I want to feel something when I watch a television show. I must be thoroughly entertained in all areas; humor, excitement, sadness, confusion, and anger. I want a TV show to take me on a journey; I crave to be immersed in the characters’ lives to feel just as they do. That is precisely what Sex and the City does for me.
Personally, there are a handful of reasons why this is the case, but at its core, I know others that have enjoyed this story long before I have that can say the same.
New York City, Baby!
The ’90s produced some of the best New York City-based TV shows that I know will ever be made. Shows like Friends and Seinfeld will live on, forever frozen in ’90s NYC. One of my favorite aspects of SATC is its transition into early 2000s New York. You can see this change through the fashion and language, making watching the show feel like you have traveled back in time a bit.
The show takes us all over the city, from Carrie’s apartment on the Upper East Side to the East Village for Saturday night drinks. The entirety of Manhattan was taken over by these four iconic women. As a New Yorker these last few years, I use this show as fuel and for suggestions. I have spent many nights looking up the bars, restaurants, and clubs they attended to see if I could go myself. I love that the show was actually filmed in the city, not just on a New York-style set in LA.
When I watch the show, it makes me feel so unexplainably lucky to live in the same city. SATC is an idealized, somewhat out-of-reach version of New York, but I am still in awe of seeing it through the character’s eyes. I know just how lucky I am to be watching the TV show in my living room in the same exact city. I can walk outside and experience the same streets and atmosphere. It can be very surreal.
The Fashion, Obviously!
Every single episode of this show, its accompanying movies, and the new spin-off, And Just Like That, is decked to the nines in high-end luxury fashion. Probably some of the most insane fashion to grace TV if you ask me. When I first started watching the show, I couldn’t believe that they were able to have all of these expensive pieces for just a TV series, and it has remained consistent!
This is certainly not a singular experience, but I am constantly looking up every outfit from the franchise. I will be watching and have to pause to deep-dive into the world of the internet to find the designer outfit. Of course, every time, it is way too expensive for me even to consider buying, but I love to pretend for a minute. During quarantine, I became obsessed with videos of women trying to recreate outfits from Carrie’s closet using thrifted clothes; that is something I would love to start doing.
As much as I obsess over every outfit in this show, the fashion is what stands out the most when I consider the privileged lives these four women are leading. Sure, there are other aspects, like where they live and how often they purchase expensive items, but fashion is what stands out.
All four of the main characters have very different jobs that I admire greatly, but you’re telling me a column writer in New York can afford an UES apartment, luxury clothing, and to eat out every night? That, to me, is the biggest disconnect I feel towards the show and its plot; why showcase an expensive lifestyle when if you pull back on it, it doesn’t even seem possible?
The Power of Female Friendship
With all of that being said, I think the takeaway from SATC is the beauty of female friendships. We get to watch the intricate conversations and caring moments between four unique different women. I watched this show semi-recently, so it has been so wonderful to see this bonded friendship and compare it to female relationships in my life.
I really like how they show the raw energy of friendship, not just the perfect aspects. We see them disagree and cry when they’re upset. We watch them struggle through relationships and meet men who are outright ridiculous. Every time I feel that I can’t relate to their lives, I remember that I can always understand the power of these kinds of friendships. That is why women, especially, continue to watch and rewatch this story of four extremely different women bonding over their shared love for each other.
At the end of the day, I just get so excited that a show like this exists. It really is just a show about four friends who live every day to the fullest in one of the best cities in the world, documenting their sex lives; what more could anyone want? