. . . . I'm watching Beyond Ridiculous Clothes. Laughter is a warming activity!
Agatha Raisin's Christmas Murder Mystery.
The protagonist's blindingly color blocked wardrobe could kill all by itself at 20 paces.
The Eyes of Tammy Bakker (2022). Chastain takes 18-20 Tammy in perky, cute, cheerleader 1960’s outfits all the through the increasingly ridiculous outfits Bakker sported as her talons grow ever long and more pointy, her make-up every thicker and more permanent, and her hair goes from natural to peroxided to what red wig piques her fancy that day – the Tammy Bakker everybody pictures when her name comes up.
Plus My Fair Lady, which is about Clothes you betcha, but over the top brilliant costume design, not ridiculous, well, not quite, not really. After all, Audrey Hepburn's no Lily Collins (EIP) or Sarah Jessica Parker (AJLT), both of whom urge the viewer to bitch slap them with every moue, which is their idea of acting, in every beat, every scene.*
. . . . So, as is evident, the contest for Most Ridiculous Clothes On Television Today is more than competitive. But we have ... a winner! Two winners in fact, co-winners, all due to the efforts of just one man.
And Just Like That, sequel to Sex And the City, and Emily in Paris (skipped the first season, so I'm in ep. 4 of the second one). They share the same inspiration and producer, Darren Star, queen of portraying women as more shallow than a dish drainer.
Gosh these clothes are -- foolish, So are the characters, so it's all one thang. The best Emily in Paris character is the mixed Asian friend, Mindy, who busks with two fellas, as the vocalist. And is a Madame PeePee (yes, her job as the daughter of a supremely weathy father, is to take a teeny coin in return for handing a square of tp to the people entering the Toilet) at a Drag Queen Club. She sure can sing though, if the actor is indeed the singer. The only thing is in the show worth watching is Mindy singing. Yet the songs always take second place to whatever Mindy is wearing. The purpose of the songs is to give the half hour episodes more opportunities to show More Paris so no one has to strain the brain for much plot, character or doing anything at all -- just like Instagram, which is the real star and real concern of Emily in Paris.
. . . . SATC -- Ep. 6. These characters, even if they are not White, are just like the White Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte – so well off, so consumed with what we call First World Problems. It’s not as though we see these new characters behavior as informed by their heritage. They have the same never enough status and privilege as their White counterparts, which of course they would, but isn’t there something more the show could show us? At Seema’s family’s Diwali party, we see only her family’s desire Seema marry a rich fellow and produce grandchildren, etc. and nothing cultural at all, except the saris – one of which Carrie wears in the same way she wears those silly tulle skirts we are still seeing little girls wear with their fairy wings in the street, unless the temps demand coats, even though Carrie's now in her mid-50’s, showing how she can pull out her edgy at will.
The exception is the stand-up comic star-podcaster character, Che Diaz. Same as in their real life, Sara Ramirez plays a non-binary Afro-latino butch-bitch sort. Except this character are only about their sexuality, and anyway, we don’t see Che much now, except in Miranda’s fantasy replay sex life, and unanswered texts. As is often the case with White people, the point of the Other is my sexual fantasy. The show just doesn’t do culture/people wrong, even its all-and-nothing-but-surface is wrong.
Charlotte reacts like a Karen or something to Miranda’s outing of her Che sexcapade – "Are you a lesbian now or what?!?!!!!!!??????" The show -- and Charlotte, like Carrie and Miranda and the show itself, has written out memory of the episode in which Charlotte was partying hearty w/lesbians.*
This surface is neither fun nor interesting, since there's no evidence any of the character have learned anything since the glory days of the friendship, i.e. the 7 season of SATC, or during the last 15 years. Moreover, its brittle depiction of the good life on the verge of snapping and splintering at any moment – quite as the USA YAY has done.
Worst of all, as with SATC, they appropriate downtown / SoHo. In AJLT, there's scene in the very costly sari shop here on West Broadway. As per usual it’s weird to see this perspective on where I live. Totes consumerist vision for Carrie, etc., not at all mine Another big boulder of superficial in this episode, is that Carrie buys a millions of dollar coop "downtown. Even as she does so, she says, "I used to come downtown all the time, but I never thought I'd live here." Yet the show keeps making a huge deal out of Carrie wanting to cocoon her husband-bereft self back in her first apartment -- which, while show called its location "the Upper East Side," it is in reality a real brownstone in the West Village. This is something even casual watchers of SATC know -- see: the endless convoys of tourist buses and tours on that block. And truly the watchers of And Just Like That were anything but casual watchers of Sex and the City.
Not to mention the afternoon a SATC shoot shut down my entire block, forbidding me to leave my apartment building or re-enter it, because Somebody in the crew was standing there.
Eileen: Are you gay?Charlotte: No, I'm not. But I do so enjoy the company of all these women. Everyone's so smart and funny. After spending too much time and attention on men......it feels like such a safe, warm environment. And while sexually, I feel that I am straight......there's a very powerful part of me that connects to the female spirit.Eileen: Sweetheart, that's all very nice. But if you're not going to eat pussy, you're not a dyke.
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