What Mr. Big Said

Sex and the City (the movie).

Firstly, let me start by saying, I know I’m late to the game.

Sex and the City the HBO TV series first aired in 1998 (when I was in fact only a wee child of four) and ran till 2004.

The movie came out in 2008 and the sequel following in 2010.

Now, eight years since the second movie released, I have drunk the Kool-Aid! And it is a wild ride, to be sure.

I want you to know, I really did try to get into the show a few months ago… I poured a glass of wine, lit a candle, got cozy and gave it my best shot.

It was not meant to be.

Something to do with timing, you know the feeling… If it had been another time, another place, perhaps it would have been love. Nope.

However, tonight I needed something. Sunday blues are real, and they are not to be ignored. A new chick flick would be just the thing to shake me out of my funk, I was sure of it! A dreamy fairy tale to distract me from the anxiety of hours at work changing, adult-ing stressors and the paranoia which is the second nature of an Enneagram four who is trying very hard to be all grown up.

Netflix to the rescue! They had just added it… That pink titled film. No one was around… I could watch this allegedly corny rom-com at last, and in secret!

It will be fun. It will be relaxing.

And while it did turn out to be those things, I got a little more then I bargained for.

PSA: I’m not going to write a full break down of the plot line. You will have to actually have seen the movie for any of this to make sense, so if you haven’t, I urge you to go and watch it! Go! Go with God and be blessed!

Watched it? Excellent. Below find my highlights reel!

10 minutes into the movie, Mr Big, the love interest of our girl Carrie Bradshaw has bought he and she a brand new beautiful apartment.

CB is now having a rather hesitating conversation with her hunky significant other, about getting married, due to pressure put on her by gal pal Miranda to look at her legal options in case of a break up. Where would she go and what would she have? These legal queries are Miranda’s signature style I am gathering. The couple, agree to get married.

45 minutes in, the preparations for the wedding of the century have been in full swing, Miranda’s husband, the “good guy” type has cheated on her and shocked everyone. Miranda is understandably, pissed off.

There is a rehearsal dinner of some kind. Very classy, I surmise, from the fact that the men stand outside the club and smoke Cubans after the dinner. That, and all the women of significance to the story line are wearing LBD’s.

Steve, Miranda’s estranged husband shows up and asks Samantha who stands outside with the smokers, she being the sex-obsessed-comic-relief-who-survived-cancer girlfriend, to tell his wife he is outside and requests an audience with her lawyer-ness. She agrees.

Miranda emerges, they fight, she storms back inside, runs into Big and says, “You two are crazy to get married. Marriage ruins everything.” Cue close up of Big’s serious and stern handsome face taking in this dumb pearl of wisdom.

CB finds Big in the bar a few moments later, she knows he’s acting like a weirdo. She does not acknowledge his odd behavior.

This is a common strategy in our arsenal, as women who deal with men, or just people in general, who are not well versed in the art of self-awareness. We pretend to not notice your bullshit, because, quite frankly we deal with enough of it already. We’re not about to borrow trouble.

Cut to later that night, the girls are together enjoying the night before the big day, in their silk bathrobes, which are tradition for pre wedding fun-times.

CB gets the call. Typical.

Big has cold feet.

Big can’t write his vows.

Big doesn’t want to screw it up.

He screwed it up twice before.

Well, Big guy, you sound like you’re gearing up for screw up number three!

CB says nice calming things.

Big (short for Big baby I am gathering) is soothed and he hangs up without clearly communicating how he is really feeling in simple concise language.

I know, I know! It’s a romantic comedy, and psychological analysis is not advised. It’s supposed to be corny and unrealistic.

I just can’t resist taking a few shots at the dying breed of rom-com male leads. They are, hilarious.

It is now the next day, the day of the wedding!

Mr. Big sits in his sleek black car and whines into CB’s answering machine “I really need to talk to you!” and “…I need to know it’s still us. Just you and me.” Well OF COURSE it’s just you and her you big man-child! You’re only marrying her! And then he just sits there looking at his beautiful bride through the tinted car window, begging her to just please turn around, so he can see her face and know its just them.

Dear lord.

Finally Big gets through to her on their antiquated cellular devices, (which, honestly I find precious. I’ll admit, I do want to own that rhinestone pink flip phone!), he at last gets the chance to break her heart for the third time! The first two being during the TV series, it is implied.

He drives away.

Then, about five minutes later, he exclaims “What the fuck am I doing?!”

He commands the driver to make U-turn on a one way and then leaps out of the car, which has gotten stuck during it’s awkward maneuvering, just in time to meet CB, who exits her own limo with her devoted handmaidens, Charlotte and Miranda. CB attacks her groom to be with her bouquet, screaming at him, saying she knew he would back out. Then, pulled away by her friends, falls sobbing into Charlotte’s arms.

