Dear Carrie (Bradshaw…) on the occasion of AJLT, Season 3, Episode 6

Ffs, Carrie.  Like all women I have ever known, pretty much, you are punching way, way, way below your weight (even if said weight can’t have changed much, if at all, since we first met you in 1998, enviably).

Let’s start with the very first scene of this week’s torture-telly: did you pay any attention whatsoever to Aidan’s morning beauty routine?  Yes, there is the un-ignorable evidence of male pattern baldness and his application of some sort of fairy-dust to endeavour to seed additional growth, but, more importantly, why was he drying his toothbrush on a dirty towel?!  Ew.  No, thanks, Aidan.  Move on.  Bye-bye.

But no.  You were on the phone rather than being there in person and didn’t see these insalubrious morning shenanigans, and were presumably in the dark about the relationship-ending-worthy toothbrush issue when you welcomed him into your New York townhouse and he immediately broke the glass in your ye-olden-times window (it’s from 1863).  Breaking a window does not a villain make, in my humble opinion, but his “Woe is me!  Why is my life so bloody difficult? Why does nothing ever go my way?” victim mentality is unbearable to watch unfold.  He just broke your nice window and you’re a materialist with the depth of a New York City puddle, ffs.  Just apologise!

But no.  A sincere apology is beyond Aidan’s emotional intelligence and capabilities and, instead, he will ruin an entire weekend by self-flagellating and seeking replacement antique glass, thus making the entire window-shattering episode exponentially worse and ALL ABOUT HIM.  Maybe he just feels so, so bad about the glass (and you were hardly chillaxed about it when it broke…), eh?

But no.  It’s not about the glass, Carrie.  Aidan has been being a full-on-turn-it-up-to-11 self-obsessed, self-pitying bona fide arsehole and upended (favourite word alert!) your weekend plans because… drum roll please… HE HAS CHEATED ON YOU.  And with his ex-wife, no less.  And I do not blame the ex-wife, btw, even if Aidan tries to do so by claiming he found himself in flagrante out of good ol’ fashioned pity.  “She was so upset,” he says, “so I felt obliged to fix it by penetrating her with my penis.  Guess I just couldn’t think of anything else to do.  What?  Just listening to her and offering her emotional support?  No, that didn’t occur to me….  What?  Just ringing her partner to see if he could step in and offer the penis penetration panacea himself?  No, that didn’t come to mind…” (Disclaimer: okay, I made up that last bit, but the first bit is directly from the script!)  And you listened to this ridunculouness and you are presumably clever enough to put together the sequence of events of the couple of preceding days, and you presumably have his number, so to speak.  Phew….  Right, Carrie?

But no.  You’re TOTES FINE WITH IT.  Wtaf, Carrie!  You spent most of the bin-fire that is this season worried about his relationship with his ex-wife and establishing boundaries, and now he has shagged her and you have nothing to say about it?  How is this balding, tooth-brush towel-drying, always-the-victim, insincerely earnest cheater worth any woman’s time?  Yes, you yourself are really fucking annoying, but you deserve more than this.  Sort yerself out!

And I’ll stop there except to tell you something of which you will not be aware and which I feel obliged to tell you, woman to woman, which is that Aidan met Duncan, your kinda cute downstairs neighbour with whom you have spent a brief sliver of a moment and with whom you have done absolutely nothing untoward (other than both be entirely self-congratulatory about what serious artists you are and how you are moving away from your sex-and-shoe based column into something worthy and literary, which reads a bit like the telly-makers patting themselves on the back and claiming they, too, started with a column and are in more esteemed territory with this godawful show… which is, of course, monumentally untrue, evidentially so) and he noted his kinda cuteness and is now JEALOUS.  Men.  Honestly.  How do they live with themselves?!

And if that isn’t enough for Aidan to disappear from this show just-like-that, then…. Then I can’t even with you any more, Carrie.

Let me see what Charlotte’s up to over here: oh, she’s perpetuating the myth that a cancer diagnosis is something to be ashamed of and to hide.  “Everything is just so fragile,” she weeps, just in case we had missed the metaphor of the broken window.  We didn’t.  Ffs, Charlotte.  (And, incidentally and not really connected in any way other than to demonstrate the opposite level of writing, I recently saw an episode of HOUSE where Hugh Laurie’s Dr House enters a room full of his minions and chucks his cane towards one of them, saying, “Here.  Hold my metaphor.”  Which is genius, right?)

And Miranda?  Okay, she’s seeking to purchase a New York apartment and getting comfortable with the idea of paying significantly over the asking price, which is presumably the show’s in-joke about HBO’s greedy over-exploitation of the IP in Candace Bushnell’s original column:  squeeze every single drop of value you can out of any property you can get your hands on - there is always some sucker willing to pay over and above the asking price.  And, readers, that sucker is us (or me, assuming you’re smarter than to watch this shite…).

And Lisa?  She has finally, after three episodes of it being the main story-line, hired an editor for her documentary (yawn….) and he is hella hot and she, understandably, has a minor workplace flirtation with him.  Minor.  Nothing more than a coy smile.  And the world punishes her for this indiscretion by KILLING HER FATHER.  Wtf?  Just like the broken glass, this show’s moral compass is set in 1863, it seems.

Why do I do this to myself?  Answers by postcard, please.