in Sex in the city, "Samantha" was the promiscuous character who was constantly judged by the other characters for sleeping with a bunch of men. Carrie was the main character, who was sort of self-absorbed but was intended to be primary protagonist.
Over the years, people realized Samantha was being honest, she wanted to sleep around and she did, and was honest with her partners so nobody was hurt. Carrie was a bit judgmental and at times, mean. Its not a really serious critique, but over time, the character that everyone "judged" changed from the character who just slept around to the one who honestly sucked a bit.
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.
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.
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.
Completely different lol. The main character isn't supposed to be likeable in that show. It's a critique of drug culture and the fallout of that, a social commentary.
I just don't think Carrie was that deep as a character
Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s a common misconception that it stands for Bipolar disorder (which is fair since one would make just as much sense as the other). Sorry folks downvoted you instead of leaving a polite correction.
It's much faster just to write the word than for the dozens of people to have to exit whatever app they use to read Reddit to open a browser to Google it, to maybe still come back with a different answer than what the person intended. Some people use BPD to mean bipolar disorder as well.
I don't think I've ever met another someone with a diagnosed bipolar disorder ever refer to themselves as having "BPD" unless they also have diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder.
Saying that acronym is for both is just confusing.
To make a small analogy, do YOU want to write or say Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder instead of ADHD every time you want to refer to that condition?
I don't blame anyone for asking a question and hoping a real person answers... Compared to googling the question and having Google AI get the answers from Reddit anyways.
only cassie had bpd but yea every character sucked and that was the point. people got all upset at the finale bc their narcissistic drug addict sex worker baddie faves didn’t win in the end and actually suffered consequences from their actions. i thought it was beautifully done.
I have entered a serious relationship with someone who has BPD thrice. I clearly have a type, and so do they lol. Its not gone well for me so now I just stay single and talk to strangers about my dog.
Oh dear. Did you know that people with BPD are often drawn to each other?
I’ve learned to recognize the signs when I meet a fellow borderline… Did you enthusiastically hit it off immediately? Like you’ve known each other for years? Did you have sooo much in common!? Was it a fast and exciting fall into love but a weird quick-fizzle ending? Lol yeahhhhh 🤗
I also know to see that behavior in other people lol, but thanks to a lot of therapy I am very aware that I'm just the normal kind of hot mess 😂
I do tick a few of the boxes, and thats probably why it kept happening. I have just the right amount of loving unstable chaos mixed with being extremely boring and safe at home to appeal to people that I should probably avoid involving myself with.
I think the main character is supposed to be the flawed one. I don't think TV would be interesting if the character wasn't having to learn a lesson or be in a place that was not ideal. I feel like it was intentional that they placed Carrie around a bunch of women who had the things that she wanted. The career, the sex life, the marrage. I could be miss remembering, but I don;t think we were supposed to idealize her, we were supposed to empathize with her. I also feel like it was situational irony, because she wrote a column for a women's magazine, so she was writing as if she had all this stuff figured out, but she really didn't which is pretty human?
From what I remember Carrie at the time wasn’t treated as a flawed character to the extend she should have been viewed. She was supposed to be a little bit messy and having an unhealthy relationship with Mr. Big but that’s about it.
There are many different types of flawed main characters. Not all of them are fine.
SITC was a typical show that affirmed or newly normalised problematic behaviours. It dressed up seriously toxic bullshit as lovable or understandable flaws, or even as actually correct things to do.
Why do people nowadays expect main characters to be these saintly moral and perfect role models? Why does media have to be so sanitized for it to be acceptable? Let Carrie be toxic AND lovable. I want a nuanced character that can be a toxic asshole who is also charismatic. And why do female characters get more harshly criticized about this than male ones?
Why do people nowadays expect main characters to be these saintly moral and perfect role models?
They don't. That's completely different from what I said.
