We're Tom Lorenzo and this is the Pop Style Opinion Fast. Hello, KITT's,
welcome back to another edition of the PSO. I am the Tea and
your telow Tom Fitzgerald, and I'm here with the low and your Telo.
Lorenzo Marquis my lovely husband. How are your lovely husband? Very excited?
We are heading out the fire Yeah, in literally hours. We're up early
recording this on Thursday morning. I don't even know when it's coming up on
our site. It's all wide open today. Island is my heaven unnerved.
Yes, you're a happy place and um my happy place. I just want
to take a moment to thank everyone for their kind oh God response us the
last week's podcast, and not to return to that topic, but Fire Island
is coming in exactly the right time for Lorenzo, who absolutely needs right.
We thought about it. I was like, should we get I was like,
oh, hell yeah, we're going. We're going. Um, I
need it. I mean it's a beautiful place. We stay with friends,
wonderful friends, and it's just heaven. I absolutely lovely heaven on heaven earned
Earth. But anyway, thank you so much. Uh you know, all
the message emails and Instagram, you know, message everywhere. So thank you
so much. It was very hard. I felt very loved. Thank you,
you are very loved. Everybody loves the runs that they hate. Oh
my god, that's not true anyway. Um, I'm joking. Okay,
So it's not a long, super long podcast this week. Like we said,
we're I'm not gonna lie. We're rushing out the door. So is
this one is done? But we're not going to give you a rushed pod.
Yes, we're going to give you, especially since the first topic of
the day is not something I want to treat to frivolously. But we are
going to um talk a little bit about the legacy of shint O'Connor, which,
honestly, if you're gen X, I don't even think I have to
explain it to you, but if you were there, you know. But
she deserves she she died yesterday or her death was reported yesterday, and attention
must be paid, respect must be paid. So we're gonna spend a little
time talking about her. And then up here's tab Hunter, all twenty pounds
of them landing on the table. That's why we actually have something to Christian,
Like, we put a quilt down on the table because of that,
because they jump on the table and make a lot of noise, right,
And our recording setup is a lot nicer than Miranda's hook up this week,
shitty hook up that she had. We'll get into that, Oh my god.
But yes, we're also talking about and just like that. Well we'll
move that to the back half because you may not have seen the episode just
as of yet, but sort of good news. The show was really back
in its group. But we'll get to that. Yeah, So Chinade O'Connor,
Lorenzo said something to me yesterday when we were talking about this podcast.
He was like, well, you can talk about it because you're Irish,
and I said, nope, nope, that's not it. And I've said
this before. I'm not Irish, I'm American. And to talk about Shade
O'Connor is, to believe, expressed some understanding of the culture in which she
came from and which she grew up, in which she lived and in which
she lived, and that is Ireland, which is not my country. I've
said this before. I think Irish Americans in particular, but a lot of
Americans over identify with their countries of origin in a lot of ways. That's
you know, it's not my place to say how people should refer to themselves.
If you refer to yourselves as Irish or Irish American, that's entirely your
prerogative, I think, and I wouldn't tell you otherwise. I think it's
valid. But it sounds silly sometimes to people from other countries. Yeah,
if you talk to someone from it, and that's just it. I grew
up and all my life my family has known and befriended and made part of
our extended family people from Ireland, and no one has ever corrected us.
In fact, many people from Ireland told my parents that our family was more
Irish than the Irish. But I did learn meeting Irish people, and over
the years that I'm like, you know what, as much as I might
identify, I know all the songs, I learned the step dances, and
I know the real phrases and everything like that, I didn't grow up in
that culture. And when you meet someone from that culture, you're like,
you're you know what, I'm not Irish, I'm American, right. I
think it's typical of immigrants in general. They moved to another country and they
stuck with that history that yeah, yeah, yeah, that's part of who
they are and they worship that. And but the country moves on, you
know, people moveing. Um. I don't think it's wrong that Americans refer
to themselves that way. And I think a lot of the reasons why Americans
refer to themselves that way is because they're immigrant. Forebears did not necessarily come
here voluntarily. They come here. They came here because they had to.
Most in general, so they yeah, they don't have a romanticized idea of
the old world. I'm sorry, go ahead, No, I was just
going to say most most immigrants in general, they don't want to leave their
land, their country, their family. I mean, they do it because
they Irish. Irish tend to be very much about going back home, and
all the songs are about going back home, and so it's very much in
culture and I do understand it. And when Queen Elizabeth died on this podcast,
I talked a lot about the Irish diaspora all over the world and but
specifically in America and how how it is a legitimate identity like to be an
Irish person out in the world as a member of the diaspora. There's a
there's a an understanding, there's a commonality a lot of times, and this
is truable ethnics. I'm really special. But um, you know, if
you're an American of Irish descent, there's a really really good chance that whoever
came to this country from Ireland and your family left because they were persecuted or
because they were starving. And when you're a refugee like that, it infects
your idea of the country you came from, and then you pass it on
to your children, and then it becomes these Irish American traditions, so to
speak. So I don't identify with Shanade at all on that level. Her
her life, the things she fought against, the things she spoke out against
were specifically Irish in nature. She lived, she lived them. And we're
talking about things like the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church that was foisted upon
girls in Ireland and you know all over the world that all of it.
