lost at some point in our lives.
After all, he does not talk about love, nor does he take the time to really ponder the nature of it in his spare time. He boils his relationships down until all nuance has evaporated, and all that is left is "Do I like this person?" "Does he like me?" "Do I want to spend more time together than I do with anyone else?" "And does he?"
So truthfully, a TV show from his perspective would probably only last one episode anyway; what more is there, really, after all of his questions are answered?
Who knew he could be so insightful after all?
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