Sarah Jessica Parker‘s Carrie Bradshaw “is the worst human being ever,” declares MCN columnist Noah Forrest in a longish piece about his mixed feelings towards HBO’s Sex and the City series, which carry over (trust me) into the film. “Hyperbole? Sure, but there’s a lot of truth to that statement and it has very little to do with how much Carrie has affected women all over New York City (I swear if I see one more dress with a bushy tail on it…) and everything to do with how she treats her friends on the show.

“My overarching feeling when I look back on all of the [HBO] episodes is that she is a selfish, self-centered opportunist with no regard for anybody else. She is the worst kind of ‘independent’ woman, [one] who loses herself in every relationship she becomes involved in and loses touch with all of her friends every time she enters into one of those relationships.
“It’s a problem that Carrie is a materialist too, but that is more of a societal issue because women look up to her and see her as something of an icon or role model. It’s amazing that some of the show’s most ardent supporters are women under the age of majority. I suppose it’s not the show’s fault, but if I were the producers I would wonder why my show about thirty-something women — and especially my main character — appeals so strongly to teenage girls.
“There are a lot of profound problems with the show, starting with its betrayal of its own premise: it purports to be about four single thirty-somethings who don’t necessarily eschew relationships in general, but find that they don’t need a man to prove their worth. At the end of the series, each woman has settled down with wealthy or handsome men (and in Carrie’s case, both). Maybe these gals didn’t love their beaus because of their wealth or their looks, but they sure were wealthy or they sure were good looking. The central thesis of the show is thus deflated by the final bow, which essentially says: sure, you can be happy on your own but it is better to have someone who can buy you shoes instead of buying them yourself.
“That is not to say that fantasy is a bad thing, but you don’t want to read a fairy tale and have the unicorn die of leprosy; no, you want the unicorn to fly, or whatever it is that unicorns do. The point being: Samantha’s character is a fantastical extrapolation of what a woman’s life could potentially be if she eschewed relationships with men in favor of casual sex. She also happens to be a world-class PR gal that is as much a tiger in the boardroom as she is in the bedroom.
“Is it possible this kind of woman exists? Yes, of course. But Samantha is designed as a character for a television show and isn’t a real person and what she was designed for was to be the logical conclusion of a life built around freedom and drive (both career-wise and sexual). She is like the female Gordon Gekko, except she would be more apt to say, “sex√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭ¶is good.”
“The bottom line is that to have that character settle down, no matter what the reason, takes away the fantasy that the show has created. It takes that option away from the multitudes of women who watched the show and thought to themselves, ‘wow, I wish I could be more like Samantha,’ and instead reduces them to saying, ‘wow, I wish I had a boyfriend like Samantha’s.'”