Sex and the City is based on Candace Bushnell's provocative
bestselling book. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw,
a self-described "sexual anthropologist," who writes "Sex and the
City," a newspaper column that chronicles the state of sexual
affairs of Manhattanites in this "age of un-innocence." Her
"posse," including nice girl Charlotte (Kristin Davis),
hard-edged Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and party girl Samantha (Kim
Cattrall)--not to mention her own tumultuous love life--gives
Carrie plenty of column fodder. Over the course of the first
season's 12 episodes, the most prominent dramatic arc concerns
Carrie, who goes from turning the tables on "toxic bachelors" by
having "sex like a man" to wanting to join the ranks of "the
monogamists" with the elusive Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Meanwhile,
Miranda, Cynthia, and Samantha have their own dating woes. The
second season builds on the foundation of the first season with
plot arcs that are both hilarious and heartfelt, taking the show
from breakout hit to true pop-culture phenomenon. Relationship
epiphanies coexist happily alongside farcical plots and zingy
one-liners, resulting in emotionally satisfying episodes that
feature the sharp kind of character-defining dialogue that seems
to have disappeared from the rest of TV long ago. When last we
left the NYC gals, Carrie had just broken up with a
commitment-phobic Mr. Big, but fans of Noth's
seductive-yet-distant rake didn't have to wait long until he was
back in the picture, as he and Carrie tried to make another go of
it. Their relationship evolution, from reunion to second breakup,
provides the core of the second season. Among other adventures,
Charlotte puzzles over whether one of her beaus was
"gay-straight" or "straight-gay"; Miranda tries to date a guy who
insists on having sex only in places where they might get caught;
and Samantha copes with dates who range from, um, not big enough
to far too big--with numerous stops in between.
The third season was the charm, as the series earned its first
Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series to go along with its Golden
Globes for Best Comedy Series and Best Actress (Parker). One of
this season's two principal story arcs concerned hess-in-love
Charlotte and her pursuit of a husband; enter (if only...) Kyle
McLachlan as the unfortunately impotent Trey. Meanwhile, Carrie
has a brief but memorable fling with a politician who's golden,
but not in the way she anticipated. She then sabotages her
too-good-to-be-true relationship with furniture designer Aidan
(John Corbett) by having an affair with Mr. Big, who himself has
gotten married. Like I Love Lucy, the series benefited from a
brief change of scenery with a three-episode jaunt to Los
Angeles, where Carrie and company encountered, among others,
Matthew McConaughey, Vince Vaughn, Hugh Hefner, and Sarah
Michelle Gellar.
The fourth season is just as smart and sexy as ever, mixing
caustic adult wit and sharply observed situation comedy on the
mean streets of Manhattan, though this time the quartet of
singleton city girls must endure even tougher combat in the
unending war of love, sex, and shopping. Carrie finally seems to
have found her ideal life partner when she is reunited with
handsome craftsman Aidan. But can their relationship survive
trial by cohabitation? Meanwhile Charlotte seems to have both her
dream Park Avenue apartment and a solution to her marital
problems with Trey. But when the subject of babies comes up,
everything starts to unravel for her, too. It's not just
Charlotte who has baby issues either: after what seems like an
eternity of enforced sexual abstinence Miranda is horrified to
discover she's pregnant. And as for the sultry Samantha, she's on
a quest for monogamy, first with an exotic lesbian artist, then
with a philandering businessman, with whom to her utter dismay
she just might have fallen in love.
It was a short but sweet fifth season, as HBO's resident
comediennes found themselves affected by forces beyond their
control--the pregnancies of both Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia
Nixon. A truncated shooting schedule to accommodate the actresses
forced this season to be reduced to a mere eight episodes, but
they and creators forged ahead, creating a handful of episodes
that if short in content were long on emotion and laughs. Carrie
and Miranda wrestled with their solitary lifestyles, albeit with
new attachments--Miranda had new baby Brady and single
motherhood, while Carrie found herself in the world of publishing
as the author of a real-life book of her columns. Charlotte
wondered if she'd ever find another man, while Samantha finally
got rid of the one that had been vexing her far too much. If the
season as a whole felt less than the sum of its parts, those
parts were some of the best comedy in the show's history. The
season's climactic episode, "I Love a Charade," was one of the
series' best episodes ever, equally touching and funny, and
grounded the show in an emotional maturity that announced that
after all their wild travails, these women had truly grown up.
After a long wait--like the entire fifth season--Carrie is
dating again. The sixth season starts with Carrie and her sparkly
new potential, Berger (Ron Livingston), trying to leave past
relationships and hit it off, with mixed results. Meanwhile
Carrie's friends seem to be settling down, relatively speaking.
Miranda decides that her affair with TiVo cannot compete when Mr.
Perfect (Blair Underwood, at his most charming) moves into her
building. Charlotte's feelings for her "sites attract"
boyfriend (Evan Handler) deepen, but they still have a few things
to iron out. Most surprising is Samantha's hot relationship with
waiter-actor-stud Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis) taking on something
resembling love, despite Samantha's best intentions. Before the
sixth season started in the summer of 2003, a bombshell hit: it
was announced that this would be the finale. But it would be a
long season, and these 12 episodes the for the final
8 airing the following winter. These dozen episodes illustrate
the maturity of the show: there's not a bad one in the bunch, and
the show is still flat-out funny. The comedy blends serious
points of how we perceive singles, couples, and parents (and the
gifts we lavish on the latter two). Carrie's method of
celebrating her singlehood is just another gem in this treasure
of a series.
With the last eight episodes of the sixth season, HBO's grand
sitcom concluded, leaving untold numbers of women--and many
men--feeling deprived. The six-year series certainly did not
outlast its welcome; the final season is some of the best TV had
to offer in 2004. In many ways, the eight episodes served as a
single finale, with all four characters approaching a kind of
destiny and happiness, the theme of this last half-season (which
aired weeks after the first half). Carrie continues her romance
with Russian artist (Mikhail Baryshnikov), a flippantly arrogant
man who's been around the block, but able to supply Carrie's
needed desire for magic. Miranda has settled down with Steve
(David Eigenberg), but there is more that will change with her,
including her address. Charlotte continues to make baby plans now
that the husband slot is filled quite nicely (Evan Handler).
Going down the final stretch--and Samantha's cancer--gives the
series a more serious tone, but there's always a jab to tickle
the funny : Miranda's awkwardness with happiness, Charlotte's
latest passion, Carrie typing someplace new, and Samantha getting
into Paris Hilton territory. Like any series winding down, there
is a wedding, a baby, old faces popping up, and some star-ladened
new ones. In the final two-part episode, "An American in Paris,"
Carrie faces her romantic destiny, but also solidifies herself as
a fashion icon, an Audrey Hepburn for 21st-century television. In
the penultimate episode, she asks her friends an emotional
question: "What if I never met you?" Certainly fans can ask of
themselves the same question and reminisce how much better TV
became since they first tuned in these four women of the
City.--Donald Liebenson and Doug Thomas