Carrie Bradshaw isn’t the problem with And Just Like That…. Her wealth is.
The character who once had fans proudly dubbing themselves “a Carrie” has become just another rich white woman, the exact type of person she used to mock
TV Features Carrie
An element of financial fantasy has always coursed through the Sex And The City universe. Even before the film franchise whisked our well-heeled foursome of Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones, and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt to private Mexican villas and opulent Abu Dhabi resorts, the O.G. HBO series had a weekly columnist at a second-tier New York newspaper affording a studio apartment on the Upper East Side—here, as with Monica Gellar’s unfathomably sprawling West Village two-bedroom, the phrase “rent controlled” is frequently flung around to soften viewer skepticism—all while maintaining a lifestyle of urban ease well outside her tax bracket.
You rarely saw Carrie Bradshaw on public transit. (Her real-life proxy Sarah Jessica Parker, however, is delightfully an MTA regular.) Her meals were regularly consumed at restaurants, her oven instead relegated to designer-sweater storage. And she canonically owned a shoe collection worth $40,000, a pecuniary stretch even when she was making a mythical “$4 a word” while freelancing at Vogue.
But that personal finance portfolio got considerably, well, bigger after Mr. Big came into the picture, and even more so when he left it. (In case you’ve skipped the franchise expansion, John “Big” Preston suffered a Peloton-related heart attack in the premiere episode of the Max spin-off series And Just Like That….) “I don’t want you to write a thousand words about purses. I want you to give a hundred thousand dollars … due to tragic circumstances, your pockets recently got deeper,” Carrie’s erstwhile Vogue editor Enid Frick (Candice Bergen) tactlessly tells her at a fundraising event in a season-two episode of AJLT, a sum at which our now wealthy widow barely bats an eye.
Carrie now has champagne problems
And, tragically, it’s those very deep pockets that have rendered Bradshaw—the socially aspirational but emotionally messy everywoman that once had fans proudly dubbing themselves “a Carrie”—unrecognizable from the character we’ve known for a quarter of a century. All of that passive income has made Mrs. Preston quite passive, indeed, our Cosmo-loving gal now dulled by champagne problems.
The original series at least criticized Carrie’s frivolous spending habits, most notably in the season-four episode “Ring A Ding Ding,” when she was forced to buy back her apartment following her break-up with Aidan. After getting turned down for a loan—apparently, a closet full of Manolo Blahniks isn’t actually considered an “asset”—and tearing up a generous check from her then-ex Mr. Big, “broke friend” Carrie basically wealth-shames Charlotte into handing over her hefty 2.17-karat engagement ring to pawn for a down payment.
The show offset some of that spendthrift vice by giving early Carrie scrappy virtues. Especially in the first few seasons, which were laced with interview segments of Carrie’s various column subjects, her professional grind was more apparent—her nights spent out at trendy restaurants and industry events seemed less pure social indulgence than article research and inspiration. Now, thanks to that Big inheritance, Carrie 2.0 doesn’t actually need to work and even as the spin-off accessorizes her life with podcast shows and book tours, she approaches her career with a blasé leisureliness that seems foreign to the person who once had less than $1,000 in her savings. (Her response to said podcast getting canceled and its entire production team fired due to her simply not wanting to read vagina-related ad copy on air? “And just like that … I freed up my entire week.”)
Before becoming grossly entrenched in the one percent, the working creative often clashed with the upper class. In the fittingly titled season-two SATC episode “The Caste System,” Carrie attends a high society cocktail party as Big’s plus one. “Oh god, I hate Park Avenue. It’s like being in a foreign country,” she tells him. “Just think of me as your passport, baby,” he retorts. Back then, Carrie was simply a tourist in Big’s moneyed world—a complicated K-K-Katie with c-c-curly hair uncomfortably on the arm of a rich, WASPy Hubble of a man, much more at home out on the terrace sharing a cig with her tattooed performance-artist buddy who just happened to be the party’s cater waiter.
Unabashed and unironic wealth
In And Just Like That…, however, Carrie has fully relocated from everywoman relatability to that world of absurd affluence. It’s fitting that the gaudy, bejeweled swan clutch that Big bought her in “The Caste System”—the same “just wrong” handbag on the arm of every other white-and-wealthy woman at that Park Avenue affair, the same purse that made Carrie realize, to her horror, that Big didn’t actually know her at all—pops up in AJLT in the form of an insane JW Anderson pigeon purse, which Carrie now wears unabashedly and unironically. She has become yet another rich white woman, the exact type of person she once mocked.