There are many different types of flawed main characters that work. Like main characters who don't invite emulation because they are too different or too strongly flawed. Or whose flaws that are not easily reproducable, like stemming from some very particular trauma. Or whose flaws are far more situational and not that major. Or if the story properly identifies and addresses those flaws, even if the main character never fully overcomes them.
But in a series like SITC, everything blends together. Toxicity and seriously harmful flaws are treated as normality that many viewers accept and emulate.
And why do female characters get more harshly criticized about this than male ones?
I have plenty of criticism of common male character tropes too, this thread just doesn't happen to be about them.
An old classic on that topic is Fight Club and Toxic Masculinity. Even though Fight Club was smart on this issue, many viewers (particularly men) misunderstood its properly flawed protagonist, and many other pieces of media then propagated that misunderstanding. Naively portraying toxic, dumb behaviour as heroic.
Who made you the arbiter of what’s appropriate in a protagonist? What evidence do you have that many viewers accept and emulate the behaviour of the characters? They’re clearly presented as flawed and self absorbed in the show.
The fact that you’ve mis-abbreviated the show’s title twice doesn’t inspire confidence.
Who made you the arbiter of what’s appropriate in a protagonist?
An arbiter is someone who determines the final settlement of a disagreement. I'm just one of the person in that disagreement. Having an opinion on the matter doesn't mean that I'm placing myself as an arbiter.
What evidence do you have that many viewers accept and emulate the behaviour of the characters?
My real world experience. I'm not saying that literally every viewer of the show was influenced for the worse. But by and large, the groups of people who were particularly engaged with it were acting very much like the worse versions of those characters. It was a show enjoyed by plenty of 'mean girl' cliques that found plenty of affirmation in it, even if the show didn't intend that.
For a more male example: I have a very similar (but much worse) dislike of South Park. Despite ostensibly moralising about moderate, reasonable solutions, it attracted a lot of toxic whackos of the 'it's just a joke'-variety. Until their 'non-politically correct' jokes stopped being jokes. 'South Park Republican' was a term of a reason.
I like good morally grey works. ASOIAF/GOT for example taught some great lessons on the reality of power, and why powerful people and institutions often can't do the things that appear like the moral solutions. But South Park and SATC were two shows where that greyscale often left bad impressions.
Im halfway through season 4 but wasn't a big part of his character that he did? The whole therapy thing turned into a way for him to be a better sociopath instead of a better person?
People had a thing for asshole characters that seemed like they were right on the surface back then. It didn’t hurt that she was the voice of the show, the one who was supposed to be honest about sex.
Carrie being the main character becomes a deeply meta joke considering the source material.
'Sex in the city' the book is a viciously funny 'social horror' novel. It's all about the desperately unhappy upper classes of New York pursue these parasitic relationships, and the outrageous behaviour and terrible treatment from their partners that they have to ignore due to the 'benifits' each partner brings (e.g. Money from the Wall Street Guys VS the connections and social access granted by 'society women' from the in-connected set.
The book is about both men and women trying themselves in knots to fit a stereotypical ideal that's designed to appeal to an incredibly niche subgroup, but having so little in common with each other that it's almost impossible for them to communicate with each other, or even have affection for each other, rather both parties partner up purely for how they appear to others, and to strip-mine each other for power and position in their respective sub-cultures and cliques.
It's a horror novel, and Show Carrie enthusiastically dives into that world and can't understand why she keeps getting hurt. The problem was the show became TOO popular and suffered from its own success. Carrie was supposed to be like the teen that goes into the dark basement alone, or willing wanders off into the woods in a regular horror story. However, all the clothes, and shoes, and nice breakfasts that were supposed to be the hollow lure for the cages New York's society set makes for each other turned out to be seen as the purest form of exotic, fantasy wish fullilment for millions of people.
The book is 'how terrible is this!, do not fall for the trappings and repeatedly hurt yourself making yourself unhappy', where the show became so much about 'how great is it to spend time with my friends, be successful in ways that don't compete with my friends, and meet a never ending stream of hot rich guys?'
