Sex and the City requires little introduction. The six-season series about the professional, romantic, and social lives of four 30-something women in New York featured protagonists who were candid and explicit about their sex lives and put female friendship above marriage. It’s become one of those cornerstones of our pop-culture vocabulary: We label our friends — the Miranda, the Charlotte, the Samantha — while convincing ourselves that we are obviously the Carrie of the group. It’s been more than ten years since Sex and the City went off the air, and we’re still binge-watching, quoting, reliving, reminiscing, and continuing the eternal Mr. Big/Aiden debate.
There are certain parts of the show, however, that have not aged well. Some plotlines are quirky — like when Miranda wanted to bone a guy dressed as a sandwich — but others are just too messed up to let slide. Let’s talk about the biggest Cosmo-sipping elephants in the room.
1. Carrie’s net worth is inexplicable.
In “Ring-a-Ding-Ding†(season four, episode 16), our narrator is offered the opportunity to buy her co-op, but 35-year-old Carrie Bradshaw only has a total of $1,657 to her name. Somehow, this 35-year-old woman did not realize that spending $40,000 on shoes was not a sound financial investment. We’ve all been through rough patches, but even in 2002, when banks were giving out loans left and right, Carrie couldn’t get a loan. Still, this is Sex and the City, so she ultimately buys her apartment with Charlotte’s money and her financial troubles are never mentioned again.
2. Charlotte’s love of animals is … intense.
In “Ex and the City†(season two, episode 18), Charlotte stops dead when she sees a woman riding a horse in the middle of New York City. Her first love was a brown horse named Taddy, you see, who betrayed her by throwing her during a competition. Charlotte smiles knowingly when she thinks about how Taddy just loved to be ridden after she broke him in. It can be assumed that Charlotte had her first orgasm riding that horse. Earlier in the season, Charlotte also buys a dog instead of getting a boyfriend (not to be confused with her stand-in child from season six, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Elizabeth Taylor). Is Charlotte a zoophile?
3. Successful Miranda is supposed to be the least cool friend.
When SATC debuted in 1998, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) was positioned as the series’ token Sarcastic Bitch. By today’s standards, though, the choice seems pretty obvious: Life as a sarcastic, successful bitch — and not a frivolous, shopping-addicted woman with less than $2,000 to her name — might be the more appealing aspiration. Miranda ended up being one of the only women in television history to truly have it all. She had a high-powered job, a husband, a baby, a dog, and an actual house with a yard. Miranda leaned in. Miranda Hobbes was everything, and no one ever gave her her due. What gives?
4. Carrie doesn’t understand bisexuals
For a woman who writes a sex column, Carrie Bradshaw has a spectacularly narrow view of sexuality. In “Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl†(season three, episode four), Carrie dates a bisexual man. According to her expertise, bisexuals who are open about their sexuality are weird, all bisexuals end up with men, and bisexuality doesn’t even really exist. She calls it a lack of a sexual orientation and, direct quote, a “layover on the way to Gaytown.†She says most of this to his face and all of it behind his back. She breaks up with him by leaving a party without saying good-bye. Carrie is a garbage person.
5. Samantha dates a black man, and the plot is just …
The Sex and the City screenwriters do just about everything to fetishize Chivon, a successful black music executive for whom the voracious Samantha falls hard. She says she “doesn’t see color; [she] only sees conquests.†She tells her friends that he has a “big black cock.†Samantha says she thought all hip-hop had a hard edge. Chivon’s sister, who is portrayed as a farcical angry-black-woman stereotype, doesn’t like her brother dating a white woman. Samantha responds by telling his sister that she has a big black ass and that the okra served in the sister’s restaurant isn’t “all that.†I’m going to throw up all over Samantha’s gold-leather “hip-hop outfit.â€
6. The Russian
In the show’s final season, Carrie dates reclusive and sexy Russian artist Aleksandr Petrovsky. He makes absolutely no room for her in his life. Her friends hate him. The couple says “I love you†a total of zero times. Still, Carrie quits her job and abandons her friends to move to Paris with him. This empty relationship and the couple’s complete lack of foresight are supposed to be romantic. Oh, honey, no.
7. Carrie doesn’t understand computers
Carrie, a writer, gets an AOL account and hides under her desk so her ex-boyfriend doesn’t see her when she’s online. Let’s just leave it at that.