The Carrie of yesteryear was not entirely down to earth, but she at least was somewhat grounded. However, where she once feared having to vacate her beloved Upper East Side studio because of insufficient funds, she can now buy and sell a multimillion-dollar condo within mere days and it’s barely a plot point. Where she would once skip out on eating dinner to afford issues of Vogue (“I felt it fed me more”), she now bumps elbows with Anna Wintour herself at the Met Gala (and conveniently has an entire Vivienne Westwood gown in her closet when her first-choice fashion look falls flat). Where she once not only befriended but proudly identified as the creative class, she now encloses herself in a gated community of profuse money and privilege. (It’s not a shock that Carrie’s closest new friend in AJLT is Seema Patel—the show’s attempt at filling the Samantha Jones absence—a Birkin bag-swinging, private-driver-having luxury real-estate broker.)
The Real Housewives Of New York City just debuted six new personalities, each one of them, like Ms. Bradshaw, equipped with a well-stocked wardrobe, a hefty bank account and some plush New York real estate. But even their clearly drummed-up daily dramas, no doubt intensified by producers, feel more authentic and relatable than the glossy trappings of Carrie’s new-money life. Once upon a time, Carrie Bradshaw was real. Now she’s just really rich.
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Carrie Bradshaw was always a wish fulfilment surrogate.
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams! (Think people who’ve never tasted caviar.)
God, I miss good caviar. lol
It felt like the original iteration of this show was the masthead of the whole, white girl with a tinder profile that says “I’m passionate about brunch and travel” social scene. So she’s always basically been a rich white woman. As a native NYer, she did terrible things to the city.
Do any of you realize this is a tv show?
There was an episode(s) where she couldn’t buy her apartment because she spent too much money on designer fashion, and rather than learn a lesson, she got money from her friend to make a down payment.
The portrayal of money has always been an issue with this show.
Didn’t read the article, eh?
Oh I hated that episode. The “ moral” of the story is that Carrie was justified in bullying her friend into helping her. It was not Charlotte’s job to bail her out. Carrie didn’t lose her apartment in a fire or something tragic- she refused to live within her means and now it’s Charlotte’s fault for not helping her? Carrie was the main character but she was far from the ” good guy”.
“The portrayal of money has always been an issue with this show.”SATC was a product of the age where characters were allowed to be deeply flawed and the audience still allowed itself to like them. Also, obv. the show was written to maximise drama – how boring would it be for Carrie to fix her “problem of the week” by declaring bankruptcy and hiring a debt advisor or whatever to help her restructure her blaaaarghgh.Thing is, with a show like SATC, that the characters were flawed was what made them tolerable (let alone likeable). The idea of SATC was for us to engage with the fantasy of living a super fun and just-complicated-enough-to-be-interesting young woman’s independent life in NY – it had to be “fantasy” but not too fantastical. If Carrie never did anything wrong and just had success after success she’d be intolerable. If she fucked up every episode and LOL everything just works out with no dramas, that would be even worse.
Stuff has to go wrong to create drama. With a show like this, the solutions have to be on juuust the wrong side of the ragged edge of plausible to maintain the drama. That is: logical, but also kinda stupid.SATC wasn’t teaching the audience that if you mismanage your money you can just hit up a rich friend for help… it was saying “check out this drama – she mismanages her money and makes her friend pawn her engagement ring for help! Oooh! What will this do to their friendship? Oooh!”Again, this plot would be awful if Charlotte wasn’t super rich. But because she’s super rich that lets the audience think ooh Carrie you’re so naughty instead of “OMG Carrie is the worst person in the universe…”People who went on to think “actually it still does make her awful and as if a person would pawn their engagement ring to help a friend who clearly spends all her money on bullshit” were… um… kinda missing the point? The show is a show because THAT further consideration is deliberately NOT taken in to consideration.As for the new show: Carrie’s wealth isn’t the problem in and of itself – it’s the mechanism that drives the problem, which (as the article makes clear) is that whenever Carrie encounters potential drama, she just pays it away. Yes, that’s a fantasy too, but it’s a lot less interesting to watch. And the problem with that is that when the writers expect us to engage with whatever actual drama they’ve thought up for Carrie this episode, some part of our brain thinks “I don’t get it, why doesn’t she just pay this away too?” or “Why would she care about this since she’s so rich?”
I am pretty sure that is the episode covered in this piece.
I totally skipped over it, I am a dumb.
And Samantha, like Seema, also carried Birkin bags and lived a life of considerable luxury.
Well, technically, Lucy Liu ended up with Samantha’s Birkin.
Did you not even read the first sentence?
Did you not read the entire rest of the fucking article, imbecile?
It’s a heightened way to explore the very common middle-aged angst of “I’m not the person I used to be” and “Am I a sell-out? and if so, does it matter? Because this feels great.”
