Speaking of unrealistic luxury lifestyles... Watched the 1978 Superman again with the hype for the new movie and I never realized that Kidder's Lois Lane lived in a luxury penthouse apartment in Metropolis on her $ 285.00/week reporter salary
Agree AJLT would have been more interesting if…well, anyone…had to worry about money, but Big was based on Ron Galotti and not The Other Guy You Mentioned 🤪
Thing is, SATC was never that funny, and AJLT is offensively not funny. At least on SATC you could muster up some empathy for single women trying to establish careers and maybe meet a man who won’t break up with them by sticky note. Now I’m supposed to believe always-horny-for-dick Miranda no longer cares about dick? I would go on but like most people concerned with their own health I quit hate-watching this show a season and a half ago.
I was never a SitC watcher, I couldn’t afford cable when it was on, I maybe saw the movie, and I’ve avoided the new show. , In general I haven’t liked wealth porn, particularly unrealistic wealth porn. Like shopping in places I can’t afford, I don’t like how those shows make me covet things I was perfectly content without.
But I had so many friends who loved the show! And they were always women who had grown up without all the fancy stuff, usually with strongly religious parents. And while I would grudgingly watch and scoff (again: I felt too poor for cable and they felt cable was a life necessity that had been denied them by their parents), they were seemingly unable to grasp that suspension of disbelief means the show is actually not to be believed. They really did think they would be able to have all this luxury in their lives, on their women’s-job salaries. They thought that everyone else was living like that. Obviously not them, not me (the crank), but women somewhere were having well-paid careers and meals out and sex whenever they wanted it.
We are all older now and most of them have retreated to ordinary suburban lives (not tv ones) but I don’t think they’ve ever really gotten over not having the lives Carrie et al had. I see younger people feeling this way over the lives of Disney Channel characters. It’s all so weirdly destructive of reality and leads them to think of themselves as struggling when they’re really quite comfortable.
So agree. The fictional stories are always about women who absolutely luck into $$. How about one where they do struggle a little or worry about money without living in a trailer?
Or even “can live a happy life despite a modest income and the financial worries normal people have”? It seems the show runners are so deep in their bubble they can’t imagine having to live in a New Jersey suburb.
I’d never watched SATC but really enjoyed “Girls” which seemed at least somewhat more realistic in terms of less desirable apartments in further flung neighborhoods. Seems though that Hollywood loves portraying life in a big rich city like LA or NYC, or otherwise a rural area, but you almost never see shows taking place in smaller or poorer cities—there are some exceptions (“Martin” in Detroit, “Drew Carey” in Cleveland). But in any case it’d be nice to see at least some realism about how non-rich people live.
The original was also wildly unrealistic (Carrie's lifestyle on one column a week, lol), but you at least had some plotlines about money that were relatable, like when Carrie had to buy her apartment and had only a couple hundred dollars to her name. Even the "normal" characters on AJLT are in laughably unrealistic situations, like Seema's gardener boyfriend who lives in a $5M apartment that is rent controlled at $700/month.
I don't know what New York was like in the 1990's, but in 2025 everyone who lives here thinks about money constantly. Even people like Carrie's friends, highly paid lawyers and real estate agents. That's the most unrealistic thing about the show, that no one on it has any worries there.
I seem to recall when the "Eight is Enough" family could live in a large house and support ten people on dad's salary as a columnist at the Sacramento Bee.
One of my favorite “poor people” shows is “The Middle”. Granted it’s not in NYC but it’s funny, can be a little too close to home, and treats religious faith with respectful humor.
I've never really been a fan of programs that center around ridiculously rich people—whether soaps, reality, "primetime dramas," or whatnot. My tastes run to the more common, I guess (no one can ever accuse me of being highbrow): "Friends" (although, admittedly, how these young adults could live in those NYC apartments with their incomes was laughable in itself, even with rent control), "Big Bang Theory" (again, greater Los Angeles area and Penny, as a waitress/failed actress, could afford a pretty spacious, one-bedroom apartment), "Frasier" (although wealthy, he wasn't overboard rich) and other such shows were my thing. That was MY escapism, just funny people living in a place I'd never been. I never went for "Dallas," "Knot's Landing," "Dynasty," "The Kardashians," or any shows that depict the obscenely wealthy because it just depresses rather than entertains me. I honestly couldn't work up giving a single shit about some catfight between two rich, big-shouldered broads.