Um. But before we you know, really unpack all of that, I
just want to say, I gasped when I got the news yesterday. We
are much you know, we're the same age. And um, I don't
know if you weren't there when nothing compares to you land like a fricking bomb
in what was that nineteen eighty eight? I mean, just try and picture
what you remember or what you think you know about nineteen eighties music and nineteen
eighties female pop stars. And then here comes this girl with a shaved head
and barely any makeup on. And this is in the middle of the Aquanette
era, right, mostly a close up of her face. It is entirely,
almost entirely a close up of her face, emoting in a way that
was rare for music videos and allowing her performance on her voice to be the
entire yes videos, and it was hypnotic, and it still is hypnotic.
Yes, I'm a musician, and I remember, you know, I've been
influenced by a ton of people, including her, And I remember watching the
video and listening to her voice. I mean, like from the first note,
from the first word, Uh, it's just beautiful, right, I
mean, it's it's pure, pure, and it's an interpretation that you don't
see often in music now. It's just absolutely wonderful. Yeah. I listened
to it again yesterday and I started crying because I was like, this is
so beautiful. It's such a beautiful song. Beautiful And as she said,
because I also watched a documentary called Nothing Compares on Showtime, Very good,
very good one by the way, and she talked, she says that you
know, if you don't feel the song, if you don't understand this song,
and then you can't sing it will right And she did she did.
Um, I was listening to when we were dating. You gave me a
couple I hadn't even of her ninety seven album Gospel Oak Don't Remember, which
I played to death, and I can. There's only I think five or
six songs on the whole album. I can sing the whole album from beginning
to end. I won't, but that album, every song on that album
is UM. That's the thing about Shanade's voice. She had that rare quality
and a pop singer to um attach such deep emotions to her interpretations of the
song that the song works its way into your DNA and your memory and it
feels less like a song and more like something that happened to you. Yeah,
And that was her power as an artist, and the way she changes
from very soft to very intense and right and you know, even when she's
loud, she's not screaming like screaming. Well she'll she'll do a well,
she'll do right, um, and she's good at that. But it doesn't
sound like a scream more like well, no it's not, but it's it's
absolutely more. And her voice is fortius. Her voice was gorgious, absolutely
beautiful, everything about it. And it's interesting because I didn't know much about
her life, her upbringing and all that, her mother and everything, and
I have to watching the documentary. Do you want to unpack some of that
since you did watch the document documentaries very much. The documentary is about her
life growing up with her parents, and her parents got divorced when she was
very young and grew up outside Dublin. Correct, Yeah, and then she
was very difficult. Uh no, no shock there. She was a very
difficult girl and her mother sent her to live with the nuns. Um that's
why she knew all about the abuse, the abuse and about the you know,
the abortion and the women getting pregnant and suddenly disappearing and all that.
She knew about all that, all that very young and she was very young.
I mean she was very young all the time, Like even when she
started her career. Yeah, she was twenty two. Yeah, So she
talked about that her relationship with her mother, her mother had some mental issues
and makes sense now when you know, right after all happened, Um,
and very difficult. Her mother was very difficult. They had a very bad
relationship. And anyway, so and then she moved to London and started singing
with the band and then was discovered and you know, recorded her first album.
But like she was very young, she was like in her twenty twenty
one, twenty two when nothing compared to you came out. Um, when
I was reading a retrospective of her life and career this morning, and um,
what really jumped out of me, I was like, ah, gen
x, this is what we were like was the just unending litany of things
that she protested that she refused to do as a pop star. And she
wouldn't you know, she wouldn't play the venue that played the star spangled banner,
and you know, there were all sorts of things and you could possibly
take Nade's long history, you know, stated history. She talked about this
extensively in her life, her long history with mental health struggles, and you
could try and apply it to the sort of erratic nature of her career,
but I think that would be something of a mistake. I'm sure, I'm
sure her struggles informed a lot of what she did and went through in her
career, but it's just really interesting to read about a pop star who constantly
went around protesting all of the trappings of being a pop star, and that
is not something you see in modern pop. You're not going to see Miley
Cyrus do the kind of things that shand O'Connor did, because I don't.
