We all know that Sex and the City didn’t only have four main characters (Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and the only good one, Miranda); it had five. And the fifth? Why, it was none other than New York City, of course.
Likewise, Freeform’s perfectly deranged Cosmpolitan-inspired soapy dramedy The Bold Type may appear at first glance to only have three leads: Kat, Sutton, and Jane. But in reality, a fourth main character has taken center stage in the show’s third season: The Dot Com.
And I love it.
The show traces the three female protagonists’s lives at Scarlet, a fictional Cosmo-esque magazine, and the third season opens with the worst thing you could ever possibly imagine happening: a MAN (named Patrick) joins the staff of Scarlet as its digital director … and he can’t stop talking about “The Dot Com.”
I did not do an actual count, so please do not quote me on this, but in my estimation the phrase “The Dot Com” is uttered more than any other phrase on the program. “I don’t write for The Dot Com,” Jane proudly professes in one episode, for instance. But when she wants to write about her egg freezing for the print magazine, Patrick sternly reminds her, “Remember: you write for The Dot Com.” Burn. “I really want this for The Dot Com,” he says, further stabbing the metaphorical Dot Com dagger into her heart.
In fairness, they do sometimes call it “digital,” but Patrick references The Dot Com so many times that my esteemed colleague Madison Malone Kircher even tweeted:
At first, I felt just like Madison; I was annoyed that these media employees could not say “website” or “web” or “site” or “blog” or any other frequently used phrase to refer to a digital publication like the one where I work (the Cut); but then a sort of Stockholm Syndrome kicked in, if you will. Instead of being frustrated that they went out of their way to use a phrase that literally no one in media uses to describe a digital publication, I started to appreciate its madness. The Bold Type isn’t a show about logic; it’s a program where they solve the problem of gun control by having Sutton’s weapon be turned into jewelry (or a vase), and where Jane’s former doctor love interest with an American accent suddenly developed an Australian accent out of nowhere, with no explanation. The show’s absurdity is part of its magic.
Now, I love The Dot Com more than anything else in my life. Every time I hear it, a chill of excitement runs down my back. I cannot believe my luck that I live in a world where a TV show refers to a website as The Dot Com; in tribute, I’m thinking of referring to the Cut as The Dot Com. Gmail as The Dot Com. Literally every other website on the internet as The Dot Com.
And just like that, The Dot Com has become my favorite part of this inane show I love so much, and I can’t wait for its character arc this season.
