Rachel Sennott has become a microcosm of Gen Z culture. From the quiet quarter-life crisis she portrays in Shiva Baby, to the absurdist violence found in Bottoms, Sennott’s comedy tends to highlight her characters’ flaws, giving them the freedom to be terrible people.
When it was announced in March that she had been commissioned by HBO to write a new comedy pilot, fans were quick to make comparisons. The show reportedly follows a group of co-dependent friends navigating their lives and relationships. It’s a premise that has found success before, and fans hope that Sennott may follow in some pretty big footsteps.
Sex and the City ends its pilot episode with Samantha, the central group’s sexual sage, delivering what becomes the show’s ethos. She says: “If you’re a successful single woman in this city you have two choices. You can bang your head against the wall and try to find a relationship, or you can say screw it and just go out and have sex like a man.”
With that, a new kind of TV show was born. It followed a group of New York women in their 30s trying to match the success in their jobs with success in their personal lives as well. It was the first of its kind that believed a woman’s career aspirations to be just as important, if not more, as her relationship status.
Since Sex and the City others have followed in its path. Girls, a show about a writer trying to find her place in the world alongside her friends in New York, premiered in 2012. Creator Lena Dunham very quickly sought to be Sex and the City’s spiritual successor.
In one scene the naïve Shoshanna attempts to relate to the effortlessly cool Jessa, by saying: “You’re like a Carrie with some Samantha aspects and Charlotte’s hair.”
At the heart of both shows sits the question, can women have as much fun as men? As much sex? As much freedom? But as time has gone on these questions have become even more complicated.
Girls premiered 13 years after the Sex and the City pilot, and with the 13th anniversary of Girls looming next year, Sennott could be in prime position to take on the legacy. However, do we really want to see a rehash of the past?
None have these shows have been able to avoid criticism since their finales. Plenty of people have already pointed out the blatant whitewashing of New York’s famously diverse streets, or the repeated homophobia.
But most of all, these shows encapsulated a particular moment in time and, therefore a particular brand of feminism. The female characters of the late 90s and early 2010s were positioning themselves in relation to men, rather than outside of the male gaze.
Discussions around gender expression and non-binary identities were hard to come by when Girls first aired, never mind Sex and the City.
We barely know what Sennott’s untitled HBO series will be but there’s no point limiting her potential to shows that have come before. If Sennott is going to make any impact, she has to find her voice outside of the patriarchy.
Image credit: Warner bros.
Film and Tv Editor at Brig Newspaper. Currently studying Journalism and English at the University of Stirling