I really hate I'll state this right now. I really can't stand these sort
of generational harangues. And you know, jen X is starting is of an
age now where we're starting to become extremely annoying about out this sort of thing
where we're like, oh, you know, you should have been an eighties
kid, where we drank water out of the hose and our mothers let us
run around and blah blah blah, you know what. But all you're doing
is another variation of I walk backwards up a hill in the snow to go
to school, and you kids don't know how hard you had it, so
I don't want to. I always try and avoid that. We're we're gen
X cultural writers who are constantly writing about people who are sometimes significantly younger than
us and fandoms that are significantly younger than us. So it has been a
part of our work to make sure that that that very typical Gen X attitude
does not show up in our work right. But it's also part of my
life trying to understand things. That's the way they are, you know,
no matter what generation you from. I mean, that's how I feel about
it. I can't impose my every first time on everybody else. That's that's
how I feel about it. Anyway, back to her, well, I
just wanted to go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just making a point
about her, her endless protests and how and the way she managed her career
and what she absolutely would not do, and in fact, to give you
some idea of how Shand felt. She felt like her career had gone off
track when she had a number one hit, and she felt like she had
brought it back on track when she ripped up that picture of the Pope her
she walked the walk, and she was an international pop star who almost literally
walked away from it because she thought that life was such bullshit and that is
such a gen x thing to do. You just don't see pop stars in
the current day act that way. It's not the whole concept of selling out
was a gen x thing, and it's not a thing, you know,
for millennials or ten. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just a difference.
But there are many things about it. And she says in the documentary
that they tried to kill me. You know, they canceled her pretty much
at a time when and she says that at a time when we didn't have
social media. So if if the magazines or the TV shows didn't want to
show you, then you were then you're gone. And she was, and
she was canceled for stupid reasons. And you can't argue you. Yeah,
you know, the anthem and American anthem and all that. You know,
you've been disrespectful. You know. I can understand that from an American point
of view, I can understand. And this was the jingoistic A yeah,
yes, with the war and all that, I understand, I understand.
But I also understand her point of view because she was also always against oppression
any kind of She really was, she really was offended her. Yeah,
I mean I didn't know that when she performed for the first time. I
think it was dm Is that she had that sort of It wasn't that tattoo,
but it was like something she painted on her head. It was one
of the bands that because at the time I also didn't know that rap was
not considered for anything. Yeah, and she did that. One of the
bands didn't go or he decided not to go because they were not being represented
as music. So she decided to play uh Mandinka and and and she had
that on her head, the logo of the band or something right that of
the group. So right from the gat goal she was always very political.
She was always very political about and everything. And she had that thing that
a lot of Irish artists have where she without being appropriative, although it's not
my place to say other people might feel differently, but she had that thing
than a lot of Irish artists have where she found great identification with black people
worldwide. She thought there was a lot that they had in common, and
she looked for those commonalities and found them. I think now, before we
get a little bit further into her legacy and her music and why she matters
um, I just want to take things into a slightly lighter direction for a
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So back to the life and career of the singular snat O'Connor, you are
not likely to see her like again. Um, I just want to say
one more thing that explains a lot about her and the whole Pope thing.
I didn't know how religious she was when she would Irish Hunt. Yeah,
I mean she talked about how she loved the Catholic Church, how she went
to church, did everything. She was a deeply spiritual Yes, yeah,
she talked a lot about that, and I know, I was shocked.
I was kind of surprised. I thought she was kind of a rebel from
the beginning, but no, she went to church, loved the church and
all that. That's why she was so disappointed when the scandals start, you
showing you know, the people started talking in the nineties. Yeah, in
the in the nineties when not a lot of people were talking about No,
nobody was talking about it. So when she ripped up that picture of the
Pope on Saturday Night Live, it Americans in particular had no really no idea
what the hell she was talking about. And um, it's shocking when you
look back at how she was treated in response to that momentum And I cannot
imagine pop culture treating a figure like the Pope our current pope or any pope
like some sort of uh, you know, you can't possibly, you know,
disrespect this human being. Like I feel like our are our institutions,
Our faith in our institutions has degraded for good reason, because our institutions have
led us down in the last thirty to forty years. So in the time
since she ripped up that picture, and this is what happened when the when
her death was announced, we tweeted this, but so did everybody else,
over and over again. Everyone said you were right, Channade. You were
right about a lot of things, but especially about that. I mean,
she before anybody was talking about the sex abuse scandals, and I shouldn't call
it sex abuse because you know you're raping children. That's not sex, that's
rape. Um the the child abuse in the in the Catholic Church's history,
and or you know, in their sort of its endemic to their hierarchy in
a lot of ways, you put a lot of um repressed men in charge,
sexual repressed men in charge and give them absolute power over community. Well
guess what they're going to do. Yeah, I mean you have to exactly
what Chennaide point, right, You have to understand her mindset. I mean,
she also talks abou women getting pregnant by everybody, by their fathers,
by their boyfriends, but by the priest, you know, but the fathers,
whatever, everybody, and then sent away, you know, to disappear
and never see you again. All that stuff, I mean, and it's
all related to the church, right, And it's very interesting. I didn't
know that when her mother died she took two things. She said she only
took two things from the house. I guess I can't remember the second thing.
But the first thing was that picture of the pope. It was hanging
in her mother's bedroom and she was the same one she ripped up on sad.
