Line #32 Headscratchers/SexAndTheCity


1	* Ok, so when Miranda had the baby, she named him Brady which was Steve's last name. Obviously she didn't know she ''would'' end up marrying the guy, but she did and... is the kid then Brady Brady? They never discussed her changing her name, but even hyphenated it would be awkward to be Brady Hobbes-Brady. Even if she keeps Hobbes as a last name, it's still gotta be just a little weird that your first name is your dad's last name, and... goddamn this really does bug me!
2	** In the credits of the movie his name is given as "Brady Hobbes".
3	** Obviously it's not a big enough issue to mention in the movie or the series, but I actually think it would have been weird and not consistent with their characters if they had had Miranda and Steve change Brady's name after they got married. I can imagine Steve or someone else wondering if they should change his name, but then I imagine Miranda would point out that it would be silly to change his name just because other people aren't used to a child taking his mother's last name instead of his father's (when the parents are married). Also, it really meant a lot to Steve when Miranda gave Brady his name, so I feel like that symbolism would be more important to him than following convention and pressuring Miranda to conform.
4	* In TheMovie, the one thing Carrie doesn't like about the new apartment is the size of the wardrobe. Big decides to build her a new one. BUT WHERE IS IT? It's clearly much larger than there was space for, so where's the other side? Jutting out into the dining room? Stuck in a parallel dimension a la Skeeve's house in ''The Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve''? How on earth is there room for this wardrobe in their apartment?
5	** The closet is a TARDIS, maybe? I don't even watch Series/DoctorWho and that seems to be the default answer to any space-related question. Or maybe trick mirrors to make it seem bigger than it is? After that, I got nuthin'.
6	** Maybe they took out a section of wall and made it a walk-in closet.
7	** The DVD commentary implies he took a chunk out of an existing room to extend the closet.
8	*** Presumably meaning a second bedroom or guestroom is taken out. Which must be frustrating to people re-selling the property afterwards.
9	*** He can always just have the work undone, he's got the money.
10	* Does Carrie publish these articles WHILE SHE'S DATING THESE GUYS? Surely her boyfriends read her column, and she writes not so nice things, not to mention admits to infidelity more than once. And her girlfriends are all a-OK with their sex lives being broadcast all over NYC? How does this never cause an issue?
11	** They must have talked about it and OK'd her doing it, because they do all know Carrie is a writer and can pick up her magazine just as easily as anyone else. They even celebrate her being used on a bus billboard. However, I'm betting she uses fake names for them, and we the viewers hearing their real names is just an affectation to avoid confusing new viewers. On the boyfriend front, she may just "forget" to mention exactly what kind of articles she writes, or flat out ask them between scenes if they're OK with it. What she may do to avoid contaminating the relationship is "archive" the articles from ongoing relationships either for when they die or until she gets an OK. Still, I've only watched a handful of episodes when my sister had control of the remote.
12	*** Her boyfriends are fully aware of her column, and it was an issue when she dated a local politician who eventually became worried that dating a sex columnist would ruin his image. So, not using his real name, published her next column about his wanting of a golden shower, which she decided not to give him. Plus, the narration in the episode isn't supposed to be the entirety of the column, so no, she wouldn't have written about her affair.
13	*** In an early episode, Charlotte explicitly asks Carrie not to write about something in her column, so we can presume that her friends at least have given her permission to write about certain aspects of their sex lives.
14	** FWIW, The actual column/book the show is based on shuffles the names of the characters from the TV versions (Book Samantha = TV Charlotte, Book Miranda = TV Samantha) so it's possible TV Carrie did something similar too. As for Carrie's boyfriends, most of the people she hangs out with are used to appearing on [[http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/page_six_gAz3qFWPEMKJp6bwh6W79M Page Six]] and probably don't care as much.
15	** I always thought that she just used different names for them such as "the Russian" or "Big". It never really bothered me much because I also was pretty sure she didn't ramble on in her columns about her friends daily lives, affairs, and random bouts of Montezuma's revenge in Mexico.
16	** As someone said, Carrie uses vague nicknames while she writes her columns. So the only people who would know who's she talking about is her friends and ones involved. And she does use her friend's sex lives as a subject for her columns although she would withhold if her friends asked her to.
17	*** Even if Carrie uses pseudonyms, Samantha and Charlotte are well-known socialites who are constantly appearing in various public occasions with Carrie, so it shouldn't be too hard for gossip papers to decipher who the people behind the nicknames are. Okay, maybe Samantha wouldn't care about it, but Charlotte doesn't seem like the sort of person who'd want intimate details of her life to appear in a column read by millions, ''even'' if her real name was hidden. And yet Carrie seems to be writing about ''everything'' that goes on in Charlotte's (as well as Miranda's and Samantha's) life, including her problems with conceiving a child, without this ever being an issue to her.
