So here’s my chance to alienate the vast majority of my female readership. Up until now I’ve lulled and amused you with semi-witty opinions about exes, compulsive urinators, steak offenders, the Polish mafia. But now I will unleash the opinion that has led boatloads of women to cast me out in ignominy, spitting in my path and branding me a social pariah worthy of eternal damnation: Sex and the City kinda sucked. Not one episode, not one season, the entire show left an overall foul taste, like drinking slightly rancid milk after eating fruit salad.

When you get down to it, the characters were shallow, self-absorbed, one-dimensional irritants, the writing was sitcom-level at best, the acting was trite, and the clothes were semi-ridiculous. Honestly, there is only so much one can stomach Sarah Jessica Parker, the emaciated bleached-out gnome drowning in MAC foundation and whining incessantly about how Chris Noth (need I even continue after this) endlessly manipulates her, Kim Catrall trying so hard to ooze sexuality that, in the later seasons, her face actually morphs into a giant vagina (also, does a woman that enjoys sex necessarily have to be a one-dimensional raging slut with severe detachment issues and a propensity for picking up every banker and cliche hot waiter in the 5 boroughs, I ask you), Cynthia Nixon as, lets face it, the most unrealistic female lawyer in television history (a Harvard-law partner at a firm who never once checks a Blackberry or even mentions the office, she makes Ally McBeal seem realistic in comparison) and Kristen Davis as the quintessential cloying, simpering winter of unmarried (or unhappily married) thirtysomething discontent. How is it really possible to tolerate these women for thirty minutes, let alone on a regular weekly basis? Their banter was forced, their sex scenes relied on shock value, their brunches tried way too hard (come on now, no self-respecting career woman wears a Dolce & Gabbana tutu to brunch, not even in the Meatpacking District where people don’t know any better) and ok, I’ll say it: there is something viscerally depressing about watching a 38-year-old woman in $500 spike heels, chandelier earrings and a Catherine Malandrino miniskirt sucking down fluorescent pink cocktails at the same bars and restaurants frequented by people my age. Surely post-twenties life must take on greater meaning than owning 30 pairs of Manolos and shagging every straight guy above 14th Street by your 40th birthday. Not that they should all be Greenwich soccer moms with BMW SUVs & Chanel diaper bags by then, but it saddens me to think that your options are reduced to one or the other.

So Opinionista, you may ask, if you detest the show so much, why have you seen enough episodes to write this post? Answer: self preservation. Back in the day, I enjoyed a blissful Bradshaw-free existence, until I got my first job at a law firm and realized that I had been branded an outcast with a scarlet “S” embroidered into my Banana Republic cardigans because I mentioned during a cocktail party that I didn’t like the show. My offhand comment was met with shock and disdain from the female associates, as if I had confessed to secretly filling their slimfast shake containers with liquid pig lard or wearing obscenely short skirts to lunches with male partners. So I learned my lesson the hard way: when in Rome, watch incredibly shallow cable shows to avoid behind-your-back verbal floggings from overzealous female coworkers. Or just keep your mouth shut.