I think the show struggles with actually accounting for the time we were away from the characters and that makes it hard to earn those things.I mentioned this above, but my bigger issue is that Carrie seems brand new, more like her husband died after they were married/together for months instead of years. Miranda has a very similar issue – She’s in almost the same place with Steve as she was before they finally got together on the show. Without seeing all the intervening years, it feels regressive and unearned.To you point “I’m not the person I used to be” is harder for the viewer to connect with when it seems like most of that happened off screen and the people on screen seem more like the people they were 25 years ago than they should.
“and conveniently has an entire Vivienne Westwood gown in her closet when her first-choice fashion look falls flat”Do people have non-entire gowns? Surely it’s an all-or-nothimg affair?
You’re reading AV Club with to much precision. Shame on you! : )
Ha! To say someone has a “whole” or “entire” something is just an expression to convey it’s existence.
I hadn’t heard of this usage, but such figurative use is annoying. It’s literally the worst thing since Hitler!
Jesus fuck I want to simultaneously give you all the upvote and strangle you to unconsciousness.
It’s Black slang that has been around for years which, as with most Black slang, has been more or less recently co-opted by white folks.
Have you not had conversations with people in the last half century?
Not only its existence, but the improbability if its existence.
I think they’re saying “entire” to mean she has not only the dress, but the jewelry, the hat, the veil and the cape. So yes, in that regards, people do have “non-entire” gowns if they only own the dress and not the accessories.
That makes sense. As someone who knows little to nothing about fashion, “gown” and “dress” mean the same thing to my ears.
I own a tenth of one.Look, the crash investigators didn’t need all the dress, and if I’m gonna get my passenger-side door stove in by a drunken socialite, I feel taking the remnants the ambos cut off her is the least of what I’m owed.
That particular gown is also her wedding dress (wedding 1.0 to Big, where he stood her up). So it has been in her closet ever since in an impossibly huge storage box, but who can give it up because it’s beautiful and was GIFTED to her by the designer herself?
And recall that that whole Vivienne Westwood gown was her wedding dress from the first “Sex and the City” movie—that’s why she had it in her closet! She repurposed it for the Met Gala because she never got to marry Big in it!
She got it from her “proxy”, Sarah Jessica Parker (???)
it was her original wedding gown which many women do keep in their closets.
(Pssst: they were always rich white women.)
I have the same issue with this season. All of the characters appear to be quite wealthy, or at the very least, have absolutely no concerns about money. This is just wrong since they are living in the same post-COVID world we are, so their finances should have been impacted, if only just a little. Big especially, he was never impacted by the financial crisis of 2008 or no other wall street drops since then?? He was that savvy with his money? It would at least be interesting for Carrie to think or write about how she went from someone with barely any money to someone who could literally swim in it.At least her Westwood gown wasn’t purchased, she was gifted it in the first movie. It was kind of nice to see her repurpose the dress she almost got married in.Considering the show wants to be edgy, and puts socially conscious words in the mouths of the characters, particularly the younger ones, having someone, anyone point out the obscene wealth on display would be a good plot point.
The rich did get much richer during the pandemic, so it shouldn’t be surprising that any of them would be affected by it.
So at their level of money, and assuming they’re not total failson types, even the pandemic was just a time to save money. The stock market has been going crazy even throughout the pandemic. When you have that much money invested, it gets affected, but doesn’t have any effect on your lifestyle.
Big especially, he was never impacted by the financial crisis of 2008 or no other wall street drops since then?? People with a large financial cushion usually don’t need to sell assets at a loss during a downturn. They can (and do) often ride out the storm.
Once you reach a certain level of wealth, you become inoculated to failure or consequences of any sort. You can file for bankruptcy more than a half dozen times and then run for president – and win! – on the platform of being a “business genius.” You can run a $44 billion company into the ground in a matter of months through transparently stupid decisions and juvenile humor and still have an essentially infinite line of credit thanks to your “entrepreneurial savvy.”Anyone forced out of the 1% due to macro-economic circumstances was already hanging by a thread. They are the exceptions to the rule.
Yes quite a “sweet summer child” thing to assume someone like Mr. Big was actually harmed by 2008. When stocks were at their low, they bought more stock, then saw their holdings explode in value over the following decade. Wall Street bonuses were slightly smaller for like one year due to the political issues around banks paying out lavish bonuses immediately after they’d been bailed out — an optics problem that was forgotten by the following year. 2008 was the best thing that ever happened to Wall Street bankers. It initiated over a full decade of free money and constantly growing asset prices.