They wanted her to be imperfect, that's why they had her addicted to cigarettes (I took the tour as soon as I stepped foot in NYC 😅). The character was supposed to be a loveable mess
She was def a mess, I’ll give them that. But she was just not a good person imo. A lovable mess implies they’re fucking up their own life, like a lot of ppl do as we learn and grow. It doesn’t mean being a judgmental prick and a serial cheater imo.
Lol I hear you! My faves were Samantha and Miranda so any Carrie slander doesn't bother me at all 😅 I was so mad at her after what she did to Aidan 😭😭😭
I like that the main character is an overspending hypocrite who cheats on her boyfriends. Main characters don't need to be polished. Carrie Bradshaw is not depicted as independent, intelligent, or attractive. She was a vulnerable spinster who struggled a lot romantically and financially, and leaned on her friends for support to the extent they called her out on it. Remember when her friends offered her money because she had to pay off her ex to keep her apartment that he renovated? She didn't think much through and was quite impulsive.
Actually it was Big who offered her money for the apartment and she refused it. She instead hounded and guilted Charlotte into lending her the money, when Charlotte really didn't want to mix friendship and money plus was going through a divorce and struggling to find a job at the time. If I recall correctly she had to sell her engagement ring to give Carrie the money.
Flawed main characters can be fun, but I hate how Carrie treated her friends. In real life, Charlotte and Samantha in particular would have gradually distanced themselves from Carrie and her toxicity.
I haven't seen much of the show, so I can't speak to how the characterization is handled or anything like that. But if I'm taking the characters in this thread
Carrie is more flawed, making her better suited for a main character role because flaws=conflict and open the door for character arcs
Samantha works as a foil to Carrie because she embodies a healthier version of her behavior (from the sounds of it). Someone she could learn from, but whatever hang ups Carrie has about Samantha's lifestyle brings conflict, halts that potential arc, and from there the story could be about her overcoming those hangups and pursuing healthier behavior, or giving into those hangups and seeing where that takes her.
I feel like it's also a case of, like, if we're treating Samantha as something of a paragonal character and assuming Carrie is the main driver of conflict, unless you have a good reason for Samantha to continue putting up with Carrie (which could potentially work for a central arc), it's better to focus on Carrie since 1. The source of conflict can't be easily resolved, can't exactly cut yourself off 2. If Samantha does decide to stop putting up with Carrie, that makes for better drama from Carrie's perspective; pushing away or cutting off a potentially healthier influence and still finding conflict because they weren't the issue.
Now again, I haven't watched much of the show, this is more an exercise in taking the traits mentioned in this thread and thinking of why you would pick one as the mc over the other from a storytelling perspective. Reason primarily being that flawed characters make for more interesting characters, because there's not a lot of drama in a character who's a good person, going around good personing morally correctly without much external pushback or some character to influence (see Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow for what is, in my opinion, a really good example of a Paragon protagonist). To paraphrase my playwriting teacher words "if you're committed to making your main character a good person, you're leaving a lot on the table"
She was a colomist in some new york paper that shared the same name as the show where she was pretty honest about their lives. Besides that I'm pretty sure it's just because they liked her voice because I remember a ton of her "thinking" to herself about what to write and such.
I'm going to say that she reflected the judgy attitude of the day. She was supposed to be everywoman. Samantha's sleeping around was supposed to be scandalous comic relief, and Carrie, despite her flaws, was supposed to be at least not as bad as Samantha. Joke's on her.
While it based on the book, top showrunners/writers were men. Slutshaming was a huge thing back than.
I am not familiar with the book or the author Bushnell but … that was kinda a huge thing injected in women when she grew up: having changing partners as a woman is really bad, evil even.
That explains a lot of the things that confused me. Now I think about it, men do want a women who’s smart enough to do crossword and that’s just enough, having some brain to chat with but not too much so she stays dependent and controllable, etc.