18	** In the aforementioned arc with the politician, he makes a joking remark about her writing about dating a sexy politician, so I think it's fair to say that yes, she does write about her boyfriends but no, she doesn't use their names.
19	** I think overall that Carrie's narration is about 50% column, 50% actual narration. She obviously mentions some people publically (Big and that politician, for example), but probably keeps other things hidden. The sheer length of her narration at times implies you couldn't fit all that in a newspaper column.
20	* The current economic situation aside, why the hell ''does'' Carrie keep her old apartment? When she starts going back there in the second movie, it's implied that its the first time she's been there in two years. I understand wanting your own space and everything, but if she really seldom goes there, why waste good real estate like that?
21	** I'm guessing for the same reason she specifically went back to that same apartment after coming back from Paris. She has a lot of memories in that place, and isn't ready to see it go yet.
22	** Carrie never fully commits to relationships. It's her main character flaw. And she's the kind of New York rich that can keep a Manhattan condo in her back pocket on the off-chance that the same relationship that already collapsed several times collapses again.
23	* In the episode The Cold War, Charlotte obviously realizes her dog is in heat during the dog show. Anyone who knows anything about what happens when a dog is in heat knows it is NOT a good idea to have her anywhere near male dogs, let alone let her off the leash in the middle of a dog park. Also Elizabeth Taylor is a small dog, and so is the Jack Russell Terrier who first tries to mount her. Why didn't Charlotte just walk over to her and scoop her up instead of standing uselessly to the side waving her arms?
24	** She might have not expected a situation like that to happen, and assumed it wouldn't be out of her control. But I assume once your tiny dog is being gangbanged by all the strays in new york, you might not want to go shoving your hands in the middle of that... unpleasantness.
25	** Probably part of Charlotte's Flanderization of her naivete.
26	* In the episode where Samantha tries to return a back massager from some Sharper Image type store becuase it doesn't function as a vibrator, (which hello gross, I don't think the store would be able to resell that item) why didn't she just go to a sex toy shop and buy a real vibrator? It's not like New York City wouldn't have dozens of those! In fact they had an episode in the first season where Charlotte gets addicted to a vibrator.
27	** RuleOfFunny. She didn't know it wasn't a vibrator.
28	** She mentioned it was under warranty, so she was simply able to get a new one for free.
29	** It's Samantha, she probably has/wants a variety of... sex equipment.
30	** My impression was that it ''was'' a vibrator, but the store clerk didn't want to admit that. In the same scene, Samantha proceeds to advise other women buying "back massagers" in the store, and says to one something like "I think that one ''is'' a back massager."
31	** What she has is a Hitachi Magic Wand, ostensibly a back massager but was known for years as a vibrator. Hitachi have finally embraced its more popular function and now sell attachments for sexual use. Check out the amazon reviews - hilarious! http://www.amazon.com/Vibratex-HV-250R-Hitachi-Magic-Massager/dp/B00005M1WE
32	* Kyle Maclachlan plays Charlotte's husband Trey. The guy who plays Stanford plays a metalhead in one episode of the second series of ''Series/TwinPeaks''. But then Heather Graham shows up playing herself? And Stanford doesn't know what to talk to her about? How about kissing Charlotte's husband? I know I should just ignore this but it makes my head swim!
33	** ... you realize Twin Peaks isn't in the same universe as Sex And The City, right?
34	** The OP probably means that, because Heather Graham played herself (one of Heather Graham's most notable roles was on ''Twin Peaks''), that ''Twin Peaks'' presumably exists in the ''SITC'' universe, or else why would she be famous? The issue being, Kyle Maclachlan was also famous for ''Twin Peaks'', much more so than Graham, and it creates a potential CelebrityParadox.
35	*** And in ''Series/{{Glee}}'', one of the characters' favorite musicals is ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}'' and her mother is played by Idina Menzel. It's really nothing more stand out than any other example of celebrity paradox.
36	* Charlotte's not actually gay pastry chef from season 2 not handling the vermin (I don't remember exactly what it was.) As a chef, isn't that the sort of thing he'd eventually get used to just from doing his job? (At least from what I've heard, that sort of job will attract a lot of pests, though I may have just heard wrong.)
37	** Health code requirements are a thing. It turns out most eating establishments generally frown on being rat infested.