^This
The only people who went broke were never actually rich to begin with. At best, they were over-leveraged paper millionaires who funded their lifestyle through massive amount of debt given out on the presumption that housing prices (and the financial instruments attached to those values) would never go down. Anybody not tied directly to mortgage debt, at worst, took a hit but kept ticking.
What you also forget is that many of those people were easily able to find employment elsewhere in the industries they were in. You think all of those Lehman bankers just trotted off and began farming sugar beets in North Dakota? Of course not. Many of them stayed in the industry because, like it or not, most high-level industries such as finance are a revolving door, and once you’re in, you only stay gone through indictment, death, or a refusing to go back.
If anything, there’s a lot of evidence that the crash happening when it did was arguably more beneficial to those within the industry (and on the periphery) than if it happened even 1-2 years later. The depth would’ve undoubtedly been more severe in 2009 or 2010, and the reverberations far wider. The last thing you’d want to do with a runaway train is attach more cars to it, and if the proverbial line kept going up, the inane financial instruments and tricks they would’ve developed to amplify their returns would’ve been far more mindboggling than the CDOs and CDSs we actually contended with.
What world are you living in? The pandemic made the rich richer.
The original series’ episode referenced here (I think) with Carrie, Charlotte and a loan was one of the best in that run. Mrs’ F. and I only liked S1 of AJLT a little bit. But we’re linking S2 a whole lot more. Che isn’t as annoying is a big part of it. Sadly, Miranda is now the most annoying. By far.
Once upon a time, Carrie Bradshaw was real.No, she wasn’t.
Yeah, in the few episodes I caught, I never found any of the women relatable. And they always seemed extremely privileged and well off.
…and shallow… And zero chemistry between Carrie and Big for me. But then, I was never a fan..
You’d think someone with that much money would wear better clothes than something that looks like an oversized comforter dragging across a dirty street, but I digress… Carrie Bradshaw was never “real” about money just like a Friends was never “real” about wealth except for that one episode. Yes, even in the late 1990s with rent control and a wealthy on again/off again boyfriend, Carrie would never have been able to afford the lifestyle she had. She would have been making about $52k/year, which is about $97k in today’s money. Samantha and Miranda were far more realistic due to their careers. Charlotte came from old money. Carrie was the one with the least who spent the most. The episode where Carrie shamed Charlotte into giving her money to buy that condo was the worst episode of the entire franchise. I don’t know what the writers were thinking.
A Michael Patrick King show that doesn’t get it? Shocked. SATC was still that, even with the nostalgia people have for it.
Che Diaz was the worst but I did appreciate that they acknowledged that Che may not be able to afford that new, hideous Hudson Yards apt after losing their awful show. It was the one single sentence that acknowledged reality.
Am I the only one that thinks Carrie was always this way? Despite all of the “life lessons” that OG Carrie turned into episodic musings for her column, her behavior was one of someone who pursued the trappings of wealth and luxury, and eschewed any meaningful relationships in favor of the rich guy to whom she was (mostly) just a convenient FB.
Thank you for articulating so well what I’ve been feeling about the series. I know that it seems to be popular to watch rich women doing things (see:the “Real Housewives of…” franchise), I don’t enjoy it. I wonder if the writers were influenced by the popularity of that franchise and misread what SITC fans would enjoy.
If it wasn’t about her being rich, I think I would be okay with it. Carrie has money and can therefore get up to wacky hijinks would be fine as a premise. I mostly just don’t want to watch her grapple with it or be hit up for money or what not. My bigger issue is there seems to be this running thread that Carrie is oblivious to how rich she is in some ways – She’s shocked she’s being hit up for money. She was with Big in a (mostly) committed way for almost 20 years if we count from the end of the original run. She also spent most of her time interacting with people from the wealthy side of New York society. She should know better about the world and she acts brand new.
I think she acts brand new to it to try to keep her relatable for the audience? Or because they’re not creative enough to get past her fish out of water (for the past 20+ years) schtick?
100% agree. For me, a savvier Carrie who is able to move through the world of the rich and instead of being an idiot about it be the one making observations would make so much more sense!I mean, if we want to use the Real Housewives scenario, she could be our Andy Cohen. Instead she seems…dumb. Or at least naive.
Is it possible for a knowledgeable rich woman to be likeable… Could they have written Carrie so that she reflected the wisdom, trials and tribulations imparted on her by her time with Samantha.
This is 100% the bigger issue with AJLT… It’s cannon that these folks have been living these lives for the past 20+ years since the end of SITC, but the dialogue & situations from everyone involved makes it seem like there was a blip that time-leaped from the end of one show & the start of the other. They talk with a shock & awe as if these are fantastical situations – when this is just a random, mundane Thursday in the AJLT universe. Makes it a chore to suspend disbelief.
