I never intended to look Sex and the city. Nothing I heard about the series particularly drew me to it. My biggest exposure to it was being loosely part of conversations in which friends assigned themselves characters, like “a Miranda” or “a Carrie.” But one sleepy Friday evening my partner turned it on to watch while they cooked. Satisfied to try something new, I plopped myself down on the couch with a chocolate martini in hand.
The fact that I would have a prejudice Sex and the city is not all that surprising. In a 2013 essay for the New Yorker: Emily Nussbaum wrote about how even critics have historically excluded the show from the canon of television greats and relegated it to the TV sidelines. And his supporters were not immune. She writes: “As the show celebrated its 15th anniversary this year, we fans had trained ourselves to degrade the show to a guilty pleasure, to mock the puns, to have self-flagellating conversations about those blinders and bling- out films,” conversations that I had more or less absorbed over the years.
But after actually watching the show, Carrie’s quick tongue immediately ensnared me in her world and I couldn’t stop watching. I struggled with the toxic pressure and pull of her romance with Big, and stared at the absurdity of this portrayal of life in New York City in the ’90s and ’00s. But more than all this, the series contained a warmth that surprised me. Viewing the series today – where the premise of a woman being single and having sex in her 30s is ostensibly less provocative – removes any sort of ‘shock factor’ associated with sex. What struck me instead was a story filled with the generosity and messiness of unconditional female friendships and love.
The four – you know even if you don’t know them – you don’t always get along. Miranda in particular takes issue with Carrie’s tendency to pursue a man who doesn’t treat her right, and Charlotte could be judging Samantha’s constant sexual escapades.
Image: HBO
But instead of letting these differences tear these characters apart, we watch them wade through the messiness of it together. Carrie may not listen to Miranda, but we can see the two supporting each other in other ways. In times of need, it is usually the friends who fill the “void” created by the lack of romantic partners. Ultimately, it’s clear that the relationships between these women, not the sex or romance, drive the show. I don’t care as much if Carrie ends up with Big as I do if she finds a way to see Miranda’s perspective, and vice versa. In this way, each woman reflects and bends each plot and the world around her in her own way to create a glittering diamond of a show.
This recommendation still comes with an important caveat. The series features several instances where Carrie and her friends’ blatant homophobic, transphobic, and racist actions and beliefs ruin entire storylines. (At one point I simply skipped an episode because one of the characters was too preoccupied with a bit that played up racist stereotypes to laugh.) And while we can say it was probably a “sign of the times,” the series a sensibility that suits the very limited slice of life it shows (rich white ladies living in New York).
Despite these drawbacks, I still found the show worth watching. Over the course of its six-season run, Sex and the city finds surprising depth in each of its characters. At several points, the series refuses to give many of its characters the neat, idyllic ending they might have wanted in the beginning. A character like Charlotte may want marriage and the idea of the “perfect” man, but must – more than once – reconsider what that looks like. The result is a show that feels raw and real at points, a crucial “second coming-of-age” story, except for women in their 20s and 30s who buck society’s expectations. I may have been skeptical of the series, but now, looking back on my chocolate martini, maybe my inner Carrie was just waiting to come out.
Sex and the city is now streaming on Netflix.