Sex and the City
セックス・アンド・ザ・シティ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Four women, one column, and the sentence 'I couldn't help but wonder'; still the grammar of every brunch conversation about sex.
Carrie Bradshaw writes a weekly column about sex and relationships for a New York newspaper, and each episode is framed by the question she is typing. Her three closest friends supply much of the material: Samantha Jones, a public relations executive who wants sex without romance; Charlotte York, a gallery manager with traditional hopes of marriage; and Miranda Hobbes, a lawyer sceptical of both. Carrie falls for a rich, elusive businessman she calls Mr. Big, who will not commit. He moves to Paris and comes back engaged to a much younger woman, Natasha. In the third season Carrie, now with Aidan Shaw, a gentle furniture designer, has an affair with Big behind Natasha's back and confesses it; she and Aidan reconcile, he proposes, and the engagement comes apart over her unresolved feelings for Big.
Charlotte marries Trey MacDougal, a doctor from an old-money family, and his impotence and domineering mother end the marriage. She falls in love with her divorce lawyer, Harry Goldenblatt, converts to Judaism to marry him, suffers a miscarriage, and they adopt a baby girl, Lily, from China. Miranda's on-and-off relationship with a bartender, Steve Brady, gives her a son, Brady, whom she first raises alone; she marries Steve in a community garden, moves reluctantly to Brooklyn and, in the final season, takes in his mother, who has dementia, bathing her on one of her worst days. Samantha, after a relationship with a woman and another with a hotelier who cheats on her, falls for Smith Jerrod, a much younger waiter and actor whose career she builds. When she is diagnosed with breast cancer, he shaves his head in solidarity as she loses her hair to chemotherapy.
In the sixth and final season Carrie leaves New York for Paris with Aleksandr Petrovsky, a celebrated Russian artist, over Miranda's doubts. There she is lonely and ignored, and after an argument in which he accidentally strikes her, she leaves him. Big, who has come to Paris to find her, tells her she is the one, and they fly back to New York together. Smith flies home from a film shoot to tell Samantha he loves her, and she tells him he has meant more to her than any man she has ever known. In the last episode Big's first name, never spoken in six seasons, is finally revealed: John.
Starring
Sarah Jessica Parkeras Carrie Bradshaw
A New York columnist who writes about sex and love and keeps returning to the one man who will not commit.
Carrie Bradshaw’s story
Carrie writes her column out of her own dates and her friends' confidences, and falls for the man she calls Mr. Big. He will not commit, moves to Paris and comes back engaged to Natasha. While dating Aidan, a furniture designer who gets her to quit smoking, she has an affair with the now-married Big and confesses it; Aidan takes her back and proposes, and her reluctance ends the engagement. Berger, a novelist, leaves her with a note on a Post-it. Over Miranda's doubts she follows the Russian artist Aleksandr Petrovsky to Paris, finds herself alone there and, after an argument in which he accidentally strikes her, leaves him. Big, who has come to find her, tells her she is the one; she flies home with him, and learns that his first name is John.
Kim Cattrallas Samantha Jones
A public relations executive, the oldest and most sexually confident of the four, who wants sex on her own terms.
Samantha Jones’s story
Samantha claims hundreds of soulmates and prefers her lovers to leave soon after sex. When she waits to sleep with James, thinking he might be the marrying kind, the sex disappoints and it ends. A serious affair with an artist, Maria, ends when Maria decides Samantha fears intimacy, and the hotelier Richard, to whom she gives her heart, cheats on her; she tries to forgive him, then leaves. She picks up a young waiter, renames him Smith Jerrod and makes him a star, and after one more night with Richard comes back to Smith, who forgives her. Diagnosed with breast cancer, she takes off her wig on stage at a benefit; Smith shaves his head for her. When he flies home to say he loves her, she tells him he has meant more to her than any other man.
Kristin Davisas Charlotte York
An art gallery manager with traditional ideals, who looks for a husband and finds love where she least expected.
Charlotte York’s story
Charlotte, a gallery manager raised in Connecticut, dates in search of a husband and keeps being disappointed. She meets Trey MacDougal, a doctor, when she falls in front of his taxi, waits for marriage, and finds on the night before the wedding that he is impotent; therapy, a kiss with the family's gardener, a separation and a brief revival follow. They try for a baby, but Trey decides he does not want children, and the marriage ends; he leaves her the Park Avenue apartment. She falls for her divorce lawyer, Harry Goldenblatt, converts to Judaism for him, pushes him to propose and is dropped, then apologises at a synagogue singles' mixer, and he proposes. They marry. She becomes pregnant and miscarries, and in the last episode they learn that they can adopt a baby girl from China.
Cynthia Nixonas Miranda Hobbes
A sharp, career-driven lawyer, sceptical of romance, who becomes a mother and marries the bartender Steve.
Miranda Hobbes’s story
Miranda meets Steve, a bartender, and breaks up with him over their different schedules and money; they move in together, but when he wants a baby and they get a puppy instead, he moves out, and she makes partner at her firm. When Steve, after surgery for testicular cancer, feels less of a man, she sleeps with him and becomes pregnant; she considers an abortion, then keeps the baby and raises their son, Brady, with Steve's help. Realising she loves him just as he starts seeing someone else, she dates Robert, until at Brady's first birthday she and Steve admit their feelings. She proposes, they marry, and she moves to Brooklyn, where they take in his mother, Mary, who is losing her memory, and Miranda bathes her on one of her worst days.
Chris Nothas Mr. Big
A wealthy, emotionally unavailable businessman whom Carrie loves across six seasons of breakups and returns.
John Corbettas Aidan Shaw
A patient, warm furniture designer who loves Carrie and whom she cannot bring herself to marry.
Why it matters
Sex and the City put four women in their thirties at the centre of prime-time talk about sex and let them do the talking: about pleasure, bad dates, single life and the pressure to marry, in the frank language television had long reserved for men. Drawn from Candace Bushnell's newspaper column, it helped HBO build its Sunday night. Its limits are part of its record. In 2018 the Guardian examined how white its New York was, and a wave of memes had already mocked jokes about bisexuality and trans women that have not aged well; the same paper also called it brilliant, daring and pioneering. What stays is its argument that friendship can be the great love of a life. It ends with Carrie back in New York with Big, but its most moving last scenes belong to the others: Miranda bathing her mother-in-law, lost in dementia; Samantha without her hair, and loved anyway.