Metro Pulse/Pulp/The Edge of Reason

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Bridget Jones' return strikes a sour note

by Shelly Ridenour

While finger-pointing critics have been tripping over themselves anointing the "American 'Bridget Jones'" (everything from Suzanne Finnamore's black-hearted Otherwise Engaged to Melissa Bank's wonderfully smart The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, and a whole lot of already-forgotten lesser lights), I don't get it. Tell me again why a strong, independent woman with any pride and half a brain would want to see herself in a character who starts seemingly every other post-breakup journal entry with "Very black day," "V. depressed," or "Very dark state," as in The Edge of Reason, Helen Fielding's follow-up to her wildly successful first Bridget novel, Bridget Jones's Diary.

I was, admittedly, amused by the excerpts from Bridget Jones I read in magazines; I was, I guess, bemused by the actual book—the misadventures of a single career girl in the big city were cutely funny in a sit-com kind of way, more of an updated Rhoda than Caroline in the City, thank God. But anyone who either watched it the first time around or became addicted via Nick at Nite knows that Rhoda wasn't anywhere near as fun once she had a husband taking up space in her apartment. Likewise, Bridget with imagined boyfriend troubles is so silly as to be an overheard conversation at the mall food court—is he cheating? Should I call him? Should I call him back? Let's go to B. Dalton and consult the self-help books!

Suddenly, Bridget isn't cute so much as silly. I can no longer suspend my disbelief that a woman who can't get it together enough to make it to work on time, or do her laundry, or catch a flight would be dedicated enough to record her calorie/cigarette/alcohol intake each day. A carpenter hired to add on a room to her flat knocks a giant hole in the wall, then doesn't finish the job—and she doesn't do anything about it for six months?! Given a crack at a celebrity interview with Colin Firth (Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy), Bridget makes a fool of herself—asking sub-Access Hollywood questions like "Are you still going out with your girlfriend...but don't you think you'd be better off with someone who was English and more your own age?"—and then blows the deadline?! An ex who accuses her of not knowing where Germany is, is, in fact, absolutely right?!

And while Bridget continues to get tangled up in the goofy web of paranoia and flightiness she weaves for herself, it just feels like Ab Fab-lite as she travels to Thailand and winds up in jail after being unknowingly duped into drug smuggling (or is that Brokedown Palace-lite?). But where Patsy and Eddie went over the top and fell straight down into hedonistic hilarity, Bridget and Co. seem to teeter in hesitation, worrying what some man or another will think of them.

Bridget is a pop-culture nightmare, like the aforementioned Caroline in the City or Suddenly Susan; she is a Mademoiselle girl when a smart woman should be reading Bust, or even Jane; she is the novel equivalent of that horrid little Cathy cartoon, when a smart woman would be picking up Sarah Dyer's Action Girl and the work of Jessica Abel. Where is Harriet the Spy? Whatever happened to Sally J. Friedman, or Trixie Belden, strong young female characters who inspired firecracker independence in a legion of pre-teen girls now on the cusp of 30? I'm pretty sure Harriet isn't obsessing on her cell phone with a gal pal, sure that Sport's out flirting with some tramp over Cosmopolitans. She's probably fronting an all-girl emo band with her lover, or running a wildly successful Web design company while Sport stays at home raising the kid—whereever she is, I wish she'd come back to the page and kick the asses of all these wimpy girls.

Fielding's sequel has been criticized as one-note. But perhaps it's a matter of get me once, shame on you; get me twice, shame on me. In other words, I am a resolutely single, straight, late-twentysomething who doesn't want to be Bridget Jones. I don't want to identify with Bridget Jones. I am horrified that I recognize even parts of my life (i.e., checking my messages too frequently) in these blithering, dithering "diary" pages. I don't want to know her, either; if a friend tried to talk me out of returning a love interest's phone call by quoting John Gray, I think I know which one of them would be cut from my life quicker.

And, maybe, in that way Bridget is an inspiration to identify with. Monday, March 27—Weight: Who knows?, Calories: Who cares?, Goals: Don't waste time reading silly sequels.