Battle of the Single Broads: Elaine vs. Carrie vs. Bridget

Three iconic singletons have emerged in popular culture over the past 15 years: Elaine Benes from the sitcom Seinfeld was the first. She kept up with her male friends, dating as many men as Jerry dated women; never placed too much importance on whatever man she was with; and entered (and lost) The Contest. She was intelligent, self-sufficient and witty. When Seinfeld ended in 1998, it paved the way for Carrie Bradshaw, the fictional sex columnist (based on real sex columnist Candice Bushnell) in the HBO series Sex and the City. Carrie dated far and wide, placing importance on finding a good man, but even more importance on a great pair of shoes. And across the pond in Britain, Helen Fielding was creating her heroine (and coining the term “singleton”), Bridget Jones, through a series of columns appearing in The Independent, which were fictionalized into the 1996 novel Bridget Jones’s Diary. Bridget Jones was a fumbling London thirtysomething trying to navigate her way through the dating scene, avoiding all "fuckwittage" and losing a few pounds along the way.

But how do these three women compare when lined up against each other? How do the major arenas of their lives measure up?

JOB:

Elaine: Writer for J. Peterman catalogue (after a turn at Pendant Publishing and personal assistant to Mr. Pitt), which she clinched just after meeting Peterman in the rain and describing her shirt: “This innocent looking shirt has something which isn't innocent at all. Touchability. Heavy, silky Italian cotton, with a fine almost terrycloth like feeling. Five button placket, relaxed fit, innocence and mayhem at once.”

Carrie: Sex columnist for New York Times, sometime freelancer at Vogue; lives her fabulous life and gets paid to write about it.

Bridget: In the first book, Bridget has an office job at a publishing house where she sends flirty emails to her boss, Daniel Cleaver (see Significant Relationships, below). In the second book, Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason, she becomes an on-air personality who attempts such stunts as parachuting into a pig sty and sliding down a firehouse pole, ass-to-camera.

FRIENDS:

Elaine: Apart from the obvious Jerry, George and Kramer, Elaine has some girlfriends out in Long Island who keep entreating her to “come and see the baaayyy-bee”.

Carrie: Solid as a set of Manolo wedges in bright summer colours; Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte have been by Carrie’s side since the beginning.

Bridget: Sharon (Shazzer), Jude and Tom are always happy to drop everything and meet Bridget in the pub for more than 14 units of alcohol and several cigarettes, despite any New Year’s resolutions.

SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIPS:

Elaine: Puddy, the face-painting, eightball-jacket wearing lug who Elaine is constantly breaking up and getting back together with – one time, both events happened on a single plane trip; another time Elaine got back together because she needed a bureau moved.

Carrie: Mr. Big is the one man that Carrie keeps coming back to, even when she’s committed to a live-in relationship with Aidan (who we all know is just too simple and too easy for Carrie). At the end of the series, Carrie ends up with Mr. Big. In the big screen version, after two painful hours of breaking up, she ends up with him. (Seriously, in real life, girlfriends would never let their friends go back this many times to such a waffle-weave man.)

Bridget: The first book starts out with Mark Darcy, in a cheesy Christmas jumper, being a bit rude to old Bridget. Then she gets caught up in the romance of bad boy Daniel Cleaver (who also happens to be her boss). As is to be expected, Bridget makes nice with the dashing Mark Darcy by the time he’s ready to wear his cheesy Christmas jumper again.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION:

Elaine: She is always in search of the perfect apartment in Manhattan, even considering Jerry’s apartment.

Carrie: She rented her apartment in New York for years, choosing to spend 40 grand on shoes instead of a down payment. She eventually buys her place, with a little help from her friends, after breaking up with Aidan.

Bridget: Lives by herself in a small flat in London, well-stocked with granny-pants and by the end of it, Mark Darcy.

CATCHPHRASE:

Elaine: “Get out!” (followed by a voracious push)

Carrie: Any age old question that attempts to understand men.

Bridget: “Fuckwit.”

Daytime TV

And so begins the March Break, that week approaching spring that sees Pearson’s passenger numbers rise dramatically, parents scrambling to find childcare for a week and those lazy teachers claiming one week is just not enough. (It isn’t.)

For those of us who were lucky enough not to be sitting on the floor of Terminal 3 on Saturday, watching the snow fall and the flights fail to leave, we get the sinful indulgence of daytime TV.

