Inevitable

On TV, late: the episode of Sex and the City, fairly early on (season two), where Big threatens to move to Paris. Fights, unhappiness, chaos.

Of course, having seen season six, with its lovely and surprisingly satisfying ending, we know that Carrie will finally end up with Big again – and we will even find out his actual name, which is otherwise concealed up until that last scene of the entire series – and he will come save her from confusion, loss and unhappiness – ironically and cleverly, in Paris.

And it is all made inevitable by the fact that this is clearly the guy for her (Aidan was an indulgence, Berger a faiure – can you tell I liked this show? – and a host of others merely temporary mistakes); and if he wasn't ready for a full relationship in season two, he finally will be by season six. The happy ending is inevitable, because it merely takes him a long time to realize what he needs to do – up until the last episode – at around the same time she realizes that he realizes, etc. etc.

I'd love to be part of an inevitable story – one that must reach some useful resolution, where everything makes sense, where there is some kind of return, some completion. Where time forms an arch of some kind, where events circle around in some way: where they don't merely meander in rather formless curves; and where the great distance travelled from anything familiar, from anything that you think you want, is merely proof of how right the ending is – I want to get the job in New York and discover that my future was always there, or have the guy from my past show up on my doorstep (the right one). Or maybe, I become the person for some younger man that an older man once was for me – I end up smiling, putting my shades back down over my eyes, in the sun, saying words that I didn't understand twenty years ago, to someone else, who in his turn doesn't quite get the cosmic joke.

Inevitable... yes, I know the problem with narrative inevitability: it's based on the exclusion of fragments of real life, the removal of that which just happens, which is why it's not realistic.

I still want to be part of a story – and a good one too: not one of those dismal modernist anti-narratives that just trail off like they're....

Comments

[Renee]

Just my favourite programme. Love it love it love it!!!