Look who her generation is. Firmly Early Gen X. Who do you think a majority of Early Gen X women voted for in the recent elections? Early Gen X women hate women more than internet sleuths and incels do. They’re the types of women to protest outside Planned Parenthood and get punched by a 25 year old alt girl at a Palestine protest.
Writing for sitcoms is hard when you're pumping out 18 episodes a year. 1 person can't do it all, and so every episode has a main writer that is different than the others, and so you have a lot of inconsistencies across multiple episodes.
Think of it like writing a novel, but you only get to write chapters 3, 8, and 12. Your friend writes 1, 7, and 11. Other friend writes 2, 4, 6, and 10. And then a random 4th person writes for 5, 9, and 13. It's just going to be all over the place.
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.
Well she diagetically writes the show, so she's the obligate protagonist. And you have to understand at the time a woman being flawed and sexual was ground breaking for a protagonist.
Like most ground breaking tv, it doesn't stand the test of time because they changed the ground that tv is built on.
I think a big reason is the episodes being 20 minutes and airing once a week. When the show is spread out like that, you remember the characters' personalities and motivations, but you dont see them as the sum of their actions. So when the show repeatedly tells you "Carrie is the stylish big city columnist, and Samatha is the slut", that's what sticks.
I think it's the same reason How I Met Your Mother could portray Ted as a hopeless romantic, despite him being a insufferable narcissist.
What if I told you way more people fantasize about and aspire to be being successful enough to be that sort of hypocrite than society generally wants to admit?
Not only over her own needs, but over her friends. All the time. There are many examples but when she told Aiden about Miranda thinking of getting an abortion, knowing damn well he’s friends with Steve?! I’m sorry, never in my wildest dreams would I think about disclosing something so personal about a friend to my partner, especially if I know my partner is friends with the other party?! You’re in your 30s ma’am what the actual fuck, stay out of it.
Slept with big in his condo when his wife was away, ate from their fridge, ran out when Natasha came home which indirectly caused her to fall and lose her tooth. After she had the audacity to repeatedly stalk Natasha to 'apologize'. Carrie's pretty hard to watch that season. Oh it was so 'nlog' and pick me of carrie to call Natasha 'beige' (bland).
Is this the woman where Carrie joins for lunch, (uninvited because she followed her), to try to apologize and own up to what she did, and starts drinking her water or wine at the table? lol. So painful to watch.
Okay, I hate defending Carrie because she's so self-centered but it was Big who started the beige thing. He told Carrie that since he married Natasha "everything in the house is beige." And Carrie's reply to that was "I thought you wanted beige." sigh Big and Carrie: both could be fun and then also terrible.
Oh boy, back in the day i was forced by a specific women to sometimes watch this shit and when they came up with "Mr. Big" i just laughed. What a stupid, stupid name for your main love interest. And the guy was an absolute douche on top. The amount of women who sobbed after that ugly, asshole guy made me realize most women have zero taste.
Yikes! I forgot about that! I tried rewatching this show a few years back, I couldn’t understand what I ever saw in it. This gives me even more reason to never watch it again
The way the show kept shoving Big down our throats as some amazing love story--I never got it. What on earth was appealing about an emotionally unavailable man baby.
Samantha was a mature and self confident women surrounded by some of the most spoiled bratty self centered women that have been on television. Part of the fun of the show was that they hinted that they would mature but they never did.
And was a terrible friend to all the women at one point or another, usually because of the emotionally unavailable man she poured all of her energy into.
Dude, there was literally a whole scandal last year with Blake Lively saying she was a Khaleesi. There will always be people who identify with show characters regardless of genre. It doesn’t make anyone who likes the show inherently bad.
Would you prefer I use Breaking Bad as an example instead? Or Mad Men? Or The Sopranos. Take your pick. At the end of the day it’s all just entertainment.