Back in the day, daytime TV used to mean soap operas and game shows (I remember many a March Break spent as a student in my parents’ basement, shouting “Big Money!” at contestants on the Price Is Right as they spun that massive wheel just before Showcase Showdown). Later on, audiences saw an endless string of trashy talkshows with similar themes (My sister is pregnant with my transvestite husband’s baby etc.) and different straight-talking hosts (Montel, Sally Jesse, Maury etc.).

Nowadays our channel lineup has increased and so has the spectrum of daytime television. It seems that home-based shows have been all over the place for a while now: everything from home renovations to selling property to managing debt are the foci of shows.

And it seems we’re following Britain's lead, a country which, if the daytime lineup of BBC Canada is to be taken as a representation of television interest, is really into buying, renovating, decorating and selling property (and then rummaging through the attic to find things to sell).

Canada is even seeing the import of a few Brits to host Canadian-produced shows. Colin and Justin’s Home Heist premiered on HGTV back in October, transplanting the flamboyant duo from a variety of “flipping” shows in the UK (including Colin and Justin On The Estate, where they attempted to revitalize a dire council housing estate) to a show focusing on our national crisis of ugly basements.

The latest British import is Kim Woodburn who presented How Clean Is Your House?, a show revealing the grimy state of some UK households. This past Tuesday, Woodburn hosted the first episode of Kim’s Rude Awakenings, where she gets down to the dirty in Toronto homes.

How do homes get to this state, one wonders? Especially homes of those lazy teachers who have an entire week off to spring clean (which happens to be my goal for this week)?

Well, we get so drawn into the soap operas, game shows, talkshows and home and design shows that we can’t possibly find the time to do any work on our own houses.

(I should have left the dust, braved the airport, and gone to Cuba.)

Posh: Reality Living in America

Along with the rest of the closeted Spice Girls fans across the land, I watched Victoria Beckham: Coming to America last Monday. I will fully admit to an odd fascination with the lives of a few celebrities: I followed Kate Moss’s torrid love affair with Pete Doherty, I’m still intrigued by Suri Cruise (along with Katie Holmes’s outfits) and I love seeing pictures of Victoria Beckham in impossibly high heels and tiny get-ups, carting around her three boys – how does she do it?

The special, originally planned to be a series of six episodes, was shortened when producers were left with little material after Victoria flew back to the UK early to see her football start husband, David Beckham. Producers scrambled and made it into a one-hour special, attracting a mediocre 4 million viewers in the U.S. on Monday.

Like most reality TV shows centred around celebrities, the show was about publicity – and warming Americans up to Victoria, who consistently wears a scowl (and those sky-high heels) in paparazzi shots in papers and on the internet. The show is carefully crafted to show Victoria, though always gorgeous and flawlessly dressed, as a down-to-earth mum who misses her kids, incurs traffic violations, and sometimes drinks too much at afternoon socialite parties.

As with other shows that document the lives of celebrities like The Osbournes and Nick & Jessica: Newlyweds, the editing is deft, frequently poking fun at the show’s subjects. From Ozzy’s exasperated interjections during his children’s squabbles to prolonged shots of Jessica as she tries to figure out if chicken really do live in the sea, we are made to laugh at the follies of the rich and famous.

And this is why we like these shows: they bring celebrities down from their airbrushed spot on a Louis Vuitton pedestal and show us that yes, they are just like us: Ozzy and Sharon have to deal with clearing up dog poop in the house, Nick has to deal with the olfactory aftermath of Jessica’s visit to the bathroom. And while Victoria Beckham is never brought down to this basest of human functions, we are shocked to see her having to step out of her car in [gasp] flats!

Bringing celebrities down to the layperson’s level is a trend of the past decade or so. Remember back in the 80s when Robin Leach took us through the lavish and serviced homes and lives of celebrities in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? That programme was deftly edited, too – but it was all the boring, diurnal bits that were left out. Now, we want to see those bits. Celebrity magazines - a niche once left to the National Enquirer and News of the World, but now expanding faster than Nicole Richie’s pregnant belly - frequently run stories about celebrity cellulite and other body flaws the magic of Hollywood manages to hide. (And I use the term "stories" loosely, since much of the story is told through glaring graphics and little text.)

While Victoria Beckham does remain quite flawless throughout the special, we do see that she is followed around by her own makeup artist and hairdresser, and refuses to consume a proffered cookie from the bitchy celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton. But we also see her sweet side: stumbling over what she wants to be a polite description of a chubby, plastic, dolphin-calling socialite and dressing up a sex doll to act as a decoy so she can buy her husband a watch.

