Sex and the City? Really?

Seriously, these women are evil. I'm not kidding

I have a serious question to ask you people. Who is the intended audience of the Sex and the City movies and TV show? Honestly?

I need to admit up front that my feelings toward the Sex and the City franchise are unreasonably harsh. Frankly, I'm predisposed to hate everything that bears the name Sex and the City. I explain that in a minute. Still, just because I'm biased doesn't mean that I'm wrong when I say that this show and its associated feature films were forged in fiery pits of Hell by Lucifer himself and sent to Earth for specific purpose of torturing the human race.

Too harsh? I don't think so.

There are some people -- I don't know if any of them read this blog -- who will defend Sex in the City by claiming that I've never watched it and am only dumping on it because that's how guys are supposed to react. Well, that's not actually true.

Here's the thing...I'm kind of one of those people who takes critics too seriously. If something is getting widespread critical acclaim, it peaks my interest. If something is getting railed on by critics, it's hard for me to get excited about sampling it unless I have a built-in interest in it (see: Pearl Jam albums). This is true whether the consensus is among movie critics, music critics, or television critics. I don't always agree with the critical consensus, but broad critical accolades will at least get me to take a look at something.

So, yes, though I may have to turn in my Man Card to admit this, I did check out Sex and the City when it was on HBO. It was a widely acclaimed program that won several awards. I figured I should at least give it a look-see. I made it through one episode with my sanity intact. It wasn't horrible, though I had to wonder why the ladies on the show thought puns were so funny and how any group of women could sleep around so much without all of them dying from a venereal disease. While I wasn't enthralled with the program, I was at least able to stomach the first episode I watched.

Then I watched another. And another. Roughly three episodes and I was already praying for a quick and painless death. Now, I'm willing to accept the possibility that just maybe the three episodes I saw were some sort of epic low point for the show and that what I got was not a representative sample of Sex and the City's overall greatness. But, I seriously doubt that's the case.

This was a show about horrible people. Each of the four main characters was shallow, selfish, catty, and at least a little spiteful. Their "struggles" were nothing like those that real, actual people really, actually deal with in real, actual life. Yet, people seemed to place these women on pedestals as archetypes for how women want -- or should want -- to live their lives.

Now, it was just a TV show. I should have been able to just let my dislike for the program pass, opt not to watch it, and move on with my life. Well, things just weren't that simple. Like many things I end up hating for the rest of my life, I'm forever unable disassociate Sex and the City with a bunch of really stupid people I used to know. You see, simultaneous to my ill-fated effort to see what all the fuss was about was my association with a handful of stupid girls I knew in college.

These girls, all of them Mormon girls of the chaste variety, convinced themselves that Sex and the City was some sort of instruction manual for how to be single. Of course, none of them were inexplicably rich enough to buy untold amounts of shoes. None of them had an inordinate amount of gay males for BFFs. And, most importantly, none of them really actually dated very much, let alone had crazy amounts of illicit sex with dudes they barely knew.

Each of these girls was a little sad to have made it to age 22 or 23 without getting married and, for some reason, they felt this galactically stupid show validated their existence. So, they had their lame Sex and the City lunches together and pretended as though not being married was a choice they'd made and not just the way things worked out. And, even though, in reality, each of them was desperate to meet a guy and get married, they talk as though any relationship with a male was disposable. In short, they bought into the facade that the Sex and the City women were supposed to be role models, even if, in the end, they weren't about to emulate the characters in any major way.

"I didn't even know how to be single until I started watching Sex and the City," one of them once told me. I responded by asking if that meant that "being single" meant shagging a bunch of dudes, being bitchy to basically everyone, and obsessing over shoes. I was then told in no uncertain terms that I obviously didn't know what Sex and the City was all about.

She was probably right. Maybe I still don't know what it's all about. What I do know is that, over the past few weeks, as I've been bombarded with commercials and articles about the new Sex and the City movie, I want to put a bullet through my temples so I no longer have to live in a world where that is considered quality entertainment.

I can't imagine that time and aging has made the characters more endearing or realistic. Now it just seems like it'd be like watching your grandmother constantly talk about sex using graphic puns while going through 17 different wardrobe changes a day. Thankfully, I married a woman who finds the whole thing to be as ridiculous as I do.

So, I want to ask the question again. Who is the intended audience for this crap? Does anyone really like this stuff?