“Sharing a [holiday] house with you girlfriends is fine in your twenties, but I feel like in your thirties isn’t it a tiny bit pathetic?” – Miranda
This is an interesting one for me – because when I first watched Sex and the City I was a twentysomething woman, and now I’m well into the thirtysomething camp.
I certainly hope I didn’t agree back then with Miranda’s scathing verdict about grown-up friends holidaying together. Clearly she’d wised up by the time of the much-mocked Sex and the City 2 (unless she views such vacations as tragic only when they women are single and have no-one else to ask).
The trip is to the Hamptons and, thanks to Charlotte bagging herself a toyboy before they even arrive, our chums end up running with a younger crowd. At the point where the three moaning minnies all start bellyaching about beer foam and vomit, you have to wonder why poor Charlotte bothers with them.
It’s not all grim, though – Carrie bumps into a fangirl who declares reading Sex and the City column “is, like, my religion”. So far so flattering, until said girl declares herself a 25-year-old virgin who’s saving herself for marriage. Presumably she’s reading Carrie’s couldn’t-help-but-wonderings as cautionary tales, but it’s never quite made clear.
Meanwhile, Samantha’s bratty young assistant gets above her station and tries to pinch her clients, but it’s no surprise when youth fails to triumph over experience.
And then … suddenly there’s Mr Big, with a twentysomething woman on his arm. Regular readers will recall I got thoroughly sick of Carrie’s Big fixation in season one, but I must admit his reappearance came as a sucker punch here and I really felt for Carrie, trying to recover her dignity by name-checking her own date but digging herself deeper into a hole of rejection and embarrassment. I must admit Big is looking pretty good too. Must be the Hamptons air. He’s back from Paris, he hasn’t called, and he’s already moved on. Almost as though he just wasn’t that into Carrie all along. Brutal.
Carrie’s column: Twentysomething girls: friend or foe?
Fashion: Carrie tried her best to repel the date she’s lukewarm about by wearing unflattering Bermuda shorts to the beach, but then raised her game with a gravity-defying boob tube and abs to rival any young whippersnapper. I also enjoyed Samantha’s ludicrous frontless jumpsuit.
Puns: None, but I did enjoy the visual gag when Charlotte discovered some unwelcome pubic visitors. I suspect many of today’s Brazilian-waxed twentysomethings wouldn’t even get the reference…
Sex and the City Revisited 