And though I never did figure out how she manages three boys whilst wearing skinny jeans and Louboutin heels, perhaps we will discover more in the near future: David Beckham has just signed on to star in his own reality series. Now, if only someone would convince Kate Moss to open up her model lifestyle to the scrutiny of the layperson…

Hodges Has His Day

Did you catch CSI tonight? Had I more faith in the North American viewing public I would venture to say that the show’s popularity is gleaned from the inventive plotlines and characterization.

Tonight’s episode did something that I don’t think has ever been done on a television drama (in my television viewing lifetime). The peripheral characters (Simms & Hodges etc.) and their plotline were brought to the forefront while the main characters (Grissom & Greg etc.) and their crime scenes were relegated to the briefest of glimpses.

The episode was akin to the brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, a play which thrusts Hamlet’s bumbling D-list friends into the protagonistic spotlight (fully made up that word). We follow the trifling (but not inconsequential) movements of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that occur when they are not “onstage” with Hamlet. Scenes from the actual Shakespeare play that feature Hamlet’s friends are interwoven into Stoppard’s play. Tonight, CSI followed the secondary characters as they tried to solve the Miniature Killer case. The main characters’ cases, usually the focal point of each episode, served as background annoyances, slipping in and out of Hodges’s quest to find a common link between each miniature.

Brilliant.

Didn’t like the lucky day montage, though.

The Ordinary in the Extraordinary

How many times have you watched a movie or television show with a far-fetched plot, rolling your eyes and mumbling, “that so would not have happened in real life,” or words to that effect? But then you settle into your seat, sigh at the piece’s grandiosity, and get taken it, eager for an hour of escapism…

For many, television is escapist entertainment. Sure, we want to be able to relate to the people we see on TV, but really we are happy to live vicariously through the exciting lives of the characters on our favourite TV shows.

In an article published in the December 9th edition of the Globe and Mail, Gayle McDonald interviewed Abi Morgan, who wrote the HBO miniseries Tsunami: The Aftermath. Of the subject matter, Morgan said, “I’m always interested in extraordinary events that happen to ordinary people. Because that is the real world.”

Although not exactly the real world, Lost is an example of a current trend in television: the dramatization of extraordinary events happening to ordinary people. Lost is based on the premise that a plane full of strangers crash-landed on a desert island that seems to have a mind (and magnetic force field) of its own. Not only must the survivors deal with finding food and building shelter, but with vicious, inapposite animals and mysterious residents with perplexing intentions.

This is, perhaps, an extreme example. So let’s look at Ugly Betty: a normal, bespectacled girl from Queens is crash-landed in the fake, appearance-oriented world of a fashion magazine, where not only must she deal with fulfilling the responsibilities of her job, she must navigate vicious co-workers and perplexing office politics. Everyone likes a good underdog story and we collectively cheer when the normal Betty uses her smarts to triumph over the obstacles of working in the world of haute couture.

The extraordinary happening to the ordinary is a trend in television that may have found its inspiration in the popularity of the myriad reality shows: normal people thrown into exceptional situations. On Survivor we see regular people from Middle America living in very abnormal circumstances – they must fend for themselves and complete tasks requiring athleticism and smarts. And from this premise comes the dramatic structure of Lost; the only differences being the polar bears and production costs. (Seriously. The producers are like The Others, constantly watching and analyzing the every move of the characters, then shaping the story line through clever editing.)

Reality shows such as American Idol or, more appropriately, America’s Next Top Model, have likewise set the stage for Ugly Betty. They take inexperienced contenders and throw them into the exclusive worlds of music and fashion and then watch them flounder. Just like Betty. (Granted, though, Ugly Betty must have gleaned some inspiration from the book The Devil Wears Prada one would guess.)

There has been a shift in the basis of hit TV shows from the 90s to the first decade of the 21st century. Ten years ago, one of the most popular shows was based around four characters poring over "the excruciating minutiae of every single daily event!" Seinfeld fans know that the decade’s defining show was really about nothing – four regular people going about their daily lives. Even Friends and Home Improvement were sitcoms about normal people living regular lives.