38	* When Carrie has briefly met Aleksandr but hasn't yet begun dating him, he attempts to call her. Without listening to anything beyond "Hello", Carrie immediately dismisses the call as a "wrong number" without further questions and then hangs up. A few times. So does she genuinely believe that it's a wrong number despite it being the very distinct accent of a somewhat famous celebrity she'd met recently and yet somehow doesn't recognise over the phone, or is she preemptively giving all unanticipated callers the cold shoulder? I legit can't tell whether it's SJP's acting or the ambiguous script, but it's not entirely clear.
39	** In a prior episode, Carrie mentioned that her phone number is unlisted and she hadn't given Aleksandr her number (he got it through a third party). Most likely, any time she gets an unexpected call from someone she doesn't recognize, it ''is'' legitimately a wrong number.
40	* In the first movie it's made such a big deal that Miranda told Big he's crazy to get married after she found out Steve has cheated on her. Miranda thinks that may have been the reason Big ran out of the wedding, but... He was already married, well-aware of what that commitment entailed and his marriage to Natasha ended because he cheated on her with Carrie. Why would such a statement be the reason for cold feet, especially since if we are to take it as an example of failed marriage, then Harry and Charlotte's happy marriage counteracts that? The whole thing was played out as if Big was getting married for the first time (unless the movies retconned that) and had no idea what he was getting into.
41	** I think Miranda and Big are essentially thinking about two different things here when it comes to "getting married". It seems pretty clear - particularly through the two movies - that Miranda finds it hard to juggle having an active romantic life with her husband, having a kid (who she has help for lmao), and having a job. It doesn't actually seem to suit her at all (note in SATC2 she says she never has time to make it to Brady's stuff and yet she can always make time for the girls). And in addition to this, Steve has cheated on her. Don't get me wrong, Steve cheating on her was bad, but I feel like one of the main reasons it bothers her is because she sacrificed so much of her freedom (from her perspective) to have this domestic life with Steve... and he still cheated on her. Big's issue is that he knows what being married is like (with the way he's approached it in the past), and that's precisely what he's anxious about. He asked Carrie to marry him almost like a business transaction, to settle her anxiety about not owning the apartment, and was under the impression that the wedding would be discreet especially because Carrie herself has shown a reluctance to get married. However, it's as the wedding starts to become more of a spectacle - and thereby more of a "real", traditional marriage in his mind - that he starts to panic. He asks for reassurance from Carrie that it's about the two of them because if he ''is'' going to get married again he wants it to be different.
42	* In the second movie, how come the girls have no money to pay for one more night at the hotel in Abu Dhabi to at least properly pack, while by the time of the movie, Carrie is married to a wealthy financier and herself also a successful author, Samantha owns her successful PR company, Miranda was a lawyer before she quits, and Charlotte comes from a rich family and is also married to a lawyer? Not to mention, they all wear designer clothes all the time and they're going back to New York from Abu Dhabi in ''first class''.
43	** This ''is'' dumb, but I think can be explained two ways. From a story perspective, you will often see people cut corners as to how much or little money characters have according to what they want the conflict to be - lazy writing essentially. It's like in Friends where the supposedly struggling characters had a really nice apartment and never wore the same clothes twice. Second reason is one based in reality that very rich people are often happy to drop money on status symbols and shiny things (real estate, accessories, clothes, cars) but ''not'' when they don't "have" to or they're ''supposed'' to be getting something for free. Yes, they could've likely paid for the suite, but goshdarnit they weren't ''supposed'' to be! And these women are pretty full of themselves and this movie in particular was trying to pretend it was feminist so I guess they wanted to resolve the situation without further embarrassment or asking others for help.
44	* When baby Brady is born Steve cuts the cord and then hands the newborn over to Carrie. For what possible reason? Shouldn't Miranda get to hold him before Carrie does? Is Steve somehow unable to hand the baby over to Miranda himself? As a viewer of the show it seems like a ridiculous attempt at making Carrie important in the moment, but what could possibly be the in-universe reason behind it?
45	* When Carrie and Samantha are staying in Aiden's "country" cabin, Samantha announces that they'll need some milk so that they can bake a pie, and runs off to the nearby dairy farmer to ask for some milk (and also sleep with him). Until dropping the pie dish containing the blind-baked crust, Carrie says she is trying to bake an ''apple'' pie. Why does an apple pie need milk?
46	** While not exceptionally necessary, pies with a top crust (like apple) typically use an egg wash on top to make the crust a perfect golden brown. You beat an egg with a small amount of milk or cream.
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Context Headscratchers / SexAndTheCity