Running through my mind during this scene were two simultaneous thoughts:

1. This is so over the top.
2. This is so powerful and I wish I could be Carrie or Charlotte right now!

As Big attempts to approach CB again, Charlotte’s eyes get real big, mom-big. She is protecting her cub with a primal energy. She shouts “NO” and waves her finger in Big’s face, with a gesture that emphasis her point perfectly. He WILL stay back, or she WILL murder him. Right here in the street, in broad daylight, crowd of witnesses or no, he will die for his crimes of the heart! This moment is by far the best of the entire film. If you just search up this scene on Youtube it will be worth it, I promise you. I’ve actually started watching it daily. It is chalk full of the good strong feminine-beast motivation which my morning coffee is so lacking in.

Charlotte is an unsung hero. I worship Charlotte. I want to be her when I grow up.

The girls make their escape. And so ensues my favorite part of any breakup story, the radical grieving and then the reinventing of self.

There is throwing of phones into the ocean, (fare thee well legendary pink phone!). There is pooping in pants.

There is drunkenness.

There is debauchery.

There is new hair color.

There is a sassy black woman, Louise, or Saint Louise, who makes you feel happy and comforted, as well as uncomfortable and guilty over how obviously the “diversity” box has been checked.

There is friendship.

It’s messy, it’s hilarious, it’s horrible and so onwards!

During this time, comes the most excellent of CB’s lines in the movie.

She and Miranda are sitting at a table for two on Valentines day, they both being single, Miranda having not yet reconciled with Steve and Big still being in exile. Miranda demands why on earth CB would look at the Vogue issue, which included a spread of CB in wedding attire and a whole big article about her impending and then canceled wedding.

“Why would you look at the Vogue!? Today of all days?” Miranda asks incredulously. “Cause,” CB says with a shrug as she relieves an artichoke leaf of its meat with her teeth, “I’m an emotional cutter.” I laughed so hard I had to the pause the movie. This is a line written for me, if ever there was one. A line written for any of us who know all too well the sinking feeling of heartbreak and then sit in it for as long as possible. There is no way out, only through. Might as well go straight through with flare, a cloud of black smoke and twirling a baton to boot! Some of us make heartbreak an art.

Moving on, the end of the film is nigh. Miranda and Steve have reconciled in a tear-jerking scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. Samantha has broken up with her hunky Hollywood boyfriend who may or may not have been holding her back from a continued life of wild serial sex. And my most beloved Charlotte had her baby… After an unexpected meeting with Mr. Big, during which her angry yelling at him caused her water to break. When CB arrives at the hospital, he has already left, leaving with Charlotte’s husband a request that she please call him, he has been writing her, but she doesn’t answer. No duh, you big chiseled idiot! CB has had no letters. She goes home to her newly decorated, old apartment, and searches the emails and snail mail left for her to go through by Saint Louise, who has departed for St Louis to be married to her own one true love. There is a password-encrypted folder. Of course the password is “love” and of course it is filled with the love letters of great men, and one from Mr. Big himself, the greatest of all great dumb idiot fool men. CB is soon rushing to rescue a pair of shoes left in the apartment which Mr. Big bought for her and the is a romantic accidental meeting. They kiss. They are lying on the closet floor.

Now, I knew they were going to end up together. Die-hard Sex and the City fans would stand for nothing less! I know it’s a fictional tale of love, so I cannot be so mad at him that I would deprive CB of her happily ever after. It’s ridiculous, and obviously to be expected.

Although, I will say this, Mr. Big has the best line I never expected.

“Why did we decide to get married?” CB asks in her sweet lady voice, as she and the love of her life lay entwined together on the closet floor. Big makes an appropriately contemplative face and answers her with this,

“I guess we were afraid it would mean something if we didn’t.”

That got to me. I paused the movie. My eyes filled with tears. I set my wine down (yes, there is wine involved, but mostly the pure and unexpected brilliance of the line, okay!!). I had to take a few breaths as I repeated the line to myself. I wrote it down. This is a big, big idea, Mr. Big! I had never before seen with such clarity the ideal behind the idea of a wedding. Don’t get me wrong, I want a wedding some day. I want a beautiful dress, a beautiful day, good food, good drink and the best of friends and family. I want to dance all together and I want to be happy and loved. But here’s the thing, I don’t want to be so wrapped up in the idea that “married” means more then it should. I have friends who are happily married and I am constantly caught in the envious trap of thinking that I am less then. That my happy, committed relationship is some how invalid because there hasn’t been a license signed or a cake cut. Mr. Big is right. I fear that ominous “something” that it might mean by not being married.

I want to let it go.

I want to be where I am right now.

I want to enjoy the days of simple love and when the time is right, the right party will be thrown.

And I will eat, drink and be married at the ripe old age of whatever hell age I choose.

Of course, this idea can apply to many more things then marriage. The fear of the unknown, chosen by not checking the big must-do-this-the-right-way boxes of life is a powerful motivator. It can become so easy to say and do things for the sake of approval and blending in… Not worth it. Never is it worth it to agree to something at the expense of a soul full of peace.

So, in conclusion, thank you corny over the top Sex and the City, for unexpected words of “no-duh” wisdom, hysterical laughter, and of course, the privilege to witness the awesome power of Charlotte’s girl-gang power. May we all have girls like her in our corner! Amen. I will know watch her again on YouTube, and you should too.