Oh my gosh, same! I was in law school when those early shows like the one following Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were popular. My best friend loved them and watched them obsessively, and I was just like “I don’t like watching rich people do rich things. That’s not fun for me.” I’ve never gotten the appeal but they sure are popular.
One of Vulture’s Real Housewives recappers literally refers to RHOBH as “Rich Women Doing Things” in many of his recaps.
‘And Just Like That’ is so ridiculous but Cythia Nixon and Sara Ramirez have been great in it. Yes, Che is CHE! but Ramirez really sells the character.that “harry wearing a wig” storyline an episode or two ago. Jesus, i cringe so bad typing sbout it and remembering that scene at the Ralph Lauren photoshoot. it was so bad.We’re all waiting for that Samantha cameo.I wonder what a Darren Starr-written ‘And Jusr Like That’ episode would be like?
Star seems to be essentially making variations of the same show now (between Younger, Emily in Paris and Uncoupled) and they certainly are all focused on characters who don’t have to worry about money (to put it mildly—Uncoupled had a big plot point about Neil Patrick Harris not being able to afford his apartment as a single man—and yet money didn’t seem to be an issue whatsoever, otherwise.)
That said I do like Star’s writing at least marginally more than Michael Patrick King’s (The Comeback aside,) so would be curious to see him return to the Sex and the City world. But it’s really moved far past what it was when he was showrunner.
…as with Monica Gellar’s unfathomably sprawling West Village two-bedroomI know that we can never have an article about New York set shows without mentioning this one, but Monica explicitly states the apartment belonged to her grandmother, was rent controlled (which is a real thing) and was probably leased before the West Village was trendy. Let’s also be savvy media consumers and recognize that sometimes the size of an apartment is just practical for filming.There’s a lot to not like about Carrie and the reboot, but at least we do more or less know where her money is coming from now – her inheritance from Big and likely the ability to have been saving money while married to Big. It was somewhat implied in the original run that Samantha helped pick up some of the bills (certainly for restaurants and clubs and such).I do think sometimes escapism is okay so long as viewers recognize it for what it is. Carrie being rich is hardly the thing making And Just Like That unwatchable.
I know that we can never have an article about New York set shows without mentioning this one, but Monica explicitly states the apartment belonged to her grandmother, was rent controlled (which is a real thing) and was probably leased before the West Village was trendy. Let’s also be savvy media consumers and recognize that sometimes the size of an apartment is just practical for filming.“Apartments are more expensive in real life than they are on TV” is just about the lowest form of cultural criticism. It’s probably a fair critique if the show is very explicitly trying to be a gritty, highly realistic, grounded depiction of the economics of urban living, but that’s never what Friends tried to be.
It’s probably a fair critique if the show is very explicitly trying to be a gritty, highly realistic, grounded depiction of the economics of urban living, You may recall this is how they designed the original Sesame St set, to look as busted-ass 1970s “generically poor New York” as possible – the stoop near Oscar’s trashcan was all crumbling, the facade of the apartment block was grey, Big Bird lives in an alley etc. And all the “film” sections were of working class people doing ordinary stuff (everybody sleeps!). As a little Aussie I remember growing up thinking NY looked really hot and sticky…
Every time I see a huge NYC apartment I remember the LAW & ORDER episode about a murder in a rent-controlled Prewar apartment on the Upper West Side with six huge rooms and a view of the Hudson, and how everybody in the cast contrived to find a reason to wander through the apartment saying, “$860 a month, huh? That a motive, all right…!”
The Friends sitcom often had a fake randomness to the background extras. All the characters walking back and forth were under 30 (younger than most of the actual Friends characters), with a single occasional over-50 strolling by. No fatties, no children and few people of color. It always created a distraction for me.
Yeah, if Monica’s grandmother owned it, it was probably super affordable (relatively!) back in, what, the 50s or 60s? Didn’t Peggy on Mad Men buy an entire building in the west village working as a copy writer? Woulda been around the same time as Monica’s grandmother probably.
And as someone who lived in several old NYC apartments over the years, it may look big and luxurious – I guarantee the heating, cooling and plumbing is not so great lol.
Peggy’s building was UWS, IIRC. (Would’ve gone for a song in the Wild Wild West of the late ‘60s.) Your point still stands though.
There was also an episode that revealed that they were basically living there illegally under her grandmother’s name. The building’s super finds out and blackmails them, having Joey give him dancing lessons as the price to keep their secret.
Also, during it’s original run it was pointed out that Carrie was terrible with her money. She literally spent every dime she made on shoes/clothes and other things. I do remember an episode where this gets pointed out that she has no savings because she pissed a lot of money away.
