spritechan | Entries tagged with tv

I first started watching Sex and the City on TBS in 2005, when I was lonely during my first year of college, living by myself and experiencing severe insomnia. The episodes were mostly in order, but because of the heavy censoring I didn't always get the full picture.

I was 17 and in a struggling relationship. I idealized Happily Ever After with The One. I hated Big - he was terrible and cold. I hated cold men. I loved Aidan and Steve. I couldn't believe Carrie would hurt Aidan so much.

Eventually I started getting the seasons on DVD (2007-2010), and a clearer picture started to emerge. Smith and Harry were added to my list of amazing men. Still hated Big. Started to see that Carrie was very problematic. By the time I saw the first movie, I could NOT forgive Carrie for what she did to Big (and I was pretty pissed at Charlotte too for stopping him from explaining). As if either of them are perfect. Obviously the whole movie plot wouldn't exist without Carrie running away, but fuck them both. I also hated how dirty they did Smith. They made him callous. The show ends with a patient Smith telling a recovering-from-chemo Samantha he loved her after flying back from the movie set. Movie Smith is wrapped up in himself and a bored and neglected Samantha leaves him.

The second movie is just stupid, other than Charlotte's parenting difficulties and part of Big's handling of Carrie telling him she kissed Aidan - the part where he says it really tore him up and really just, how he processed in a very true-to-Big way... giving her a "Reminder that I'm married" ring is wildly unlike either of them - Carrie does not want to be "owned" and Big doesn't give a fuck about proving anything.

Anyway - someone in ONTD shared this article. And it really made me reflect on the show and its impact on me.

Carrie fell under the thrall of Mr. Big, the sexy, emotionally withholding forty-three-year-old financier played by Chris Noth. From then on, pleasurable as “Sex and the City” remained, it also felt designed to push back at its audience’s wish for identification, triggering as much anxiety as relief. It switched the romantic comedy’s primal scene, from “Me, too!” to “Am I like her?” A man practically woven out of red flags, Big wasn’t there to rescue Carrie; instead, his “great love” was a slow poisoning.

After watching through several times, I don't actually think Big was made of red flags at all. As a 32-year-old, Carrie is my age when the show starts. Carrie is immature and plays a lot of games. She expects Big to intuit everything she needs and throws tantrums when he can't. When he confronts her directly, she deflects. He wasn't there to rescue Carrie, though several times he does offer to. She says he doesn't chase her, but he does - just on his own time, like everything else in his life.

[T]he conundrum Carrie faced for the entire series: true love turned her into a fake. The Season 1 neurotic Carrie didn’t stick, though. She and Big fixed things, then they broke up again, harder. He moved to Paris. She met Aidan (John Corbett), the marrying type. In Season 3, the writers upped the ante, having Carrie do something overtly anti-heroic: she cheated on a decent man with a bad one (Big, of course), now married to that “perfect little woman,” Natasha. They didn’t paper over the repercussions: Natasha’s humiliation, and the way Carrie’s betrayal hardened Aidan, even once he took her back. During six seasons, Carrie changed, as anyone might from thirty-two to thirty-eight, and not always in positive ways. She got more honest and more responsible; she became a saner girlfriend. But she also became scarred, prissier, strikingly gun-shy—and, finally, she panicked at the question of what it would mean to be an older single woman.

This summary is on-point. Though I think Carrie is fake a LOT of the time. I don't think Aidan was "good" and Big was "bad." Though I do have a lot of negative feelings about Big's coercion of Carrie in the elevator, Carrie had been avoiding Big because she knew she wanted him too. Aidan, the first go around, was presented as very pure. And that made the pain all the bigger. Although I'd like to point out, while the affair Carrie and Big have seems to stretch over quite some time (and again, feels pretty realistic in many ways), the reality is they were only messing around for about a month. Affairs are rarely that short-lived. Just saying.

The way the Aidan-Carrie-Big triangle played out the second time is honestly super-realistic in a lot of ways, in my experience. Aidan's remaining trauma and Carrie's desire to stay friends with Big hit directly home for me. I'd say most relationships are not stable or trusting enough to make it work, but it's exactly how I wanted things to play out for me. Well, plus open relationship. Carrie and Aidan should have definitely worked on the relationship in therapy instead of needling each other for however long, and Aidan obviously needed individual therapy as well to deal with his trust issues.