Yeah. So it has so much meaning, so much symbolism. People
didn't know it at the time. They had no idea. It was such
a personal statement on her part. Yeah. I mean, even her publicist
said at the time, she said, I can't get you out of this
one at all. I mean, you're on your own. I mean,
it was huge at the time, and it just seemed so embarrassingly silly the
response to it. It was a picture. All she did was rip up
a picture like there's she didn't pope the Catholic Church and all that. Yes,
yeah, and I mean at the time the pope was JOm Paul the
Second, who was probably one of the more popular popes in the modern era.
He was very good at managing his own image. So and as I
said, she she wasn't anti religion. In fact, she converted to Islam
later in her life, and she was apparently very faithful in that. She
had always been spiritual and looking for me like a lot of artists, looking
for spiritual meaning in her life. However, the other aspect of Sanade's public
and private life is the fact that she has had very very public mental health
struggles. And I'd say public because she shared them like an artist would,
very openly. She she was in and out of actually you know, mental
institutions or in patient facilities, I guess we would call them for several years.
A couple of years back, she u she had a couple of public
sort of mental health crises that played out. Some of them were on social
media, where she would she would, you know, post these very heartfelt
but almost but kind of disturbing messages about how much distress she was in.
She has claimed to have been diagnosed as bipolar and as having a border borderline
personality disorder, and then in later um writings she has claimed that other doctors
claimed that she wasn't bipolar. She was. I'm sorry, but there's no
other way to put this. She was very erratic in the public in terms
of how she talked about her mental health. So it's it's I just want
to be thoughtful in discussing this because I can't diagnose her, and I don't
want to diagnose her. And also there is an assumption, because no information
has come out about how she died, that she died by suicide, right,
But again I don't want to make that assumption, not yet, I
mean, not at all, until we get exactly her Sunshane, who was
seventeen years old, died by suicide too years ago. I believe she was
devastating, as any mother would. She posted about it the last post I
believe on Instagram. It was a picture with her son or something like that.
She um. So she came from a family, her mother had mental
health health her she had them, and her son died by suicide. So
it's really tragic, but it's a very good illustration of how this sort of
thing passes down through families and it's a it's a generational struggle through families that's
very, very hard to escape. Um. I think she was brave to
talk about all of her mental health stuff, but um, I don't think
the public was very good about listening to it. But they never were very
good about listening to her now. And I think her story is incredible.
I mean, you know, a woman fighting for all these courses, you
know, risking her career, risking everything she believes in, right in terms
of art and you know, career, because she thought that she had to
talk about these things and it was more important to her than because because those
things matter too. Yeah, at a time when people didn't talk about anythings
right, especially as a woman. You know. Uh, she was criticized
the law, I mean, as she said, and she says that in
the documentary and I was like, wow, she says, you know,
they tried to silence silence me. They tried to they actually tried to kill
me. And it's true. Yeah. The other thing I would if you're
not entirely familiar with side who's not familiar with Sennide, but if you want
to learn more about her, the interviews that she gave in in recent years
were um eye opening in the sense that she was very open about her pain,
about her struggles and everything she's been through. But she's also um I
don't want to say surprisingly because that sounds dismissive, but amazingly self aware of
self conscious, articulate about who she is, about how people see her.
UM. I don't know that she was all that open about admitting mistakes in
her life, but she she was very, very self aware of everything,
and she was very good about talking about herself and putting so much of this
stuff in context. She was I guess I had to be blunt here.
She wasn't as quote crazy as people tried to make her out to be.
She always had a point, she always had a focus, and she never
really wavered from it her whole life. So if her behavior was a radic
or her her comportment, the way she you know, acted in public or
whatever, was you know, bizarre to help, at the heart of it
all, she was doing something really powerful, really important, and extremely consistent
all the way down the line said. Wasn't just you know, flipping out
and reacting to shit. She she was in some ways I think she might
have considered this her artistry. Her real artistry was talking about these things and
bringing light to them. And now you look at these things you're like,
wow, they don't matter. But they did matter at the time. Down
to her hair when she shaved her head, I mean, everyone was treating
her like she was crazy, right, like she was you know, why
did you do that with and all that stuff that seemed so nuts at the
time. It's like a freaking fashion statement, but it was such a political
statement and the hair eighties and the hair band eadies to say, and that
was apparently she did it in response to an executive, yes, a music
executive, who told her to start, you know, dressing more pretty.
And she said, you know what I'm if I shave it off, you
can't tell me what to do with it. Yeah. And the documentary show
with a bunch of interview with her at the beginning of her career talking about
the hair, and everyone was talking about the hair. Why did you shave
your head? You know, all that kind of Oh my god, she
looked beautiful. She looks incredible with the shaved head. I don't know that
I've ever seen Channade except old pictures of her pre fame with her hair but
my god an eighty eight, she those eyes an absolutely stunner on camera.
