Lost girl in the City
I rarely watch TV. But I love American sitcoms like My So-Called Life, Friends, Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives. Really mainstream prime time pre-packaged, glossy, bite-sized caricatures of the American Life, which probably has nothing to do with reality of course.
And even then, I have never watched all the episodes of any of the shows, much less in chronological order. I catch random re-run episodes whenever I'm back in Malaysia and it's on TV, or on inter-continental flights, or whenever it happens to be played in UK TV (some time during the weekend. Morning, night—I'm not quite sure).
But on my trip to Vietnam last June, I bought the pirated version of the entire set of Sex and the City DVDs for US$1 per piece. The shop assistant assured me in heavily-accented English that it was all okay, no problem. As it turned out, the DVDs were badly labelled in Chinese (at least something I can read), some disks were unreadable, and the order of some of the episodes were messed up, and some episodes I suspect were just missing altogether.
Luckily, one of my housemates had most of the seasons, the original versions no less. And so over the course of the past few weeks, months, I've managed to watch most of SATC, in approximately the right order (less Season 2). He didn't have Season 6, which I had in my pirated collection, mislabelled as Season 7.
So with me working virtually part-time over the past few weeks, I'd been watching the last episodes for the first time—"Let there be light", "The Ick factor", "Catch-38", "Out of the frying pan", "The cold war", "Splat!", "An American girl in Paris (Part une and part deux)"
It's strange, over the course of the seasons, especially in the last season, to watch as the four quintessentially neurotic swinging single New York girls, one by one, began maturing, resolving their issues, settling down. It might sound weird, talking about them as if they were real people, but I would never have imagined sharp-edged, cynical Miranda settling down, having a baby, moving to Brooklyn (God forbid!), and having her mother-in-law stay with her. Or Samantha finally being in a relationship, loving someone, opening herself to share herself with one special man. Or Carrie being all loved-up in coupledom for a long time sans commitment issues with the Russian, and of course the classic all-American romantic happy-ever-after denouement with Mr Big.
I have just finished watching the last few episodes. The show seemed to echo my real life, with my lovely girl friends through the years moving away, settling down. And so watching SATC has been a sobering process. Even TV characters grow up.
And even then, I have never watched all the episodes of any of the shows, much less in chronological order. I catch random re-run episodes whenever I'm back in Malaysia and it's on TV, or on inter-continental flights, or whenever it happens to be played in UK TV (some time during the weekend. Morning, night—I'm not quite sure).
But on my trip to Vietnam last June, I bought the pirated version of the entire set of Sex and the City DVDs for US$1 per piece. The shop assistant assured me in heavily-accented English that it was all okay, no problem. As it turned out, the DVDs were badly labelled in Chinese (at least something I can read), some disks were unreadable, and the order of some of the episodes were messed up, and some episodes I suspect were just missing altogether.
Luckily, one of my housemates had most of the seasons, the original versions no less. And so over the course of the past few weeks, months, I've managed to watch most of SATC, in approximately the right order (less Season 2). He didn't have Season 6, which I had in my pirated collection, mislabelled as Season 7.
So with me working virtually part-time over the past few weeks, I'd been watching the last episodes for the first time—"Let there be light", "The Ick factor", "Catch-38", "Out of the frying pan", "The cold war", "Splat!", "An American girl in Paris (Part une and part deux)"
It's strange, over the course of the seasons, especially in the last season, to watch as the four quintessentially neurotic swinging single New York girls, one by one, began maturing, resolving their issues, settling down. It might sound weird, talking about them as if they were real people, but I would never have imagined sharp-edged, cynical Miranda settling down, having a baby, moving to Brooklyn (God forbid!), and having her mother-in-law stay with her. Or Samantha finally being in a relationship, loving someone, opening herself to share herself with one special man. Or Carrie being all loved-up in coupledom for a long time sans commitment issues with the Russian, and of course the classic all-American romantic happy-ever-after denouement with Mr Big.
I have just finished watching the last few episodes. The show seemed to echo my real life, with my lovely girl friends through the years moving away, settling down. And so watching SATC has been a sobering process. Even TV characters grow up.
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