That said, moving to the UK was the opposite—I don't like soaps here because, aside from the fact I just don't like soaps, everyone is of...supposedly average means. People live in normal houses or flats in some village somewhere or in a larger-city suburban home that's been in the family for generations. I don't want to see the struggles of "regular" people, I've got enough of that of our own, tyvm.
Many years ago, when I was still a playwright I crafted a version of Chekhov's Three Sisters titled Connecticut Sisters about three adult women tussling with their younger, "vulgar" sister-in-law (and their husbands, brother and various male hangers on) over the remains of their newly dead father's estate and fortune - it was a satire - all the while longing to get back to the Manhattan of their privileged youth, a lifestyle a lifetime and little more than an hourlong train ride away but one they could no longer "afford" with the division and dissipation of Daddy's fortune. My painfully honest boyfriend at the time told me he didn't find the play funny or particularly interesting. When asked why, he replied - whatever these people's problems are, they are cushioned from the worst happening by their money. They had money, they would be "fine" and "fine" was boring. His point was that people without money have MUCH more at stake and are forced to be much more creative (positively and negatively) when confronted by adversity. Their lives and choices are "life and death" and therefore MUCH more inherently dramatic. A striving, single Carrie was a more interesting Carrie than an ensconced, wealthy, widowed one. Monetizing her and her friend's sex lives - her column wasn't called "Love in the City" - to make money was more interesting than marrying money. Creating a pennywise street look from downtown thrift shops and vintage stores was more interesting than Madison Avenue atelier coture, however tastefully kooky. My CTSIS adaptation, inspired by six weeks of house sitting in New Canaan when I was (ahem) "between residences" was, again, intended as satire, not tragedy, and was about the paralysis that money, or more accurately, a monied lifestyle could impose on those addicted to wealth and comfort but unwilling or more sadly, unable, to work to maintain it. Ironically monickered New Canaan was "a nice place to visit", I suppose - once you got past the alcoholism and divorces and economic insecurity of massive white collar corporate layoffs and relentlessly competitive social scrutiny - you could literally visit the home of an architect who famously lived in a "glass house" - but every day it was "You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about." I damn sure didn't want to live there, and I wanted a relatively well-heeled theatre audience to maybe look around and feel a little uncomfortable about their choices and compromises. Rich Carrie didn't have to compromise or competitively apartment search for a too small space in a marginal neighborhood for too much money - and what a character HAS is just stuff - props, costumes and set dressing - and is never as interesting as what that character may DO.
Wow this article is a lot of food for thought. I guess escapism in the form of wealth means your day to day stresses go away, and why so many loved that. I bet that is one reason people lime influencers who flaunt lots of luxury. Or even "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."
Not just where and how they live, and ludicrous clothing, its the shallow, worthless dribble they speak. So prevalent in all our media for so long, crap, it's what we bought and its now carved in stone at the highest level of our "society," leadership in higher education, business and government. You broke it, you bought it.
But SER, that is our whole society! Sex and wealth with a dash of sports is what sells. The Real Housewives of OC live in a place I've never driven through and I've lived in OC most of my life. It's all fantasy and our society is addicted. I call it wealth porn.
I'm weird, because watching insanely wealthy people, whether real or fiction, on TV or in the movies has been something that I enjoy. It's not escapism to me, it's Gilded Age "fuck you" to us peasants. And are those people ever really happy? Do they ever have moments of joy?
Speaking of unrealistic luxury lifestyles... Watched the 1978 Superman again with the hype for the new movie and I never realized that Kidder's Lois Lane lived in a luxury penthouse apartment in Metropolis on her $ 285.00/week reporter salary
https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/superman_balcony4.jpg
Agree AJLT would have been more interesting if…well, anyone…had to worry about money, but Big was based on Ron Galotti and not The Other Guy You Mentioned 🤪
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/fashion/mr-big-sex-and-the-city-inspiration-vermont.html
Thing is, SATC was never that funny, and AJLT is offensively not funny. At least on SATC you could muster up some empathy for single women trying to establish careers and maybe meet a man who won’t break up with them by sticky note. Now I’m supposed to believe always-horny-for-dick Miranda no longer cares about dick? I would go on but like most people concerned with their own health I quit hate-watching this show a season and a half ago.