Her friends went through changes, too, often upon being confronted with their worst flaws—Charlotte’s superficiality, Miranda’s caustic tongue, Samantha’s refusal to be vulnerable. In a departure from nearly all earlier half-hour comedies, the writers fully embraced the richness of serial storytelling. In a movie we go from glare to kiss in two hours. “Sex and the City” was liberated from closure, turning “once upon a time” into a wry mantra, treating its characters’ struggles with a rare mixture of bluntness and compassion. It was one of the first television comedies to let its characters change in serious ways, several years before other half-hour comedies, like “The Office,” went and stole all the credit.

^^^ Definitely agree. I think the growth experienced by the characters is true to human nature and very relatable.

Most unusually, the characters themselves were symbolic... the four friends operated as near-allegorical figures, pegged to contemporary debates about women’s lives, mapped along three overlapping continuums. The first was emotional: Carrie and Charlotte were romantics; Miranda and Samantha were cynics. The second was ideological: Miranda and Carrie were second-wave feminists, who believed in egalitarianism; Charlotte and Samantha were third-wave feminists, focused on exploiting the power of femininity, from opposing angles. The third concerned sex itself. At first, Miranda and Charlotte were prudes, while Samantha and Carrie were libertines. Unsettlingly, as the show progressed, Carrie began to glide toward caution, away from freedom, out of fear.

The show’s basic value system aligns with Carrie: romantic, second-wave, libertine. But “Sex and the City” ’s real strength was its willingness not to stack the deck: it let every side make a case, so that complexity carried the day. When Carrie and Aidan break up, they are both right. When Miranda and Carrie argue about her move to Paris, they are both right. The show’s style could be brittle, but its substance was flexible, in a way that made the series feel peculiarly broad-ranging, covering so much ground, so fleetly, that it became easy to take it for granted.

These last two paragraphs, I think, perfectly capture why I keep coming back to the show. Relationships are complex, and the characters are not always right. They make stupid decisions and have bad opinions. They are judgmental, naive a-holes. There is so much gray. The assumed tropes of high school sweethearts that live happily ever after and never fuck up and never hurt each other are not *real* like this show was. Multiple people can be right in any given situation, and yet everyone can still get hurt.

And then, in the final round, “Sex and the City” pulled its punches, and let Big rescue Carrie. It honored the wishes of its heroine, and at least half of the audience, and it gave us a very memorable dress, too. But it also showed a failure of nerve, an inability of the writers to imagine, or to trust themselves to portray, any other kind of ending—happy or not. And I can’t help but wonder: What would the show look like without that finale? What if it were the story of a woman who lost herself in her thirties, who was changed by a poisonous, powerful love affair, and who emerged, finally, surrounded by her friends? Who would Carrie be then?

The first time I watched the series, I was so mad that she ended up with Big. After several watch-throughs, I came around. Again, I don't think Big was poisonous. He always loved Carrie, but he was a white man used to being in power/getting his way/being selfish and she intimidated and confused him with her own brand of self-importance. He came around - he experienced a lot of growth in the show as well. Carrie going to Paris was a dumbass idea. She'd already seen that Aleksandr put work first - why was she surprised? I think Big chasing after Carrie to the end fit exactly with his M.O. And I loved how the other characters played out too - Charlotte and Harry and new baby (flying in the face of her ex husband's POS mother's opinions on adoption), Smith softening up Samantha's refusal to be vulnerable, Miranda finally acknowledging the importance of family to her.

I dunno, there's so much about the show that aged super poorly (or was just poorly done to begin with), but the overarching story and themes still sit deep with me :)

Today we woke up a little late, and were both frisky right away in the morning so we decided to take advantage of that!

Then we relaxed with coffee before needing to head out to lunch with Steve’s parents and grandpa, who just turned 92. We planned to get to Roseville a little early so we could stop at Half Priced Books. Today was a bust for me, no cheap SK hardcovers, no Murakami I don’t have, no manga that seemed interesting and no humor books that caught my eye. I was feeling flirty with Steve though so I made my trip interesting that way. He ended up finding a DS game he wanted and a manual for a Castlevania game he was missing. Score for Steve! Then we needed to go over to Baker’s Square.

When we first started doing lunches with his grandpa, it was at an Applebee’s, and that sucked. Now we go next door to Baker’s Square, which still sucks, but at least the pie is good. The food itself is bland and mushy. I opted for the in-season peach pecan pie, which is like a cheesecake with peach preserves on it. It was pretty yummy. The conversation was fun this time, everyone appeared to be in good moods and we planned for Steve and maybe me to go up north the weekend of the 19th for four-wheeling. Steve’s parents talked about plans for an RV so they can drive around the country during the cold months. I knit on my second Totoro sock, woo.