Not that her looks mattered, They certainly never mattered to her anyway. Um
naide slunch a girl. You know you know safe journeys. You you um
were right and you fought so hard your whole life and the fight was evident
on your face, like on what it had taken it from you? So
I I wish you nothing but rest. I agree, and it and it
was worth it. It was well I don't. I mean, yes,
her fight was worth her life, I understand, but her cause is and
everything. I mean, look at look at how how artists in general behave
now and you know they embrace causes and to do all that now, But
she did when nobody was doing but hum an anti patriarchal stance, uh in
a in a female artists work and life is now almost considered you know,
to record. But I know I'm mangled the pronunciation there, But um,
when she was doing it to be anti pay dri archle in nineteen eighty eight
as a female pop star is completely insane. Even Madonna, who broke so
many barriers, rolled her eyes at her and made fun of her because Madonna
couldn't take her her sort of musical protest nearly as far as Channade could.
And we're talking about someone came from Ireland. She was the original real one.
So pour one out for Channade because she really was the real deal.
Okay, that this concludes our gen X moralizing and philosophizing, and well,
actually we're going to continue our gen X because now we're gonna talk about a
bunch of fifty five year old ladies having sex or not having sex. Actually
this episode so and just like that. The latest episode was a Valentine's Day
episode, and I gotta say I the minute they mentioned it was Valentine's Day.
This is gonna be painful, but I actually really liked the episode.
Once again, I'm gonna toss to you, but once again I really want
to say it's a very gentle, sort of middle aged version of Sex in
the City, and that the storylines and the characters are all very recognizable.
They feel very much part of that world. I still don't laugh. There
were one or two mild chuckles in this episode, but they have yet to
really write a funny as episode. And I mean, people forget sex and
the City was actually really really funny back from the day. No, it's
not you know, out loud. I don't know, it's just not like
funny. Hahaha. You were leaving out all the time. You're kind of
like, oh, okay, this is gentle chuckles. Yes, but I
kind of liked the episode of Valentine's Day. Oh we've been out many times,
not many times, A couple of times, I guess. I don't
know. We two restaurants and things many times, honey along, but like
celebrating Valentine's I don't remember that many anyway. I don't like it. I
feel like you're just doing something that everybody's doing and then you get to the
see I enjoy restaurants and I enjoy I enjoy a mew very much at a
restaurant. But I like it, you know, personal and quiet and private.
To me, when you do Valentine's Day, it's like you're just you're
a prop there everybody's doing the same. It just feels Valentine's Day is really
pre dating. Yeah yeah, right, I mean going out for Valentine's Day
it's dating. It's not it's get it, but it's I don't I don't
like it. I feel like I'm I'm I was forced to do something.
Yeah, well, it's like going out on the New Year's Eve. Yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel the same. I feel the same
about that. And now you have so many versions. You have the Galentine,
you know, the gals get together and all that. There's there's different
versions, and I appreciate that, I actually, because you know, it's
about the ones you love and doesn't have necessarily to be you know, um,
you know a man or a woman in your life. By anyway,
I agree. Uh So, running through the episode, Charlotte becomes a monager
to Rock and it is incredibly obnoxious about it, as you would expect from
Charlotte having a child who might have a modeling career in front of them.
So yes, Charlotte flipped out at a modeling agency and Rock wound up quitting,
and Lily was having her. Lily such an obnoxious teenager, and I
actually do a really good job with her. So long story short, Charlotte
winds up eating a pop brownie and it's another silly Charlotte and Harry moment,
and I don't mind them. I do think this feels very true to Charlotte
and that yes, I agree. He would get herself in these silly little
situations and that sort of thing. And the whole thing about her thinking she
was having a stroke and Harry flipping out on the girl in the restaurant.
It was funny and very New York because it's hard that age group, Like
there are so many stories of people in our age group or that age group
accidentally ingesting weed and then not knowing how to handle it. I think Charlotte
is the number one character in terms of like being very true to whatever,
yeah they had in the past. I agree, And I'm happy to say
that it seems like all of her shenanigans this season, which felt a little
less but entertaining, have led her to this point where she finally said,
I think I need to go back to work. It'll be very interesting how
that plays out. Well. First of all, it's so silly that,
you know, someone made her a job offer at a dinner party months ago,
and she's just going to take them up on it now, And of
course it'll happen for her. But of course life doesn't actually like a gallery.
Positions don't remain open for months, you know, because they're waiting to
hear from someone stay at home mom. I know. So she's likely to
be working at a gallery again soon, and I actually think that's a great
storyline her because there's so many both comedic and dramatic possibilities of her returning to
a career after all this time, so many great episodes about her and the
gallery, remember, yeah, And there were also many great discussions when she
decided to give that career up and the other women had a real problem with
it, as they might, and as women in that generation or any generation
might so love the Charlotte whole storyline, it's working for me. She's a
relatively silly character, she always was, and I do think Kristin Davis is
probably the weakest actress of the original four, but she should get some credit
because she actually doesn't view Charlotte feels very real, even when she gets very
silly and her I agree, but christ And Davis really does understand that character
very well, and she modulates her performance very very well. And if you
pay attention, because I think she is a decent actress, it's her micro
expressions and various scenes. The way she reacts to things is still very very
funny. So good job on that moving on to I gotta say it was
white ladies sex in the city episode pretty much. I mean they stopped for
a moment on Nayah, who has no storyline, and she's such a great
actress, that character looks amazing. We've got a great life on screen that
I want. I mean, you're a Columbia law professor in Brooklyn. I
want to hear more about that. But it's all about her sad um soon
to be divorce life and and that's it. That's all she has as a
character, and I really think that is such a waste of that character.