I was never a SitC watcher, I couldn’t afford cable when it was on, I maybe saw the movie, and I’ve avoided the new show. , In general I haven’t liked wealth porn, particularly unrealistic wealth porn. Like shopping in places I can’t afford, I don’t like how those shows make me covet things I was perfectly content without.
But I had so many friends who loved the show! And they were always women who had grown up without all the fancy stuff, usually with strongly religious parents. And while I would grudgingly watch and scoff (again: I felt too poor for cable and they felt cable was a life necessity that had been denied them by their parents), they were seemingly unable to grasp that suspension of disbelief means the show is actually not to be believed. They really did think they would be able to have all this luxury in their lives, on their women’s-job salaries. They thought that everyone else was living like that. Obviously not them, not me (the crank), but women somewhere were having well-paid careers and meals out and sex whenever they wanted it.
We are all older now and most of them have retreated to ordinary suburban lives (not tv ones) but I don’t think they’ve ever really gotten over not having the lives Carrie et al had. I see younger people feeling this way over the lives of Disney Channel characters. It’s all so weirdly destructive of reality and leads them to think of themselves as struggling when they’re really quite comfortable.
So agree. The fictional stories are always about women who absolutely luck into $$. How about one where they do struggle a little or worry about money without living in a trailer?
Or even “can live a happy life despite a modest income and the financial worries normal people have”? It seems the show runners are so deep in their bubble they can’t imagine having to live in a New Jersey suburb.
I’d never watched SATC but really enjoyed “Girls” which seemed at least somewhat more realistic in terms of less desirable apartments in further flung neighborhoods. Seems though that Hollywood loves portraying life in a big rich city like LA or NYC, or otherwise a rural area, but you almost never see shows taking place in smaller or poorer cities—there are some exceptions (“Martin” in Detroit, “Drew Carey” in Cleveland). But in any case it’d be nice to see at least some realism about how non-rich people live.
Closer to real estate reality: Billy Eichner's character's apartment on "Difficult People"? Anyway, thanks PTG for the column. Enjoyed it.
What about the shoebox apartment the guys in “Flight of the Conchords” lived in? That was the smallest I ever saw.
Thanks!
The original was also wildly unrealistic (Carrie's lifestyle on one column a week, lol), but you at least had some plotlines about money that were relatable, like when Carrie had to buy her apartment and had only a couple hundred dollars to her name. Even the "normal" characters on AJLT are in laughably unrealistic situations, like Seema's gardener boyfriend who lives in a $5M apartment that is rent controlled at $700/month.
I don't know what New York was like in the 1990's, but in 2025 everyone who lives here thinks about money constantly. Even people like Carrie's friends, highly paid lawyers and real estate agents. That's the most unrealistic thing about the show, that no one on it has any worries there.
I seem to recall when the "Eight is Enough" family could live in a large house and support ten people on dad's salary as a columnist at the Sacramento Bee.
Yeah, Carrie clearly had budgeting issues that keep getting handwaved as “Big was rich.”
My wife and I love the “Pivot!” scene in FRIENDS bc it is classic New York to us (especially having a friend who is too cheap to pay for delivery).
One of my favorite “poor people” shows is “The Middle”. Granted it’s not in NYC but it’s funny, can be a little too close to home, and treats religious faith with respectful humor.
The Conners is too “zingy” for me.
What I liked about “The Middle” was the characters weren’t Hollywood gorgeous—they looked like average people.
Yes. I had far too many shirts and sweater sets like Frankie’s.