That might even be a more interesting show – suddenly rich without Big Carrie has to learn to actually be a grown up. Lawyer!Miranda has to help her. Socialite!Charlotte has to too! It’s almost like that could be a less contrived plot where the core three had real reasons to interact with one another.
This is a character who once said when she was broke she would buy Vogue instead of food because she felt it fed her more. Carrie has always been a mess when it comes to money.
Carrie being rich is hardly the thing making And Just Like That unwatchable.Repeating for emphasis.
Not only was Monica’s apt rent controlled, they were living on the Grandmother’s original lease. They never told the landlord the grandmother died.
It’s also totally valid to say that this is a totally bullshit handwave.
In And Just Like That…, however, Carrie has fully relocated from everywoman relatability to that world of absurd affluence.Slate recently published a related piece about how on the one hand, Carrie is famous and still relevant enough to get invited to the Met Gala every year, but not famous and still relevant enough that anyone listens to her podcast. It doesn’t work, but maybe the latter is supposed to be a (nonsensical) appeal to her retaining her everywoman status.
Why you so salty Cizzo? Be easy. It’s not good for your pressure.
She was always a rich White woman, which is why the show was so popular with middle class and lower-class women. Entertainment is living vicariously and voyeuristically through the main character.
The majority of TV and movie characters are way more well-to-do than the viewer (Friends, Fresh Prince, Every Disney show, Bluey lives in a fucking mansion). No one wants to watch normal life as entertainment, but you don’t go full Normy on the viewing public either, because it’s depressing (looking at you Sanford & Son and Punky Brewster).
This also describes why Roseanne was such a hit when it debuted.
Not as well as Full House. But yes, they were just a bit better off and relatable – always popular TV format. Family Ties was another.
Yeah at that time even Dan having a motorcycle he could tinker with and being able to afford a house with more than 2 bedrooms was living higher than my family was. The ‘80s were rough, ya’ll.
I remember an episode of Friends which was specifically about how three of them were super broke and were getting annoyed at the other three making expensive plans they felt forced to participate in. The only part that was unrealistic was that we were expected to believe all six of them were into Hootie and the Blowfish.
Bluey! OK, something I can speak with a bit of authority on! I used to live in the suburb Bluey’s set in (Red Hill, Brisbane), around about the time Bandit and Chilli would’ve bought (if they hadn’t inherited it) their house.It’s not so much a mansion as a standard-issue Queenslander–house.My brother actually lived in a grand one when he was in uni, in Red Hill (I, alas, only lived in apartments in that suburb) on Victoria Street, which is full of classic Queenslanders: https://www.google.com/maps/@-27.4541024,153.0090167,3a,75y,244.19h,87.93t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sm-SmI6J1blgpTFYKJia3wQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu(You’ll have to copy-paste the links, since Kinja borks them.)Red Hill, being close to the CBD, and even closer to QUT Kelvin Grove (where I went to uni) is a melting pot of well-off young professionals and dirt-poor students like I was. The students have the effect of not just serving the Ladies Who Lunch their lattes at the cafes along Give and Latrobe Terrace in neighbouring Paddington, but also keeping property prices down (because no really rich bastard is gonna wanna live next a bunch of kids blasting Custard and Powderfinger and the Gurge and smoking weed underneath Tibetan prayer flags strung out on the verandah) and adding “charm” (ie, make the thirty-fortysomethings feel young). It’s a classic piece of Brisbaniana, an icon of the town – and probably the only piece of Aussie vernacular architecture that’s entered popular usage, unlike “Brisbaniana” which I just made up for this sentence. Queenslanders used to be all over the town, although as Brisbane author John Birmingham said, many got carted off in the dead of night in the 90s to be set up on some wankers hobby farm.More recently, many started burning down in circumstances that have completely and totally exonerated the shitbox Gyprock apartment-building white-shoed property developers who bought them totally not just for the land and any further questions should be directed to their lawyer Lawrence Shonky-Bastard, King’s Counsel, and they’ll see you in court, bucko. It’s not unrealistic to expect that Chilli, with her government job, and Bandit with his archaeology grants and, um, pharmaceutical interests in Caboolture……and investment property…It’s reasonable to assume that Chilli and Bandit bought it around about 2007-2010, after they got married (and Chilli sadly miscarried with their first child – assuming Bluey was born in 2012). That’s when I was living there.There were tons of young couples like Chilli and Bandit buying decrepit Queenslanders and doing them up, because Jamie Durie couldn’t stick to stripping himself and had to move onto stripping paint. Not unreasonable to expect them to buy an older Queenslander for $300,000 back then and did it up. If you take the bootleg “Bluey House” (yes, it’s a thing, got cease-and-desists and everything) as a guide, it’s fairly tiny, even by inner-Brisbane standards:(This house is actually in neighbouring Paddington, on Charlotte Street. And I’m like 60% sure I once dated an Irish girl who lived in it. I may have shagged in the Bluey house. Also, that photo has been heavily photoshopped – the neighbouring houses are MUCH closer – they’ve pasted trees over the top.)It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for a young couple to afford it back then…before prices got stupid during COVID and every man and his dog (or, indeed, every dog and their other dogs) moved up from Melbourne and Sydney to get away from lockdowns.