So where will TV go next? Well, there seems to be a few shows that appear to feature the opposite: extraordinary people living in ordinary situations. Medium sees a mom who works for the district attorney’s office and solves crimes by having psychic premonitions. Ghost Whisperer is about a woman with supernatural powers that allow her to talk to ghosts. And the recent Heroes is based around characters that discover they have superhuman powers whilst living their regular human lives, struggling to cope with this duality. As cheerleader Claire Bennet (who is gifted with the ability to regrow tissue) says in one episode: “Maybe being different isn't the end of the world. It's just who I am.”

Just who she is? I’m sorry, but Claire’s whole “spontaneous regeneration” power thing so would not have happened in real life.

57 Channels and Nothing On

I lived for the first 12 years of my life without cable (on a black and white television). When my family finally got hooked up (we were cable subscribers in the generation after the tan box with the push buttons), I developed a nasty habit of starting at channel 2 and clicking upwards to the last channel that the cable provider would allow. Finding nothing interesting on (as in the words of the Bruce Springsteen song, referenced in the title of this post), I keyed in channel 2 again and repeated the whole process. I could easily spend an hour with the TV on, but not actually watching anything.

When I moved in by myself, I brought with me my grandparents’ 13-inch TV and accompanying bunny ears, partly out of impecuniousness, but partly out of a desire to not spend hours not actually watching television.

But the other week, my old TV blew a picture tube and it was time to buy a new TV. Which did not come equipped with bunny ears attachments. So I buckled and signed up for Rogers Digital Cable.

I don’t think I could even estimate how many channels I get with the basic cable package – partly because I haven’t found them all. I’ve only made it up to the hundreds. And in those hundreds are a lot of Simpsons, Friends and Seinfeld reruns. Often the same episode running on several different channels. And then an hour later, you can watch the same episode again, but from a Manitoba channel.

And the home renovation and decorating shows – my god, is there no end to them? I thought we’d been oversaturated with reality shows. Obviously I hadn’t been watching daytime television. Soap operas and talk shows have been taken over by a plethora of shows hosted by women in overalls and men toting around swaths of fabric to make into curtains.

So those are the drawbacks. What about the positives?

Well, I can watch Oprah now (on a Manitoba channel). I have a vast selection of sitcom reruns to watch as I make dinner. The TV doesn’t go fuzzy on rainy days.

And my knowledge of home renovations has never been better…

Canadian Television

Over the past 26 hours, I have seen three Canadian politicians on my television screen, all performing in slightly different roles.


Last night was a repeat of Corner Gas in which Paul Martin guest starred in the opening scene, playing the straight man to Brent Butt’s, uh, straight man. This evening, Sam Sullivan, Vancouver’s mayor, spent some time hiking and talking disabilities with Rick Mercer. And as I post this, Peter Mansbridge will be interviewing Stephen Harper.

When compared to our neighbours to the south, it is impressive that our actual Prime Minister had a guest spot on a top-rated sitcom. There’s no way you would see Georgie B. doing a walk-on for Will & Grace. And it was refreshing to see Vancouver’s quadriplegic mayor having no reservations about poking fun at his disability. Too many viewers might be upset by the insensitivity in the States (and actually call the network to complain, like so many did when Janet Jackson’s boob popped out).

Now let me diverge for just a moment: Pamela Anderson hosting the Junos. She made several dodgy comments that would have been bleeped had the show been aired in the States – comments about Michael Buble´ making her hot, getting some Hedley and Alan Doyle in a G-string, among others I’ve forgotten.

And this is what I love about Canadian television: it’s not caught up in religious morals and political appearances. When The Kids of Degrassi Street did a show on homosexuality all those years ago, nobody batted an eyelash, but my god, Ellen coming out on TV was a major left step forward for the Yanks. And while Bush limits his television appearances to awkward exits and serious State of the Union addresses, Paul Martin cracks jokes with Brent Butt and schmoozes with Bono.

Now if only we could get Stephen Harper to take himself a little less seriously. (Is a combat vest really needed on a diplomatic trip to Mexico?)

Lost in a Television Formula

My first experience with the television show Lost was in a hotel room in le Marais. There were only a few options - CNN and local French channels, one of which was airing Lost, en Francais. I struggled to understand the French, never mind the fact the characters were jumping between the island and their previous lives. I gave up quickly and switched the channel to CNN.

My next experience with Lost was easier linguistically, but just as difficult semantically. My previous knowledge of Lost was that a plane had crashed and the people were trying to survive. And all of a sudden there was an underground room and a set of numbers and some computer thing that had to be reset every 67 minutes or whatever. Je suis perdue, I said and switched the channel.

