LBD's Girl Power
Yes, sex has always been part of the equation. But for all of the agony of the Post-It break-ups and the intrigue of the bi-curious boy toys, there was an entirely different reason why audiences kept coming back to a show like Sex and the City year after year: authentic, complicated but unconditional female friendship.
In an essay for Entertainment Weekly, Melissa Maerz laments the dearth of female friendship on network TV, taking to task such female-run/led series as New Girl, Parks & Recreation, Scandal and The Mindy Project.*
"I miss the Lucys and Ethels, the Mary Tyler Moores and Rhodas, the Carries and Mirandas, women who could call each other on their flakiness, and still clink martini glasses afterward. . . You know we’re in a bad place when 2 Broke Girls is the one network show that actually focuses on two young women who are bound together for good, no matter how many times they roll their eyes at each other. . .Lately, watching Jess and Mindy ditch their girlfriends on New Girl and The Mindy Project just reminds me of that Sex and the City episode when Carrie flaked on a dinner date with Miranda so that Big could cook her some veal. “You blew me off for a piece of politically incorrect meat?” Miranda huffed. It was hard to tell whether she was talking about Big or the baby cow he made for dinner. Either way, she wasn’t going to stand by while Carrie passed her over for a guy. And it’s hard to believe that Cece or Gwen or any woman worth her crochet-night needles would, either."
Without the temporal constraints or ratings grabbing motives that are par for the course with network (and even to a certain extent premium cable) TV, LBD seizes the opportunity to bring equal focus (if not more) to the relationships between female friends and sisters as it does to the romantic entanglements.
In focusing on these dynamics, LBD has the opportunity to play with audiences’ expectations that have been developed by way of other, more traditional romantic comedy properties. For instance, in Episode 97 (“Special Delivery”), Lizzie tells her audience that someone showed up on her doorstep in the rain the night prior, and of course, the audience is expecting it to be Darcy. But instead, it was her best friend, Charlotte, showing up with ice cream and a DVD.
Lizzie and Charlotte are self-proclaimed "besties" than can stand among the old guard of female companions, and with the freedom of multi-platform delivery, neither Mr. Darcy nor any other man need compromise that.
*Notably, one of the most nuanced and successfully executed female friendships on TV can be seen on Comedy Central's Broad City, a series that began on the web and moved to the mainstream with the help of Her Girl Power Majesty, Amy Poehler.
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