Ray White (*spits*) had an article up in 2021 on how the Heelers are sitting on “a fortune”, and actually interviewed Joe Brumm: https://raywhitepaddington.com.au/news/bluey-sitting-on-a-fortune-in-the-house-on-the-hill
The man behind the runaway television success, series creator Joe Brumm said the home of dad Bandit, mum Chilli, and daughters Bluey and Bingo was “a bit magical” but the property choice was fitting.“The Queenslander/Reno’s workers cottage just seemed the way to go for a show set in Brisbane,” he said.Bluey’s home is a heritage Queenslander with wraparound verandas on top of a hill in the high demand Red Hill/Paddington area in Brisbane’s inner west. It has 15 to 20 rooms under roof and a large shady backyard.He said the poinciana tree and the backyard was his favourite part of the property.“When creating the family, I didn’t want to be specific about house values etc,” he said. “The house is expansive and a bit magical as that’s how kids see their own house. Plus we need a lot of rooms for cartoons.”“The house has an ever shifting floor plan which has frustrated some fans who are trying to lock it down, but it makes the storyboarders life easier if we can take liberties with what room opens onto where.”So there’s a lot of artistic licence taken with the interior – because it’s from a kid’s perspective – but “Queenslander/Reno’s worker’s cottage” is otherwise completely on-brand. “Reno” is short for “renovation” in this case, not Vegas’ skeevier sister city. (Keep in mind, like all articles where real estate flogs talk about prices they always, always oversell it.)It’s a bit idealised, fantasised, romanticised for even Brissie these days, but that’s Bluey. It’s still a rock-solid, realistic and relatable show, and a perfect introduction to the best capital city on the East Coast. This has been your daily dose of Bluey Lore.
“WASPy Hubble of a man”What does “Hubble of a man” mean?
Robert Redford in The Way We Were.
That’s what turned me off AJLT. It’s all rich-people problems now. That’s why I noped out of Uncoupled, too: Much as I like NPH, watching his character and said character’s ex fighting over some fancy bathroom towels was too frustrating.
SATC? I (female, GenX) always thought it was cack, but my (male, Millenial) ex watched it religiously. Just goes to show you never can tell.
astounding how folks forget who was the original “Carrie” – yeah it was the douchy Candace Bushnell
I hate shows about rich people that are not Succession. I get it. At the same time I never understood why fictional characters need to be “relatable”. I don’t watch shows to see people who are just like me. I am me. I know what it’s like to be me. If I want to feel like my problems are the same as others, I’d rather go on social media or Reddit and see real people discussing those problems. I prefer to see art as a gateway to another world. What is it like to see an aspirational future? Someone much lower than me in the economic ladder and their struggles and hopes and dreams? Seeing how utter psychopaths think and their occasional human moments (Succession). Why would I want to see a show about myself?
Indeed, the success of many shows like this is in showing that the rich are just as miserable and screwed up as the rest of us. There’s a catharsis in seeing the humanity, the weakness in the powerful.
Up to a limit. Credit to Izzo up there: a scene where someone gets hit up for $100,000 and she HAS it, and the wealth on display is not the text of the scene, or even referenced except to show how crass someone is in daring ask for it… for charity ? That implies blinkeredness and poor writing, not wish fulfillment. It’s not just ignoring the elephant in the room, it’s the writer’s creating an elephant in the room and not even realizing that they’ve done so. It, at best, breaks disbelief.
Wait, when was Carrie Bradshaw ever real?
They could have had her discover after Big’s death that he’d badly mismanaged their finances and she didn’t really have all that much. This could have left her with enough to live comfortably without having to work, but not be uber rich. It would be an accurate representation of what often happens to older women who simply sit back and let their husbands take care of everything. I don’t think that was really feasible for the show, though, since they’ve always been somewhat committed to the idea that Big was some sort of business genius. Not to mention, that having her be fabulously wealthy gives them a lot more opportunities for high-end product placement, which has been a big part of their entire raison d etre since at least the later seasons of SATC.
