The Sex and the City Finale Was Bad
The Tin Drum Diaries, part 8
Listen. Who knows when I’m going to watch The Tin Drum. I absolutely absolutely am going to watch it, don’t you worry about that. But…. I mean, you know. Right? Remember when Netflix was new, still DVDs in the mail (shoutout to my parents, who are hanging on to DVDs from Netflix for dear life until the terrible day when Netflix makes the Sophie’s choice of a business decision to finally let go of the division of their company that caters to two people in upstate New York), and you were like, okay, I’m going to use this service to be gluttonous and binge even though we’re not using that term yet here in 2004 and watch Six Feet Under or whatever, but ALSO, I’m going to load up this queue with all the Criterion high art film festival stuff I’ve ever meant to watch and become incredibly film literate, Fellini here I come! But then you’d get home from work or school and be like uh, I’m exhausted, I’m not watching a two-hour black-and-white Polish movie, come on — remember that? And then that poor probably excellent film would sit there on some pile for the better part of a year while I finished Six Feet Under, moved on to The West Wing, and refused to simply change my Netflix to just one a month because someday I totally would watch it, and I don’t even need to tell you that I never did. Anyway, that’s where I’m at. I am having, lately, real trouble watching a movie, period. Since March of 2020, I’ve watched approximately every TV show that’s ever existed, and honestly that’s mostly been great — I love TV, I just do, I always have — but yeah, it’s probably mushied up my brain a little bit, even more than back in those early Netflix days. Sometimes I can’t even finish a full episode of The Knick in one sitting because it doesn’t star Kyle Chandler and I haven’t already seen it three times. (Kyle Chandler, of course, is Coach Taylor; I also recommend Bloodline on Netflix, if you can handle Kyle Chandler not being Coach Taylor. If you can’t, I completely understand.) The Tin Drum is a Criterion film that’s in German. So bear with me on the movie recap. But like, truly: I really actually am going to watch the movie. Soon. Ish.
So Big shows up in Paris and Carrie is completely unfazed? Miranda and Steve are married so is that kid’s name Brady Brady? They went seven seasons keeping Big’s name a secret and the literal series-ending big reveal is that his name is JOHN? What the fuck is that? That’s like if they showed Maris on the final episode of Frasier and she’s like, just a totally normal-looking boring lady. What are we DOING here? Samantha’s ending was actually satisfying but whoops no Samantha in the new series, you already know how I feel about that. The less said about Charlotte the better, honestly.
The world is coming back to normalcy and it’s exciting but also like, oh, right, the world was kind of underwhelming and filled with shit to spend money on. Remember that from pre-pandemic? Remember being broke? And sitting in an office for eight hours and coming home too tired to do anything? And pants and underwire bras and FOMO and anxiety when the weather’s nice and you’re not outside every free second you have?
Real life is like the Sex and the City finale, is what I’m trying to say, maybe. Anticlimactic. Much ado about a guy named John. Maybe that will motivate me to watch a movie about a German manchild who plays a drum all day in an asylum. At least it’s a change of pace from Carrie and her parade of shitty boyfriends.
I will miss Steve, though. I feel compelled to end on a positive note because I don’t know if you noticed (I maybe didn’t until I was writing this), but I’m a little bit cranky today. And when it comes to Sex and the City, Steve Brady is without question the most positive note there is. Love ya, Steve. All the best to you.
