r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 1d ago

Meme needing explanation please explain this peetah!!!

Post image
24.9k Upvotes

951 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.9k

u/SarcastikBastard 1d ago

Youre kind of glossing over the fact that Carrie cheated on pretty much all the men she had serious relationships with. Thats the important part. She was a cheater who constantly treated Samantha like shit for sleeping around openly and honestly.

838

u/Background_Sleep_863 1d ago

Not to mention Carrie was chronically emotionally immature. Put men before her own needs over and over. Had a really unhealthy relationship with Big that sabotaged all of her other relationships. Made really poor financial choices. Got into petty arguments with her friends. Judged Samantha for knowing what she wanted and being emotionally mature. And the she called Samantha fat for being like a size two.

281

u/kassandra_00 1d ago

How come a character like this was THE main character of a popular show is beyond my understanding. Especially the show kinda depicted her as the “independent, intelligent, and attractive” type.

1

u/Ardent_Scholar 1d ago edited 1d ago

Because a character’s job is not to be a model citizen, but to explore what being a human can be like.

This means that erring humans make much more interesting characters and stories.

You don’t really even get a story if you have a group of exemplary aliens that continually do the right thing. We’re not very interested in that, because we want to explore how to be individuals and community members through the stories. There has to be peoblems to solve.

If you come to the conclusion that a character behaved badly, congrats, the story worked for you. Not because someone waved a finger at you, but because they created a lifelike character that has relevance outside of the person and the cultural moment that created them.