Similarly, the Wexleys, Lisa Todd Wexley and her husband again, love watching
them. They're kind of fabulous together. They have a life that feels very
much a part of this this world that all these characters are in, and
their problems are very much you know, one percent or problems, but black
one percent of problems. So all of that's great, but this was such
a nothing storyline. It was about her son, you know, her her
teenage son and his white girlfriend possibly having sex in their apartment, and then
it turns out that she's modeling her bags and her closet and everything, and
it went nowhere. I know. I agree it's funny because they made it
sound like she was more upset with the bag than she was more I mean,
I think they made it clear that they were. They were like,
look, have sex, but you know you're not. Don't have it in
our bed, and you don't get to have a hotel for Valentine's Night.
I agree, it was just silly. It went with the Valentine's Day theme,
but at the same time, it was like, all right, she's
making a chocolate cake and you know, and the other one, the couple,
it's just like the ones that have except for Miranda, the ones that
have children, like Lisa and Charlotte. Too much of the stuff is focused
on them as mothers, which with Charlotte, I think that makes a lot
of sense, But my god, with Lisa Todd Wesley, there's so much
more to talk about with that character. It makes sense with Charlotte because that's
all that's what she that's who she is. You know, it's all about,
you know, being a mother and taking care of the family and all
that. But not the other ones. You know, the other ladies should
get more attention to and focus more on what they do. And I don't
know, Lisa has such an interesting life. That's not that motherhood isn't interesting,
but that storyline about worry fretting over her teenage son's sex life, that's
not interesting. There's way too much going on in that woman's Like I agree.
I mean, the husband's running for I don't know, city controller or
something like that. Like I just feel like more issues about that, you
know, like dealing with that. There's me there, so why are you
doing these like silly little sitcom things with her? And then there're sema,
oh my god, they are just killing this character, making her so shallow
and she and she just comes in to be Samantha for a second and then
leaves and gets very little. Right. That part of the show is starting
to bother me. It's like they they're finally getting a hand on on the
characters we recognize. But at the same time, the ones that they introduced
are who are all people are all being marginalized? Right, And she seems
very successful, you know, has money in a career and all that.
Very successful. They spent this episode yelling at a girl and I know,
but it's all about being billy and and shallow, and that's what they gave
her to do. Now, there's a lot of characters now, so maybe
you can't cycle through everyone. But once again, um, Carrie is the
centerpiece of every episode until she comes. Carrie Bradshaw and her lady friends.
Which sex in the city had that problem as well. It's part of why
Kim Cantrall never come back. Yes, and we'll get to carry and Aiden
in a second. Let's talk about Miranda huh. So, first of all,
I thought she looked stunning that purple. That purple dress looks she looks
so good on her. They find you know, it was the same thing
on the old show. I don't think Cynthia Nixon is hard to dress in
any way, but her outfits were always hit or miss as Miranda, and
they hit on this one. It was one of the best outfits, and
the gold sandals and everything kind of cute. Felt very much like Saxon Cities.
Although I do well, let's run down what happened. She she was
bemoaning the fact that she was spending Valentine's Day alone, which I kind of
think fifty five year old women don't actually sit around having those kind of conversations.
But you know, maybe I'm wrong about that. But her life is,
you know, I get it. She her she blew up her marriage,
she went after a relationship and then that blew up, and now she's
single in her mid fifties, and there's a lot to unpack their and she
doesn't seem to know what her her sort of orientation is. Although I was
a little annoyed that at the end she was like, I'm done with Dickens,
and I was like, I don't believe that. I mean, maybe
Cynthia Nixon's life played out that way. Certainly, many queer women go all
the way through, you know, a major portion of the decades of their
lives, thinking that they're heterosexual. But I actually thought it might have been
interesting to have Miranda bounced back and forth until she figures out what she wants.
But instead she went for the first hot woman that she encountered, which
is fine. It's kind of fun to see Miranda feeling her oats. I
can't I don't know who that actress is. I know she was on Younger
and I can't remember her name. Oh no, she was on the Bold
Type, right, or she was on one of those shows. She was
on the Bold Type. Anyway, she was a magazine editor. I can't
remember the actor's name, anyway, she was great. She was an audiobook
voice actor who does Austin adaptations, and Um, Miranda hit on her hard
and they set up a first date on Valentine's Day, which I'm saying,
I think that's the amount of first dates on Valentine's Day among this crowd.
I was like, that's a little silly. I don't people don't do that,
but whatever. So Um. On the one hand, the whole scene
with her showing up and the woman lives in a tiny apartment, it's not
particularly impressive. It's kind of dirty and messy, and she herself is when
they met, but she looked like shit when she opened the door, which
I also don't think, Like, it's Valentine's Day and you have a hot
hook up and you're gonna look like that, I don't think so Um.
