Movie Maven

In addition to endless comic book reenactments and stoner comedies, this summer also brings about the release of "Sex and the City: The Movie," a film much anticipated among the Y-chromosome-challenged and sassy gay boyfriend set.

I've always had a very troubled relationship with "Sex and the City": The HBO Television show. Every so often the show would discuss in the most beautiful, and wickedly funny terms, the issues about being a single woman. One of my favorite discussion was centered around SSB (Secret Single Behavior). I almost gasped in recognition when Charlotte- the innocent brunette with the wide set fish eyes- discussed how she loves to inspect her pores for half an hour before bed, and bemoaned the fact that she couldn't do it now that she's married. And when Samantha- the slutty one- got breast cancer, I was actually quite touched by her steely, yet vulnerable performance. "I just don't want to lose my tits," she declares. "Because they're fabulous." Never had the complex relationship between a woman and her anatomy been so perfectly illustrated in one line.

Most of the time, though, I wanted to kill everyone on the show except Miranda (the snappy redheaded one). As a single girl who lives in a major city (albeit younger than the Fab Four, and a student) I can tell you that we spend a lot less time sipping martinis at noon and chatting on the phone in our Ferragamo shoes and a lot more time...umm...working. Usually two jobs, to pay the rent and grocery bills living as a single girl in said city. I get to sip a martini usually once a month... and it's usually been mixed not by a hot male bartender armed with Grey Goose, but rather by my good friend Zohar. In my apartment. With leftover Smirnoff I found stuffed in the back of my freezer behind a box of chicken nuggets.

Also I know this has been said before, but it deserves mentioning again: I can understand how Miranda, a lawyer, can afford her lifestyle. And Samantha, who's an advertising exec. And even fish-eyed, useless Charlotte appears to own some sort of art gallery. But Carrie can afford $500 shoes and an apartment on the Upper East Side? As a columnist? For a newspaper??? She doesn't even write for the Times- it's some sort of New York Post clone she works for. In Real Life, Carrie would have been downsized long ago to keep up with the rising cost of newsprint.

Besides this fundamental issue of verisimilitude, I was also just annoyed with Carrie's endless monologues, meant to be her column. I hated her terrible puns and obvious double entendres, and the show's pretension that this is really witty stuff that you should feel privileged to be hearing. They were lame, she's a terrible writer, and the paper should downsize her, if only to spare us her idiotic ramblings about "Poor me, I can't find a man, but I've got wildly overpriced shoes, so it's ok."

But Movie Maven, you ask, what on earth should we look to for an accurate account of the single woman in the city?

For that, my friends, simply look to "30 Rock."

The show about a show, based on one woman's experiences working on a show, is quickly becoming my favorite show on television. It's got some of the sharpest writing around, and though Alec Baldwin gets most of the props, I would argue that the flawless cast gels in perfect harmony to highlight each other's attributes. But the main reason I watch is for Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon, a 30-something single girl.

Liz Lemon is the woman Candace Bushnell forgot.

Fey's Lemon could be pretty much any single girl, in any major city. She has an apartment that's nice, but not glamorous. She has a job that she enjoys, but it's hard and takes up a lot of her time.
She eats candy for breakfast, partially because she doesn't have time, but partially because she secretly enjoys it. She eats dinner standing in the kitchen while watching reality shows on her portable TV. She dresses like a normal woman going to work every day. She's a good person, a liberal and a feminist, but she can be shallow, spineless and manipulative to get what she wants. Last episode, upon being offered Baldwin's Jack Donneghy's lucrative position, she slaps him across the face, then promptly strides into the writer's room and announces "Suck it monkeys, I'm going corporate!"

Basically she's every woman I know. Including myself.

Lemon also has an oafish ex-boyfriend who affectionately calls her "Dummy," and whom she's in constant danger of going back to. One of her co-workers, played by Jane Krakowski, likens the schlub to the cheese doodles Lemon's eating: "You know they're bad for you, but you eat them because it's easier than cooking." This is truer than any other "lesson" on relationships that Sex and the City ever tried to demonstrate.

The true story of single women is that sometimes we are tempted to settle for the cheese doodle, because it's easier than working for something better.