Well, now I am making a concerted effort to understand this show. I have rented the first season of the show so I can catch up on all the question marks that pop up over my head when I watch new episodes.

I’m not bowled over by the show, in fact, I find some of the writing and acting quite awkward and unnatural at times. And some of the plot lines are so far-fetched as to be tiresome. (Polar bears grabbing pilots out of cockpits and depositing them bloodied, into trees? Was that ever explained?)

However, the show presents an interesting hybrid of television trends: reality shows such as Survivor and crime solving shows such as CSI.

The creators of Lost have taken the premise of a number of very different personalities forced to live together, and combined it with the twists and turns of crime and mystery programmes where the characters (and the viewers) are trying to figure out just what went on. Lost has performed so well in the ratings because the two most popular types of television formulas have been fused into one ratings winner.

What will be interesting to see is the next shift in television popularity: will Survivor-type shows fizzle, followed by Lost? Or will the viewing public tire of the hyperbolic storylines and fanciful characters that permeate this Wednesday night show?

Or, will Simon Cowell create a mega-show which consists of a group of American Idol hopefuls, stranded on an island, competing for resources AND solving a set of complicated mysteries. Britney Spears could guest-star.

And if we ever get to a point where that type of show gets airtime, send me back to that Paris hotel room with 4 channels. I’ll walk out the door and experience my own version of real life.

Reality TV

Okay, I wrote this last year, but it's still sort of current...


We recently began another season of Survivor, the lead up to which was a series of attention-grabbing adverts promising to turn all our previous expectations of the show completely upside down. Boy-oh-boy, was I excited when I sat down with my bowl of popcorn, ready to be blown away!

Well, the kernels stayed safely in the bowl and my expectations remained right side up. All they’ve done so far is, well, kick two people off right away and have both tribes on the same beach. For one night. And then it was back to regular old Survivor, which still does pretty well in the ratings.

Reality shows have succeeded for the same reason that soap operas are still on the air: we like to watch other people’s lives and other people’s problems. It is human nature to feel that ineluctable pull to examine the scene of an accident. Reality shows have provided a vehicle for us to watch how others solve their daily tribulations. And what better way for producers to make money than to allow unpaid “actors” to improvise for the camera, choosing to put their cash into careful editing instead.

My criticism of these types of shows is that the term reality is something of a misnomer. The cast and situations are always carefully constructed, just like the ubiquitous studio game shows of the 1980s. Today’s reality shows are just updated versions of the flashy games of skill like the Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune, the few differences being programmes today tend to be filmed in exotic locations, there is more focus on the interaction of the contestants, and instead of winning a fridge, the prize is an exorbitant amount of money. You half expect host Jeff Probst to remind us to spay and neuter our pets before he zooms off on his motorboat.

Contestants on today’s reality shows are always attractive and in most cases, look good in little clothing – obviously needed for the tropical settings of Survivor, The Amazing Race, Fear Factor etc. There is always a caricatured mix of people, often including a few strong, dominating personalities, the quiet, independent types and some just plain weirdos. The shows’ producers set up situations which an average person would likely never encounter in their lifetime. I suppose it is these elevated situations that draw in millions of viewers each night.


Take, for example, The Bachelorette. Who gets to date 25 men at once without a single one of them objecting? Now, biology does dictate that the general premise should work: a bunch of men competing to possibly pass on their DNA with a genetically superior female (she’s healthy, attractive, young). However, love and that societal construct of marriage negate the biology. Really - what are the chances of finding love in a pool of (albeit attractive and successful) 25 men? I have friends who have less success in a pool of thousands on Lavalife. Because it is a game show, the contestants have to keep trying to win, even if, presumably, they are not in love with Jen Schefft.


One of my favourite moments in reality TV was a few weeks ago on The Bachelorette when Fabrice stepped forward during the Rose Ceremony and told Jen he wanted out. Never before on a reality TV show have I seen such reality. Here was a guy admitting, you know what? I don’t really like you that much and the glory just ain’t worth it, baby. Bravo, Fabrice, bravo. This is what actual real life is like.

So how about an actual reality show? Where sometimes no one wins. Where the Supernanny does not tame the unruly children in the space of a couple of days. Where the young, hot twins don’t make it to Rio before the old, but experienced couple. Where Jen Schefft says, “Actually, I’ve decided to go out with the cute camera guy instead.”

Now that kind of TV would certainly turn my expectations upside down.