I've never really been a fan of programs that center around ridiculously rich people—whether soaps, reality, "primetime dramas," or whatnot. My tastes run to the more common, I guess (no one can ever accuse me of being highbrow): "Friends" (although, admittedly, how these young adults could live in those NYC apartments with their incomes was laughable in itself, even with rent control), "Big Bang Theory" (again, greater Los Angeles area and Penny, as a waitress/failed actress, could afford a pretty spacious, one-bedroom apartment), "Frasier" (although wealthy, he wasn't overboard rich) and other such shows were my thing. That was MY escapism, just funny people living in a place I'd never been. I never went for "Dallas," "Knot's Landing," "Dynasty," "The Kardashians," or any shows that depict the obscenely wealthy because it just depresses rather than entertains me. I honestly couldn't work up giving a single shit about some catfight between two rich, big-shouldered broads.
That said, moving to the UK was the opposite—I don't like soaps here because, aside from the fact I just don't like soaps, everyone is of...supposedly average means. People live in normal houses or flats in some village somewhere or in a larger-city suburban home that's been in the family for generations. I don't want to see the struggles of "regular" people, I've got enough of that of our own, tyvm.
Many years ago, when I was still a playwright I crafted a version of Chekhov's Three Sisters titled Connecticut Sisters about three adult women tussling with their younger, "vulgar" sister-in-law (and their husbands, brother and various male hangers on) over the remains of their newly dead father's estate and fortune - it was a satire - all the while longing to get back to the Manhattan of their privileged youth, a lifestyle a lifetime and little more than an hourlong train ride away but one they could no longer "afford" with the division and dissipation of Daddy's fortune. My painfully honest boyfriend at the time told me he didn't find the play funny or particularly interesting. When asked why, he replied - whatever these people's problems are, they are cushioned from the worst happening by their money. They had money, they would be "fine" and "fine" was boring. His point was that people without money have MUCH more at stake and are forced to be much more creative (positively and negatively) when confronted by adversity. Their lives and choices are "life and death" and therefore MUCH more inherently dramatic. A striving, single Carrie was a more interesting Carrie than an ensconced, wealthy, widowed one. Monetizing her and her friend's sex lives - her column wasn't called "Love in the City" - to make money was more interesting than marrying money. Creating a pennywise street look from downtown thrift shops and vintage stores was more interesting than Madison Avenue atelier coture, however tastefully kooky. My CTSIS adaptation, inspired by six weeks of house sitting in New Canaan when I was (ahem) "between residences" was, again, intended as satire, not tragedy, and was about the paralysis that money, or more accurately, a monied lifestyle could impose on those addicted to wealth and comfort but unwilling or more sadly, unable, to work to maintain it. Ironically monickered New Canaan was "a nice place to visit", I suppose - once you got past the alcoholism and divorces and economic insecurity of massive white collar corporate layoffs and relentlessly competitive social scrutiny - you could literally visit the home of an architect who famously lived in a "glass house" - but every day it was "You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about." I damn sure didn't want to live there, and I wanted a relatively well-heeled theatre audience to maybe look around and feel a little uncomfortable about their choices and compromises. Rich Carrie didn't have to compromise or competitively apartment search for a too small space in a marginal neighborhood for too much money - and what a character HAS is just stuff - props, costumes and set dressing - and is never as interesting as what that character may DO.
So well put! Thanks, Myra!
Wow this article is a lot of food for thought. I guess escapism in the form of wealth means your day to day stresses go away, and why so many loved that. I bet that is one reason people lime influencers who flaunt lots of luxury. Or even "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."
Not just where and how they live, and ludicrous clothing, its the shallow, worthless dribble they speak. So prevalent in all our media for so long, crap, it's what we bought and its now carved in stone at the highest level of our "society," leadership in higher education, business and government. You broke it, you bought it.
EAT THE RICH
Wealth isn’t the only means of escapism.
But SER, that is our whole society! Sex and wealth with a dash of sports is what sells. The Real Housewives of OC live in a place I've never driven through and I've lived in OC most of my life. It's all fantasy and our society is addicted. I call it wealth porn.
"Sex and wealth with a dash of sports is what sells."
Yes. And that must explain why cryptobros are pushing their "investment opportunities" by tossing dildos onto the courts at WNBA games.
I remember that! "Wealth porn" was coined in a description of Woody Allen's movies from the 80s on...
I'm weird, because watching insanely wealthy people, whether real or fiction, on TV or in the movies has been something that I enjoy. It's not escapism to me, it's Gilded Age "fuck you" to us peasants. And are those people ever really happy? Do they ever have moments of joy?