I also think there was something a little more than a little classist in the
response there, where with all of these women tend to have beautiful homes and
they're all quite wealthy, and then she walks into basically a typical New York
apartment and gets really snotty about the whole thing. Um, and it found
a little bit like the old sex in the city they meet, too old
for these strines. Yeah, they had that a lot that any you know,
they met someone and the whole thing ended by the end of the episode
because there was there was some flower saying or one flaw right. I mean,
I will give Miranda every credit. She should have walked out on that.
Yeah, I mean it was, but not because the woman had a
small apartment or because she had a litter box in the room. It was
because she was that's a terrible way to greet someone on Valentine's Day for a
hook up. Like, I want have walked out on that too. Put
a little more effort into it, you know, I don't know, just
the whole thing was a little bit of like a lesbian cliche, like,
oh, she's she's got flannels. They made sure to mention that she had
flanneled she and she's a cat lady and her place is kind of messy and
dirty. And I was like, oh, we're we're jumping headlong into the
lesbian stereotypes on this one. Um. So I was six and one half
dozen. Of the other parts of that storyline I really liked because it felt
like classic sex in the city. Other parts I thought were a little a
little lazy in how they were written, And I also generally kind of question.
I mean, Miranda at one point said the Miranda of thirty five would
have walked out, So now the Miranda at fifty five is going to walk
out? And I was like, on the one hand, I'm glad you
made that comparison. On the other hand, that comparison doesn't actually make you
look good, because why are you in these situations twenty years later? Granted,
I understand she's new to dating again, and she's definitely new to dating
women, and anyone of any age out in the dating world is going to
have these sort of encounters that are just a little humiliating, a little embarrassed,
right, I agree, But everything about this when she said the Miranda
of thirty five, I was like, Yeah, this this feels a little
bit too much like the Miranda at thirty five. I would have liked to
have seen a little progression her. Well, the good news is she's not
witchy anymore. So that she's not witch and she's getting a job out of
bed for something, and I'm like, I couldn't care less but I still
don't hate Chay as a character. I actually like, really like her and
and um Carrie together because they are so ridiculously different that it's an interesting vibe.
But you know whatever, I'm not mad that Jay is still in the
story. I just feel like her get them getting a job out of Vet
is really not a CBS the adult drama. But Jay is still an asshole.
The whole thing about like, oh where's Maron? She needs to get
her ship out of my place? She is, I mean, they are
very cold, still the same, still the same, which fine, um,
but no one seems to want want to call Chay on their ship.
But anyway, whatever, Okay, So big story of the week. I
knew it's Carrie Bradshaw. I have to say, I thought I was going
to hate it, but I didn't. I didn't hate. I didn't hate
it, although I did hate the way it ended. But I will get
there. I I gotta say the moment when they first caught eyes at each
other around the street they both played John Corbett in and they played it it
was really beautiful. I I'm on record as saying that Aiden was as fucked
up a relationship as Big was in a lot of ways. He was manipulative
with her, and he expected her to change for him, and he never
seemed to actually see the person that he was infatuated with, like, look
at Carrie Bradshaw and then understand that she's not the person to walk your dog
or to set up house with, not at least not back then he made
her quit smoking, which again I understand people had boundaries and everything, but
he was constantly putting her through things, and then in response, she was
acting out against all these restrictions by cheating on him, right, because we're
not wearing his engagement right because it wasn't her. So it was a screwed
up relationship at the time. And when they announced John Corbet's return, I
was like, Oh my god, is this show just going to be about
reliving every screwed up thing these women did in their thirties. And then they
see each other for the first time on the street, and it was genuinely
romantic and sweet. The way they looked at each other. It was like,
Okay, these people have serious his history and all my complaints about them
aside, he was the number two love affair in her life. They sold
that one like hell back in the day. Actually my favorite story actually better
than John, better than Big So seeing him again, I gotta say,
John Corbett looks really good. He's in his early sixties, he's very well
man, and he was immediately the Aiden we know, the Aiden we know,
I know, maddeningly obtuse aiden that we know. And so yes,
it was lovely to see them together. And then they had a dinner together
where everything about it was good, and then they did something that I was
like, well, damn okay, like serious repercussions, like people acting like
adults with real feelings. When they went back to her place, he was
shocked and more than a little judgmental that she was still living there. And
I wonder if if this is going to lead to her finally getting the hell
out of that apartment, because you're fifty five and you're really wealthy, why
you living wall up? Yes, from your twenties and thirties, there's something
very I mean, I know people in New York living apartments for decades at
a time. But she has nothing happened. She hadn't mentioned, right,
she doesn't have to, and you know, we're supposed to believe she stores
all her crature in that in that tiny little closet and it just never made
any sense for her. But his response was more like, it wasn't judging
her for being stuck in her past. It was more like, oh no,
this was incredibly painful for me, and I don't want to go back.