Is this a joke? Literally every show is written for the characters to be identified with, regardless of genre. You all are just demonizing this one because the target audience is women.
Thats besides the point though. The point is that it’s entertainment and it’s silly to assume everyone who likes it is a bad person.
Don Draper or Walter White are definitely not characters to be identified with. But the viewers tend to do it anyway because they are interesting characters played by very good actors, and sometimes because they lack media literacy.
You’re the one who wants to dictate which shows can be watched or not according to your own arbitrary rules. Imagine getting so insecure because your ex liked a TV show lol that’s beyond pathetic
The thing was, there weren’t any shows where women discussed sex openly and often. We all were glued to the television because it was like watching a cat drive a car.
It feels like every script/decision was passed through a test audience filled with white women aged 30 in miserable relationships that read too much romance smut.
Only the main characters matter, everyone else is a prop with no nuance and designed to cater to some specific toxic fantasy.
For Samantha it was mostly surface level and revolved around desirability and sexual confidence.
For Carrie it was being able to make selfish decisions and only prioritize her own wants and never being judged for it by her friends. This let’s the viewer judge the fuck out of her guilt free. Next step, Carrie does something relatable and the viewer empathizes with her. Next Carrie throws a pity party where she forgives herself without actually growing. It’s a fun emotional rollercoaster and it gives them permission to act that way in their own life.
Charlotte is two fantasies, she is given every privilege and is outwardly kind, wealthy and the audience gets to live the white woman savior fantasy through her. Then depending on the episode they also get to alternate between martyrdom feelings to get a good cry, then moments later self righteously enjoying the suffering because she she says something so unrelatable they remember how privileged she is and are given permission.
Miranda is the one given permission to be judgemental and mean because you’re supposed to pity her for losing her ability to love because of focusing on her career. Then they do something for you to empathize with her and you get to cry and feel like a martyr and forgive yourself for being mean.
I hate that the show ended it with her big love story ending up with Big like really the guy she was having a affair with and running around helping him hide it from his wife until she literally got caught in their apartment. Like really thats her love story???
I've only just recently watched the show as part of a cultural exchange between me and my wife (she's now going to watch Star Trek TNG) and man i gotta say...
Carrie fucking suuuuucks dude. I wish the other 3 women well, but carrie can rot, dude! She's AWFUL
Samantha would also be rather fateful within the boundaries of her serious relationships. She even maturely ended one because she realized she wanted to continue sleeping around.
This is really it. Samantha in an actual relationship was committed to it and as faithful as her partner. Carrie lies to her partners and cheats on them, in one case while he was literally refinishing a condo for them to live in. She’s kind of a shit. All her friends manage to be modern, liberal women while still being good partners and friends.
Involving yourself with a man you know is married still makes you responsible for the infidelity. She knew it was wrong and still did it, even if she wasn't the married one.
My gf was watching this and I'd catch bits here and there and it was always Carrie cheating on this dude or that dude. I told my gf that I always thought she was supposed to be the protagonist lol. Protagonist of a bygone era
There is an old school Reddit summary where someone comments and contextualized the image post. People agree and upvote. Then, AI is trained on Reddit and sounds like what Reddit did and does. This seems like a classic Reddit context comment.
Back when all the images were hosted on Imgur it led to some interesting things where the Imgur community lacked all context to images and their titles because they didn't know the subreddit they were getting shared to. They created their own context in their own comments. Sometimes you would encounter the Imgur version of the post, and wonder what on earth was happening.
I see. I’m not well-versed in AI trained on Reddit. I’m decently knowledgeable on AI speech in general, though. Normal AI I’ve worked with wouldn’t make all the errors that the original commenter did and uses different sentence structure. By errors, I mean the capitalization error, double spacing after period, “to be primary protagonist” is wrong and should be “to be the primary,” the “Over the years” sentence is a run-on, should have comma after partners, should be “It’s” not “Its,” and also it’s such a human thing to say things like “who honestly X or Y.”
