Sex and the City

Sex and the City is an American cable television program based on the book of the same name. It was originally broadcast on the HBO network from 1998 until 2004. Set in New York City, the show focuses on the sex lives of four female best friends, three of whom are in their mid-to-late thirties, and one of whom, Samantha, is in her forties. A sitcom with soap opera elements, the show often tackled socially relevant issues, such as the status of women in society. Sex and the City premiered on June 6, 1998, and the last original episode aired on February 22, 2004.

Overview

Carrie Bradshaw and her three best girlfriends navigate the rocky terrain of being a single, sexually active woman in the new millennium. The show became famous for shooting scenes on the streets and in the bars, restaurants and clubs of New York City, while pushing the envelope of fashion and shattering sexual taboos.

Receiving consistent critical and popular acclaim, it was based on the book that was compiled from the New York Observer column "Sex and the City" by Candace Bushnell. The first season of the show is a free adaptation of its source material, but from the second season on, it took on a life of its own and went farther than the book ever could. Each episode in season one featured a short montage of interviews that Carrie supposedly conducted while researching her column. These continued through season two, then were phased out.

Season one of Sex and the City aired on HBO from June to August 1998. Season two was broadcast from June until October 1999. Season three aired from June until October 2000. Season four was broadcast in two parts: from June until August 2001, and then in January and February 2002. Season five, truncated due to Parker's pregnancy, aired on HBO during the summer of 2002. The twenty episodes of the final season, season six, aired in two parts: from June until September 2003 and during January and February 2004.

Main characters

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the literal voice of the show as each episode is structured around her train of thought while writing her weekly column, "Sex and the City" for the fictitious newspaper, The New York Star. A member of the New York glitterati, she is a club/bar/restaurant staple who is known for her unique fashion sense; violently yoking together various styles into one outfit (it is not uncommon for her to pair inexpensive vintage pieces with high-end couture). 

A self proclaimed shoe fetishist, she focuses most of her attention, and bank account, on designer footwear, primarily Manolo Blahniks. (Though she has been known to wear Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo as well.) Often meeting "her credit card limit" in one shopping trip, it is unclear how the modest income of a newspaper columnist could support such an addiction, but in later seasons, her essays are collected as a book and she begins taking assignments from Vogue and New York Magazine. 

Another source of her New York pride is her apartment, a one-bedroom place in an Upper East Side brownstone, it is her home for the entire run of the series, which she purchases in the fourth season. Her blemishes include having had an abortion after a one-night stand (ten years prior to the show's continuity) and an affair with a married Mr. Big during her relationship with Aidan. Defining statement: "I like my money right where I can see it - hanging in my closet."

Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is an art dealer with a Connecticut blue-blooded upbringing. She is the most conservative and traditional of the group, the one who places the most emphasis on emotional love as opposed to lust, and is always searching for her "knight in shining armor". 

Often scoffing at the lewder, more libertine antics that the show presents (primarily in Samantha), she has been known to make concessions (while married) that even surprise her sexually freer girlfriends (such as dirty talk, oral sex in public and "tookus-lingus"). She gives up her career shortly after her first marriage and is devastated to learn that it will be incredibly difficult for her to have a baby. 

She receives a Park Avenue apartment in the divorce settlement, which becomes her home for the remainder of the series (prior to her first marriage she resided at 275 Central Park West, apt. 14B) even after re-marrying her less than perfect, but good hearted, divorce lawyer, Harry Goldenblatt (after converting to Judaism). She is a graduate of Smith College. Defining statement: "I've been dating since I was fifteen, I'm exhausted. Where is he!?"

Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) is a career-minded lawyer with extremely cynical views on relationships and men. A Harvard University graduate from Philadelphia, she is Carrie's best friend, confidante, and voice of reason. In the early seasons, she is portrayed as masculine and borderline misandric, but this image softens over the years, particularly after becoming pregnant by her on again-off again boyfriend, Steve Brady. 

Of the four women, she is the first to purchase an apartment (and indicator of her success); a one-bedroom place on the Upper West Side (250 West 85th Street, apt. 4F). In the final season, Miranda and Steve marry and relocate to Brooklyn in order to make room for their growing family. Defining statement: "I can't have a baby. I could barely find time to schedule this abortion." 

Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), the oldest and most promiscuous of the group, she is an independent publicist whose relationship pattern could be considered stereotypically masculine. A seductress who avoids emotional involvement at all costs while satisfying every possible carnal desire imagineable. She believes that she has had "hundreds" of soulmates and insists that her sexual partners leave "an hour after I climax". 

In the third season she moves from her full service Upper East Side apartment to an expensive loft in the then-burgeoning Meatpacking District. Over the course of the show, she does have a handful of real relationships. Defining statement: "Fuck me badly once, shame on you. Fuck me badly twice, shame on me."

Criticism

Some commentators have criticized the television show as promoting immorality by encouraging a hedonistic lifestyle and treating women as sexual objects. Additionally, they argued that it is at times mere pornography with a superficial plot. The characters are also wealthy and unabashedly elitist, which raises further questions about the morality of the show.

Others claim in response that Sex and the City is an attempt to realistically – yet artistically – portray sexual behavior in the urban United States. Others have noted that the show tends to portray its main characters as shallow and superficial.

When Sex and the City was run in syndication on TBS, some viewers organized boycotts of the station, arguing that this would put the program within access of young children.

Some commentators criticized Sex and the City's distorted presentation of female sexuality, claiming the sexuality is more akin to that of the allegedly gay, male writers of the show. The frequent obsession with penis size by one character is taken to be atypical of women and more typical of a phallocentric male focus. Others have charged that the ridiculing of men with small penises is wrong, contributing to body issues for men similar to that of young women over their weight or breast size. 

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