And he ran down the list of things like refinishing her floors and breaking
through them, and I thought, I was like, that's great. That's
really taking what we know about these characters from the past and bringing it into
the present. In a way. It's like the Steve thing last episode,
where it finally felt like Stephen Miranda and I honestly thought they were done there.
I was like, all right, well no, because we knew.
I knew there were more scenes because we had seen but I thought, okay,
well they're done. I Well, that's the thing. It was a
really honest and grown up, an adult response where he said I can't go
back up there again, and um, I part of me was hoping that
Carrie was embarrassed by that. Carrie maybe would start questioning why am I living
in the past. There's so much pain attached to that apartment as well,
But instead they decided to get a hotel room and they kissed, and so
they're putting off that issue for another day. But I was opposed to the
Aiden's storyline in a lot of ways when announced, I agree, But I
actually really liked this initial meeting between the two, and I think they did
a very good job, especially you know with Aiden m Everything he said,
you know, it was just perfect. Everything he said, it was absolutely
perfect talking to her about you know, their lives, so do you have
someone? And all that felt so real. It felt grown up. It
felt the conversation like two people who had known each other a long you know,
from a long time ago. And as you said, when they to
the apartment, that whole reaction I was not expecting now and I thought it
was great and it felt very real and also like, yeah, you don't
want to go in there? Why he and the surprised at Oh, you
didn't move on? You didn't move on? Like that's why. I was
like, I hope you're a little embarrassing, right, you actually should be.
And I really liked the idea that as much as I thought he was
manipulative and an asshole to her for in a lot of ways back in the
day, at the end of the day, as he's If you remember the
scene where he said, you broke my heart back in the day, it's
still broken. And I think that's really smart writing. Like, I don't
think they're ever going to refer to their they're almost hook up in the second
movie, although they did say we haven't seen each other in thirteen years,
and that was thirteen years ago, but I forgot about that. Yeah,
that whole second movie was her maybe she was going to cheat on Big with
Aiden. It was so dumb. Yes, yes, but I like the
idea that he is very fond of her is interesting in pursuing something again with
her, but his heart is still broken, Like back what she did to
him twenty five years or twenty years ago was should have been incredibly painful to
him. I hope they really think about what they're going to do with those
two because I don't want another horrible break up now it's just yeah, I
don't think. I also don't want to see them getting married, so yeah,
or living together. So we'll see where that goes. Right, it
could be a lovely interlude in their middle aged lives where they reconnect as old
friends and lovers and then gently go on their way. Wishing each other.
Well, I doubt that's how it'll play out. I wish it was how
it will play out. But I will say I've been waiting all season for
this Aiden thing to happen, and when it did, I was like,
huh, okay, you know what i'da wasn't too bad. I don't really
mind this. I want to see where it goes next. And that's not
something I can say a lot about a lot of the storylines, and you
can tell. And I think in the next episode she has a conversation with
Miranda about meeting Aiden, a that which feel feels very real, like they're
discussing right right right people they meet in relationships and all another sort of B
plus episode. Wouldn't you say? No, it was good. I enjoyed
this one as well. Um um. I. All the storylines are cooking.
I'm really interested, well, not all the storylines. All the white
ladies storylines are yes and they don't know what to do. Interested to see
where Miranda's going to take her new lesbianism. Interested to see where Charlotte is
going to take her potential new career. Interested to see what Carrie and Nat
and They're going to wind up doing. Meanwhile, every character they introduced,
all of whom are not white or people of color, are floundering and that
looks bad. It does, I agree to agree at this point. These
women, I think they occasionally dabble with Lisa Todd Wexley and in doing it,
but man Seema and Nia, they are just floating around on the backgrounds
like the you know, black woman or Indian woman best friend who doesn't have
anything else to do. Um, there's something about the way Nia and Miranda
interact that I just I feel like it does that actress Karen Pittman's her name
a lot of disservices. I'm like, God, do you really like playing
this woman who who just fawns all over her white lady friend, Like,
Oh, move into my place, Oh let me clap while you go off
on your first date while I'm sitting at home alone, Like, let her
feel like shit about it about her life instead of being this sort of noble
quiet I'm moving forward. Give her something that actress has the ability to do
something that character is Honestly, of all the new ones, she's the one
most potentially interesting. I want her and Miranda to open a law firm together,
Like that would be a great Here you are, you're a Brooklyn law
firm taking on like pro bono work and social office client. What isn't a
great one? Yes, I agree. I think all the new characters are
interesting and have potential, but they're just not working them out. And that's
a shame to see. What was the point in diversifying this show. If
you're not going to use diverse members, it's going to be there. Yeah,
all right, So we have got to catch a car and go to
heaven. Yes, go to heaven. So we're off to Fire Island and
we'd love to hear what you think, your memories of Sinad O'Connor, or
what you thought about this latest episode of Sex in the City. So and
thank you once again for all your kind words and very much I really appreciate
last week. So we'll be back next week with whatever crosses our eyes or
crosses our desks. Until then, take care of yourselves, love you mean
it. Bye bye,