That really would have been legit. I have a friend who married a seemingly very well-off retired guy about 20 years her senior who after about 10 years of marriage died suddenly. And she found out he was NOWHERE near as wealthy as she was lead to believe, and he had spent nearly all of it building her dream house for her and lavish vacations. Which thankfully she was able to sell and have a decent nestegg, but she had to go back to work after being a “lady who lunches” for a decade.
She had a shoe collection that was worth more than the median household income in like half the states in the country… she was never an “everywoman”
Lazy writing, its every where these days in Hollywood.
You’re knocking “lazy writing.” You. Or should I say “Your nocking, lazzy writin”?
And they want us to sympathize with the strike. Ha…
And how did everyone else get so rich? Where is
Charlotte’s endless money from – is she still getting money from Trey, who she
was married to for like 20 minutes? (very noble) Or is it Harry, who was never portrayed in the original series as a
terrifically wealthy attorney. Ditto for Miranda…she was a working lawyer.
Yeah, that gets you a nice salary, but there’s a big difference between “high
salaried” and “one percenter.” You’re not necessarily wealthy just because you
sell high-end real estate either.
It’s not that she’s rich. It’s that she’s a bore. It’s logical to assume that rich people should be incredibly interesting. But most often, they aren’t. Usually, they’re petty, predictable, and attempt to be unique by selecting from the same menu of shiny objects from which other wealthy people have also selected. In a nutshell, there is no mystique surrounding affluence (or poverty) anymore. While vast economic extremes might have been interesting in the 80s or 90s, being incredibly wealthy or incredibly poor is too basic to be interesting for a storyline. There needs to be something more. What makes NYC-based shows interesting are the underground clubs, great gay bars, overpriced 600 square ft apartments, emerging artists, vacation enclaves, and experiences that people in the flyover states will never admit fascinate them. What’s compelling about these types of situations, people might look rich but really might be struggling artists. Or they might be dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, but they own the t-shirt and jean company. That’s the greatness behind New York, and used to be the appeal of SATC.
Think the writers not knowing what to do with Carrie continues to be the problem, to the point where SJP of all people feels lost and almost bored playing her. Wealth aside, Carrie has lost any semblance of New York edge and spark. She’s spent 16-ish episodes of this new series mourning Big, overthinking sex with a hot coworker, and prudishly refusing to record an innocuous ad for her ostensibly sex-positive podcast. She seems tired all the time, and the writers are clearly out of ideas given they have her cold-emailing Aiden AGAIN. Oh this train wreck is so taxing. Hope it gets renewed.
SJP came alive in her interactions with Karrie/Rachel Dratch. We need more funny SJP now that the mourning drama is coming to an end.
Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte all had money during the OG SITC so why are people fussing about Carrie now having money? Big was good at one thing….making money. Someone that rich probably had life insurance as well.Also, the dress above I thought was the Vera Wang dress from her wedding?
THE WAY I SEE IT, THIS IS NOT THE 90S.The world she lives in is a world of wealth. Plain and simply, Carrie being middle class would not afford her to continue being friends with wealthy friends like Charlotte in real life. Not in the 202s, not in modern NYC. The city has been cleaned since the 90s, the city has created an unprecedented wealthy elite since then. The places she had access to in the90s are incredibly expensive now. Those of us who make “regular” six figures even cannot possibly do the things she does.
Yeah, the money has always been a contradiction, but, I’d like to point out that A. You’d expect that now that the gang is in their 50s, they would have a lot more financial power than in their early careers of their 20s & 30s. Carrie is no longer a struggling freelance writer for a 2nd-string paper, she’s a best selling author of 3 books who widowed well. B. That Vivienne Westwood gown was her wedding dress, don’t you remember?C. Yes, the show is tone-deaf and is ridiculously “representive” now, but the tragedy is the writing. It stinks worse than the corpse of its former glory. I continue to bear thru it purely out of nostalgia.
She’ll always be Queens Boulevard. Err, wrong show… I think.
BUT she does prove that having money doesn’t equal having taste. What’s with the outfits of those women!? Yikes!
I’ve never thought her attractive, her outfits tend to be hideous, and her show lifestyle is beyond absurd. Oh, of course, that’s why some people watch this dribble.
While it’s true the show is not great, but I don’t see the problem with her being mid-50’s and no longer needing to worry about money. Isn’t that a place what we all aspire to reach? We gain different problems (becoming a widow or divorce), gaining new friendships and experienced, and growing. It would not have been realistic if she continued to struggle and live in that SAME apartment her entire life. It’s more realistic that she is back there as she tries to find some comfort during here grief. Yes she has money now but she still wants to make here own way and have some sense of self worth.
Awesome. https://www.houstir.com/