Matteo Malinverno
Bye Bye, NY
a look at nyc's small screen fall from grace
PrintOnce upon a time, in the days when we thought Y2K would end the world and Britney ruled, ladies everywhere pored over the puns and partying of their four favorite girlfriends on “Sex and the City.” If you had asked any of those viewers who their favorite character was, they may have pointed to the show’s secret fifth protagonist: New York City.
Sure, everyone loved Carrie’s wit and Samantha’s libido, but “Sex and the City” really gained traction when it indulged in its love for New York. Whether the foursome was sharing an autumn walk through Central Park, a gab session over Tasti D-Lite, or perfume spritzing at Takashimaya, the show was infused with both gritty truisms of life in New York and over-the-top fantasies of a perfect city. This combination of the rats in Carrie’s apartment and the abundant Manolos filling her closet made “Sex and the City”’s depiction of New York both relatable and aspirational.
“Sex” was hardly alone in its love for New York. Everyone remembers the skewed version of city life presented on “Friends”: Monica and Rachel’s unrealistically large apartment, the gang hanging out at Central Perk instead of ever going to work, and Phoebe’s wacky bohemian pursuits. “Will and Grace,” “Dharma and Greg,” and basically every other sitcom that premiered in the ’90s and early 2000s also starred 20-somethings trying to make it in Manhattan.
But a look at the TV shows that have followed New York’s small screen golden age suggest that New York may no longer work as TV’s default setting.
Shows that tried to ride the “Sex and the City” wave by imitating it, like “Lipstick Jungle” and “Cashmere Mafia,” tanked after only one or two embarrassing seasons. And “Ugly Betty,” a series that used to be popular, has now been relegated to airing at 9 on Friday nights.
The CW’s “Gossip Girl” and MTV’s “The City,” are both partially to blame for New York’s small screen decline. “Gossip Girl” was once a guilty pleasure because it was fun to guess what real-life school “Constance Billard,” the fake academy attended by the show’s main characters, was supposed to be. Now NYU has become the show’s new setting—and while the downtown university is a major part of New York, watching Blair’s futile attempts at maintaining social superiority over hipsters toting textbooks is a painful indication that “Gossip Girl” has lost its mojo.
Similarly, MTV’s “The City” began as a sort of guide to downtown restaurants and clubs. Viewers could hang on the name of every last Meatpacking District lounge Whitney visited. But “The City” has now abandoned the delicious rivalry between the “uptown Olivia” and “downtown Whitney,” focusing instead on workplace tiffs and Greenwich banker beaus. As with “Gossip Girl,” this shift has been accompanied by dropping ratings and less buzz.
This fall’s most popular and critically acclaimed series are set in places far away from New York City. Shows like “Community,” “The Office,” and “Modern Family” actually play up their middle-of-nowhere locales, which are self-consciously unsophisticated and unrefined—nothing like the glamorous TV New York of years past.
Perhaps viewers have come to find these left-of-center settings more appealing because that old, “Sex and the City” version of a New York filled with excess is no longer interesting in our current economic climate. New York on TV is home to characters decked out in Dior, running between benefits, obsessed with college admissions or table service at clubs. While such a setting once gave viewers an escape from their humdrum lives, now it just seems like a relic of an earlier, recklessly overindulgent time. Those of us who aren’t Blair, Whitney, or even Carrie would rather see cubicle workers making the best of what they’ve got than watch trust fund babies spending their inheritances and dancing on tables.
There are some important exceptions to the TV-New-York-is-dead hypothesis. “Mad Men” takes place on Madison Avenue, a location as iconically New York as it gets. And “30 Rock,” NBC’s critical hit about the workings of a comedy sketch show, takes place in New York’s Rockefeller Center, one of the Big Apple’s classic landmarks. But even these series don’t use New York like TV shows used to. “Mad Men,” set in the booze-soaked 1960s, presents a fantasy of New York, but it’s a different one than that of “Sex and the City” because it’s not one we can live vicariously through. By contrast, “30 Rock” is set in New York in name only, since its characters hardly ever leave the confines of their studio.
Then again, less airtime might actually be a welcome break for New Yorkers. Chuck Bass and Whitney Port aren’t really the best mascots for a city that insiders know is about much more than PR and club openings. It was annoying enough when the line at Magnolia grew to be blocks long because Carrie and Miranda shared one cupcake there in 1998—if fantasy and reality kept getting blurred together, the city might actually begin resembling TV’s lie more and more. At least now we hopefully won’t have to deal with freshmen coming to Columbia and thinking it’s cool to go clubbing in the Meatpacking District.
12 November 2009
vol. 7, issue 9
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