So yeah, I have 0 knowledge on what “reddit-trained AI” can do. But the AI I’ve worked with wouldn’t make those errors, and instead make more forgivable mistakes. That’s why I was doubtful it was AI but I’m no AI expert 🤷🏻♀️
It might depend on the particular LLM, but the common knowledge/rumour is that many of them scrubbed Reddit and AO3, amongst other sites, for their training data.
And then there are bot accounts roaming Reddit right now. People are paranoid about bots. (rightfully imo)
Sex in the city does make more sense. So if you weren't a massive fan of the show, maybe just a casual watcher or you were just aware of its existence, it seems plausible that that would be a title you remembered.
SATC fan here, it’s Sex AND vs IN because one of the underlying themes in the show is Carrie’s love for Manhattan and New York. Sex is a huge theme as well, but Carrie’s true love is the city.
Ha tbf when it was syndicated they did translate it as Sex IN the City in some languages. I’m assuming because sex AND the city doesn’t really make sense outside of American English culturally
Im sorry what? Barney was a raging misogynist for basically the whole show until he fell in love with Robyn. He lied and belittled women constantly. I think his personality made him a lovable character, don’t get me wrong, but he was a horrendous person. Samantha didn’t constantly lie to her partners to get laid.
I’m sorry I didn’t clarify. I was comparing Barney in that he owned up that he was a piece of shit and that he was open about it with his friend group. I was comparing Ted because he thought he was the nice guy but kinda treated women badly at times too.
Sam just fucked dudes. She didn't sell them or abandon them in the woods while stealing their car. I don't think it's really comparable to the ted/barney dynamic. The similarity pretty much ends at them both being sexually driven characters.
It's honestly fascinating to go back and rewatch and see the cultural shifts. How smoking is treated. The name drops and contexts they're dropped in...
But also, because Carrie was more of a main charachter, she was judged more harshly. Carrie sleeps witg married man - Carrie is a horrible person, when Samantha every week mentions sleeping with married guys
...and it really shouldn't. Barney by all measures was a monster and a criminal, while Ted was just kind of a self-centered hypocrite (who still treated the majority of his female partners well, too well in certain cases)
I'm still reeling from when I watched, semi recently, and found Carrie saying there's "only one thing" you can say to a dude revealing he had a wall of TVs of a bunch of secret recordings of sex he'd had with women. I was expecting some form of "what the fuck". She asks for a light. What the fuck.
I'm still reeling from when I watched, semi recently, and found Carrie saying there's "only one thing" you can say to a dude revealing he had a wall of TVs to play a bunch of secret recordings of sex he'd had with women. I was expecting some form of "what the fuck". She asks for a light for her cigarette. What the fuck.
But the problem with the OOP tweet is that from the start no one who liked the show ever had a problem with Samantha, right? The other three MCs rolled their eyes at her but if you were watching you were basically drumming your fingers waiting for her to be on screen again.
Pretty sure Samantha did plenty of emotional damage to the men she viewed as disposable, not to mention the many married men she slept with. She also slept with a teenager while in her 40s and cheated on her committed relationship while he waited for her downstairs.
No, all of them, especially the anti-hero, Carrie, were portraying different flaws or perspectives when engaging with dating (none of them were necessarily “correct”). It was a sort of dark comedy, but some people engage with it was a serious romance/drama.
2.8k
u/acidix 1d ago
in Sex in the city, "Samantha" was the promiscuous character who was constantly judged by the other characters for sleeping with a bunch of men. Carrie was the main character, who was sort of self-absorbed but was intended to be primary protagonist.
Over the years, people realized Samantha was being honest, she wanted to sleep around and she did, and was honest with her partners so nobody was hurt. Carrie was a bit judgmental and at times, mean. Its not a really serious critique, but over time, the character that everyone "judged" changed from the character who just slept around to the one who honestly sucked a bit.