There wasn’t much that Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones couldn’t get away with on Sex and the City. From acrobatic sex acts to sporting fake nipples, Jonesy was always the go-to character of the quartet to get her way–sexually at least. So maybe it’s better to say, she was always the one to get her orgasm (except in the famed episode, “My Motherboard, My Self,” when she literally lost it).
Perhaps as a result of what would seem to be, in Sarah Jessica Parker’s mind, the writers’ nepotism toward Samantha, they saw fit to make her tango with the worst villain of all–a child–and finally lose. Of course, they waited until practically the end of the series to do so, also sticking her with cancer for good measure (how much was the gentle suggestion of SJP’s executive producer credit at play there?). But cancer, in truth, is preferable to what Samantha had to endure in season six, episode nine, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes.” As one of the teleplays of the series designed to most palpably elucidate the divide between singles and marrieds–specifically marrieds with kids–one of the defining lines of the script is Carrie speaking of her old friend, Kyra (Tatum O’Neal), and her sudden need to make rules about everyone having to take their shoes off at the door so dust and other shoe dander, one supposes, doesn’t infiltrate her precious little children’s lungs or nostrils. Of this quirk, she notes, “It’s like she’s had two caesarians and a lobotomy.”
While Carrie’s feelings of being discriminated against for doing the sensible thing and not having children take up the majority of the spotlight, it is Samantha’s brief moment of glory as she does what so many have dreamed of–stand up to the parent condoning their selfish cockroach’s behavior–that outshines Carrie getting cleverly reimbursed for the loss of her Manolo Blahniks.
While eating at an upscale restaurant as she talks business on her phone, a loud, gurgling child plays with his overpriced pesto pasta as Samantha is told that no cell phones are allowed as it’s a disturbance to other customers. Abhorring the blatant double standard, she demands, “I understand that my cell phone may be annoying to some but what are you doing about that noise?” Mildly appalled at her “insensitivity,” the waiter replies, “There’s nothing we can do about that. That’s a child.”
Seeing that no one is going to be her advocate on the anti-child front, she decides to attempt nothing you should ever do with a crazy person (which is what all parents are): reason with them. So it is that she approaches the pesto-flinging monkey and its progenitor and explains, “I understand that your child and I have to coexist in this city. But perhaps you could take him somewhere more appropriate for a Happy Meal so I could have a happier one.”
It is here–right here–that Jenny Bicks, who authored the script, did her heroine wrong in determining that the assertion would be followed up with pasta being arbitrarily tossed at her white blazer. While this in and of itself is already an egregious win for children everywhere, Samantha’s defeat is further compounded by her kowtowing concluding statement, “I’ve made my point, and he’s made his.”
Of course, in a more vindicating world that might exist in 2019 (though probably not because people still seem to think that the sun shines out of children’s asses when these are the darkest cracks of all), Samantha’s script might be rewritten to go a little something like this:
Samantha: Excuse me, you sorry excuse for a woman that could find no other easy purpose in life than to birth like the cow you are, could you please take your child and his slop elsewhere?
Just as Samantha concludes her request at “slop,” she edges toward the child, defensively swaps his pasta-filled hands aside, thrusts her own hand onto the plate, picks up a fistful of the green spaghetti and whips it first at the mother, then picks up another to hit the child in the face. A direct aim that lands with a splat causes him to burst into pathetic tears.
Samantha: There! Now you can enjoy your fucking lunch as much as I have.
With that, her white blazer still immaculate, she receives a perfectly timed phone call, the especially loud ring tone being “I Hate Children” by The Adolescents. She then proceeds to continue the same call the waiter had previously insisted she terminate.
Alas, only in the allegedly darker vision for Sex and the City 3 (one that thought Miranda’s teenage son getting caught masturbating by Samantha would be a fun idea) might we have been able to see something as gritty as this. But, as we all know, that shall never come to pass. Thus, those of us as unnerved by the blatant preferential treatment toward children as Samantha must content ourselves with this reimagining.