Next on our agenda was MilkJam. We had planned to go there since we wouldn’t be far from Minneapolis, but the drive ended up being like 25 minutes anyway. The weather was good and the being with Steve was awesome so I didn’t mind. I parked us a few blocks away, and we were surprised to find that there was like no line... score! We each got waffle cones, me with Cereal Killer and Steve with the mango sticky rice. I loved mine, but also I wanted the mango. I’ll probably get that next time. We walked and ate our cones, and just enjoyed each other’s company.

Finally we headed home. I had thought maybe I’d play ITG, but I was not feeling it at all by the time we got home. Too much sugar for the day, so sleepy and lazy. So I knit on my sock and Steve played his game (which he eventually beat) and we watched The Office. Soon after, Ben started streaming, so we watched him try some Fantastic Beats songs and then some officials. It was a great time. Steph was in the Twitch chat and Dave was chatting with her a bit and maybe I got protective of our Officialz group when she was making comments about officials songs (we all usually communicate via the fb group vs in twitch. I’m working on it, but it’s obvious that Ben is also protective of the four of us (him, Dave, Steve and myself) and our work on Officials. So.

After he finished playing, Steve and I went back to a show and I finally went to bleach my hair so I can dye it lavender for Bethany’s wedding. Steve beat his game and we watched a few more episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. We realized Netflix started us on the last season. I really enjoyed the Dana Carvey episode, and the Kate McKinnon episode even though she was so intense.

We ended the night continuing to watch Seinfeld while I iced my arms. Before that though we talked about the nuances of yoga and did a few postures. I’m super excited for Monday yoga, can’t wait to get back to the stuff I crave.

I get into these moods where I’m obsessed with certain cultural foods for weeks or months at a time, and I go back and forth most often between Japanese, Mexican, and Indian (though Naf Naf is Middle Eastern, and they have the best hummus and falafel, I don’t make that at home). I love very specific things about each of the basic flavors, but I feel like I can’t be focusing in both at the same time because they are just *so* different.

For the last couple months before school got out, I was on a Mexican kick. Black beans, avocado, tomatoes and cumin were my main staples. Now I’m back to wanting rice and noodles, seaweed, light soups and *gasp* eggs. I haven’t eaten eggs since I was traumatized watching “What the Health?” I live mostly a vegan lifestyle anyway, so to stop eating eggs wasn’t that big of a leap when I wasn’t consuming them that often. I’ve noticed that I don’t really miss anything anymore after I stop eating it.

The thing I consume that makes me not vegan is cheese - usually sheep or goat but occasionally cow, especially if I’m eating out. I used to be obsessed with cheese; living just a 10-minute drive from Wisconsin, I have access to a lot of high-quality cheese. However, once I stopped eating it regularly, the cravings for it diminished after a few months. Even now when I eat it am I rarely dying for it. It adds a nice texture or flavor to certain dishes, but otherwise I prefer it plain, like a snack. Dairy is in most foods if you’re eating at a restaurant, and I go out enough that it makes sense to just call me vegetarian vs vegan.

I digress.

I spent the day reading through a book I have with Japanese recipes, “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat,” just because I enjoy the book, and gathering ideas for recipes I wanted to make. Of course I skipped the recipes with meat and fish, and found a vegetarian Dashi recipe online (though when I eat at any Asian restaurant I assume the soup base has fish stock and that’s okay with me).

Then I spent the entire afternoon meandering through grocery stores - Whole Foods, my local co-op, and a local Asian market (“Ha Tien”) that I’ve never actually been in. Most of the food there was Vietnamese or Laotian, but there were sections for Japanese and Korean foods too (though mostly junk food). I finally was able to get enoki mushrooms, which are often out of stock at the co-ops, whole daikon, a cute soup bowl, some various seaweed types, dragon fruit, and decent rice. Ha Tien also had a surprisingly robust selection of “vegan seafood” in the frozen section. I couldn’t read any of the ingredients so I don’t actually know what any of them were comprised of. Having never developed a taste for seafood, I wasn’t willing to try any out, but that was pretty fascinating.

Shopping took forever because in the Asian market I had to move very slowly to determine each section’s wares and look closely at the labels, and I was constantly in the way of a man trying to vacuum the floor. Literally wherever I set my cart, he would mysteriously appear. Maybe he was following me, lol. All the cashiers could have been students of mine, but I didn’t see anyone I knew - I would guess most of my Hmong families shop at Hmong village (a huge indoor market with homemade clothing stalls, beauty supplies, various electronics services and hot food stands) because it has a much much larger selection of fresh produce, but I don’t think it has much in the way of noodles, spices and meat.

