Oh, what the hell,

Ring my bell,

Let’s go to the Dells,

Our relationship will gel.

I like your smell,

You’re really swell . . . .

—Crow T. Robot

For real, though, she’s pretty swell. It isn’t just that she not merely puts up with but actively seems pleased and amused by those of us who always think of her with puppets in the corner first, though I do love that about her. She’s an ambassador for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. She’s open about her life, including debilitating insomnia and choosing not to have children. She’s one of the last people to have a contract at Universal under the old studio system, because she is older than I ever remember she is. Has she had work? Who cares?

Did I first see her with puppets in the corner? Probably not. After all, she did an episode of Columbo, and it’s likely I saw that in reruns first. Possibly even Quincy (annoyingly not available streaming), because I remember that my mom watched Quincy. However, I can’t think of anything else that I definitely saw first. (I still haven’t seen Mannequin all the way through.) City Limits wasn’t the first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 we saw; my sister’s then-boyfriend got us into it with I want to say The Giant Gila Monster, but City Limits was right after, and my sister and I latched onto references to it.

The next year, she and I were followed by people from it. Robby Benson was in the production of Our Town that my English class watched the next year. Meanwhile, my sister watched Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, featuring Cattrall. Somewhere, I still have the letters she wrote me referencing City Limits, including the line “Kim Cattrall in under an hour.” I like Kim Cattrall under her own merits, but I also like her for how much she reminds me of happy times with Elaine.

Unlike most white women of my generation, Sex and the City never did anything for me. Which always disappointed me, because it’s got a heck of a cast. Between Kim Cattrall and Kyle MacLachlan, I really wanted to enjoy it. I’d really like for Cattrall and MacLachlan to do something good together—maybe a romantic comedy, because they’re both a lot funnier than they’re given credit for. Something where they regularly interact. Maybe a show where they are running a bookstore or something. I can come up with a lot of ideas, and she wouldn’t have to deal with Sarah Jessica Parker in any of them.

I watched her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, and it struck me that her long-lost relatives had to recognize her. If Kim Cattrall showed up on my doorstep and told me that we were some sort of cousins, my first reaction would be, “Holy crap! You’re Kim Cattrall!” I decided while watching this that they’d edited that kind of thing out of it and mostly what we’re seeing is staged instances of Cattrall knocking on people’s doors to ask about family history. Which doesn’t make her family history any less fascinating and any less depressing. Still, holy crap, she’s Kim Cattrall.

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