Is New York the New Beige?

Not the real New York, of course, the place located about 220 miles north of DC, but the New York of the mind, and, more specifically, the New York of the movies and TV.

The notion that New York is the only place in the world where a cool person could possibly live was due, in large part, to three TV series, Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City. One can hardly charge either Friends or Seinfeld with glamorizing New York, but Sex and the City certainly did, and that had its effect, probably more on the people who make movies and TV than those who watch them. Later, Mad Men had the same effect. After enduring decades of publicity as a mugger’s paradise, Giuliani/Bloomberg New York, with its low crime and high profits, was once more the mold of form and the glass of fashion, leaving poor old LA hopelessly in the dust.

About a month ago, I unwittingly confirmed this thesis when, while wallowing in a slough of sluttish antinomianism of particularly virulent vintage, I rented two Cameron Diaz rom-coms, What Happens in Vegas (2008) and The Other Woman (2014). In WHIV Cameron plays a successful stockbroker with a fab office and a fab pad, with fabulous views of the fabulous Manhattan skyline. We see Central Park at sunset, the Empire State Building, the whole nine yards. I bailed on the film early on, due to, well, racism, because Cameron is competing with this cunning Asian chick (Michelle Krusiec as the evil “Chong”). Yeah, it seems the Asians are out to steal our jobs. See, they’re skinny, and they’re smart, and they’re, well, evil. Fortunately, they aren’t good at parties, which is why we white folks get to win. Good to know!

In TOW, Cameron is a lawyer rather than a stockbroker, but both home and office in the two films are interchangeable. I bailed on this one due to house porn—Cameron, having forsaken Mr. Wrong, meets Mr. Right, identifiable because he’s building, with his own hands, pretty much, this absolutely killer beach house. So, yeah, this is the guy to marry. But I didn’t stick around to see it happen.

Anyway, the moral is, if Cameron Diaz is living like Carrie Bradshaw, you know it’s a trend. And you can’t get much blander than Cameron Diaz, can you?

These days, if you want grit, you pretty much have to go to the tube to get it, and a number of shows offer a much funkier New York than you’ll get at the multiplex, but, really, it’s just another shade of beige. I’m thinking of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Tina Fey’s The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,¹ and Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s Broad City. I’ll take the last first, since it’s the only one I like. Ilana and Abbi play versions of themselves, a distaff version of Cheech and Chong, with Ilana as the sly, shallow top and Abbi as the genial, broad-bottomed bottom. Ilana and Abbi smoke almost as much pot as C&C and there are other similarities as well. Cheech and Chong used to have this bit where they would pretend to be dogs and sniff each other’s butts. Ilana, trying to find her way to a dog wedding in Central Park, picks up dog shit in her hands and sniffs it.²

Broad City wanders vaguely between the vaguely real and the vaguely unreal. The girls have shit jobs but somehow manage to live as they please, surrounded by a crowd of cute, flamboyantly gay guys³ who help them score invites to basically wherever they want to go. The message is that anyone who doesn’t live in New York is an idiot, but most of the time the jokes are funny enough that I don’t care.

I can’t say the same about The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which comes across as 30 Rock minus all the bite. Ninety percent of the bite for 30 Rock was supplied by Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, a Princeton tiger striving ever to claw his way to the very top of the rock. Jack’s only endurable, of course, because all his brilliant coups crash and burn. Instead of ruling NBC, he ends up slaving for the fat-assed Philistines from Philadelphia (“I’m not happy, Jack. Make me happy!”). But how can you not be impressed by a man who announces his engagement in Cigar Aficionado?⁴

All of Jack’s energy is missing from Kimmy Schmidt, which simply divides the world in two—east of the Hudson and west. Tight booty? East of the Hudson. Fat with braces? Go west. There are more flamboyantly gay guys, of course, and Jane Krakowski reprises her ditzy diva role from 30 Rock, but who cares? You could cut the self-entitlement and the self-congratulation with a knife, and I’d rather not.

I’ve already moaned and groaned about Girls—all about Brooklyn actually, rather than all about Manhattan—so I won’t bother to repeat myself.⁵ There used to be eight million stories in the Naked City. Why do we always keep getting the same one now?