Things I wanted but did not find:
-shiso
-Kiriboshi

My Japanese-food (or Korean or other Asian food) consuming friends, some questions out of curiosity:
1. What are your Japanese food go-tos? What do you make most often at home? What is your daily food routine?
2. How do you make your tea?I drink a lot of tea, and I use a metal electric kettle, but I have very hard water so mineral build-up happens quickly. I’m curious how others deal with these annoyances. Also, what IS your favorite tea (anyone answer! I’m curious)?
3. For how long do you store rice, and how do you keep it from getting hard (or how do you rehydrate it)? In the book, the woman adds green tea to her leftover rice. I’m curious if that’s common or not.
4. What are your favorite noodles and why?
5. What are your favorite spices or accoutrements that you add to your cooking to make it flavorful?
6. There’s that Japanese trope of eating toast while in the go, what kind of bread do you consume? I don’t eat that much bread, but when I do it’s a sprouted kind with nuts and it’s amazing.
7. Do you cook rice on the stove or in a rice cooker? If you have a rice cooker, what kind? Do you rinse your rice even when the directions say you don’t have to? Do you soak your rice? I currently use a Zojirushi 3-cup simple rice cooker, but I’ve always been really interested in the more expensive, high-tech rice cookers. I almost always rinse my rice no matter what, so the starches don’t get everywhere. I only soak specific short-grain rice, overnight.

I got home pretty late, and Steve just had a new TV delivered for us. We bought a 47” back in like 2010, which we used for quite some time. Eventually it broke, and we used a hand-me-down plain tv of similar size for the next several years. Steve’s gotten to the point of wanting to play his state-of-the-art games on a state-of-the-art tv, and I don’t blame him. He did a lot of research because we haven’t owned a new TV in almost a decade, and he settled on a TCL 65” that is considered the best value for its quality and size. The TV is really nice, about $750USD, and it’s of course huge. The picture is beautiful, but we noticed like... dark patches, when you pan side to side. Steve did some research, and it turns out this is called “dirty screen” phenomenon, and is very common on these TVs. Most people don’t care because it’s not a huge issue, but it’s very noticeable once you see it. Steve and I debated the merits of using the warranty to get a replacement or get it fixed, but at this point I think we’re actually going to trade it out for a more expensive Sony that’s the same size and is more reliable, albeit more expensive.

Current Mood: flirty
Current Location: work

( Day 3 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show )

Current Mood: flirty
Current Location: work

( Day 3 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show )

Current Mood: cold

My weekend was really, really fun. Steve's (and everyone else's) hours have been cut, so he was able to score this weekend and next weekend off (SQUEEEEE). So much time together yes.

We went shopping on Friday for the last few things for Spoogie's wedding and my family pictures. We were able to find me EXACTLY what I was looking for - a plain white hoodie (ON SALE FOR $15), a black t-shirt, a black polo, and a certain shade of blue t-shirt. All at least 50% off at JCPenney's. God I love that store when they do end-of-season sales. We also found him a pair of NICE slacks for $20 (almost 50% off). I bought him a pair of dress shoes, which he was happier than he expected with because they looked GOOD with his outfit. I also bought him dun dun dun a DSi XL, which we both agreed we would purchase before winter. They dropped $20 in price, from $189 to $169. I will purchase myself one in two weeks when I get paid next. It's not as urgent for me because the handheld game I'm playing at the moment is the GBC game Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, which cannot play in a DS. Steve though, just finished the third Professor Layton game and FINALLY started Luminous Arc! OMG I love that game~! It looks SO PRETTY on the DSi XL's screen. I miss it!!!! We had a lot of fun, as we always do, when spending time together at the mall. It's just a good time.

Saturday we went to Spoogie's wedding. It was an incredibly small ceremony, only about 40 people there, and other than the bridal party's dress and the actual ceremony, not very formal. The reception was in the GYM of the church, and no alcohol was allowed. It was really sad because I had made a joke earlier about having the reception in a high school gym D: Steve and I spent the entire ceremony and reception discussing what we will do differently, and how we want to go about the wedding. Steve says it has to be lighthearted, and we agreed to not have any "God" or "jesus" in our ceremony. It's just not fitting. I also got to listen to the hilarious commentary by Nick's mom during the ceremony and reception - Nick and his sister were both in the wedding, and Nick's parents were the only people we knew. It was great. I had to leave at 3:45pm to drive out to Shakopee to take my family pictures. For the first time we decided to have them outside, and with a non-professional photographer - my parents hired the mom of some kid August and Paul know (Paul coaches football and my parents are very involved in August's baseball stuff too). It was actually really, really fun. We wandered around the paths of the Minnesota River (until of course we reached the flooding) looking for good places to take pictures. We took some while precariously perched over the river on trees, climbed in and around things, dodged mud (though August and I separately fell victim to one sneaky patch of mud), and all around were just silly. Bethany and I made jokes, and Tony was there too with Cayden so it was ALWAYS funny. Tony wouldn't take any pictures because he "needed a hair cut" XD Just like Tony. My only complaint is that she didn't give us any direction, so we don't know if we were double-chinning or having fat rolls hang out or posing stupid or anything. But it was a lot of fun, minus being eaten alive by the mosquitos.

Then I went back home and Steve and I slept from 8pm to 1am to try to fix our sleep schedule for tonight. I'd say we were pretty successful. It was a wonderful sleep regardless. Then we had 12 whole hours to hang out! We watched some more Lost special features - it takes a couple hours just to watch ONE SEASON'S worth of them! We also played games, cleaned up, and made our bentos. This week we weighed in pretty well and obviously gained over the weekend at the eating out and stuff, but still decent. I made my bento significantly smaller than I have, because I realized that I shouldn't be eating as much as he does! I don't NEED that amount of food; I just WANT it because I love food.

I switched up my theme in honor of Lost. I like it, but I still gotta find time to tweak my layout overall, because I'm not happy being unable to see individual entries' icons! Catching up on everyone's stuff after being gone over the weekend is very time-consuming, which makes me thankful that I have the time to do that while here at work. It just cuts down on my Japanese study time/homework time, which is a little sad, but I can always do hw or study. I'm really invested in my current friendships and don't want to miss out. Speaking of which, I also got to talk to Suzi for two whole hours! It was a great time. We haven't been able to speak on the phone in a looooong time. It was very nice, and an informative conversation on both sides :D It's like when we haven't been able to talk monthly, we forget things or just don't learn them in passing as much as we used to, so it was great to get to pick that up again!

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Work

Ahhh, the episode after Hyde takes the blame for Jackie's weed. I. LOVE. That 70's Show. It is incredibly funny with the combination of its jokes, the character interactions and development, and especially watching for character breaks, which happens a lot. For example, the joke here is also a rib at the fact that Mila Kunis WAS only 14 when she started the show (she very intelligently tricked them about her age without outright lying) and Ashton Kutcher was older than she was by 5 years and also her first kiss. I love watching it with Steve the most, because I'll burst into hysterical laughter like Joe Waid at the smallest things and just collapse in a heap for 5 minutes, and then by the time I compose myself, the next joke has come.

Whew, my fingers hurt. I finished Link and the heart, and I must say, I'm pretty pleased with the results. Tomorrow then I will work on Zelda, and the day after that, Navi and the Triforce.

Turns out I don't have much to say of substance today! Oh, that my paperwork for graduation WAS sent, so hopefully I'm all set until December 14. And insurance is confusing as hell I have no idea how to fill out the forms!

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Work

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: Work
Current Music: Nada

As Steve and I are running out of shows to have running in the background while we relax (and we have completely exhuasted Friends, we've seen each episode about a hundred times), I got him started on Sex and the City. The problem is, unlike Friends, I don't own Season 2 or the second half of Season 6. This is exacerbated by the fact that I had a TON of discs in a case here at work and some ~~dumb bitch~~ client stole it for crack money (and she was long gone by the time the theft was discovered, she left and never came back). So about half my Sex and the City discs are gone. The good news is Steve likes it anyway (and shares my INTENSE love for Aiden and Steve).

After he left for work today I went to sleep my extra 3 hours, and instead of having a pleasant, dreamless sleep I was confronted with a TERRIFYING dream about velociraptors. It was different from my normal raptor dreams because it had NOTHING to do with Jurassic Park this time, only I guess the raptors were called raptors but looked like mini versions of T-rexes and believe me, raptors look nothing like them. I woke up a couple times, heart pounding, but I had to fall back asleep and try to conclude it, ya know? It ended up turning into something like a movie, and Lost characters were there (Shannon died and Sawyer was there too and I think he died as well). I didn't die so that's the good news. Haha. It'd been awhile since I had a velociraptor dream.

My interview went well, I'll hear the results early this week. I'm sooo hoping I get it. Especially because they are closing I-94 EVERY WEEKEND and I have to drive a super long way around it to get here in 40 minutes, not to mention driving home Monday morning in rush hour. But this new position is located like 10 minutes from my house and was a dream to drive to. Plus it'll be 30 more hours a week AND as an internal transfer it won't be starting a whole new job. YES.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: Work
Current Music: Nada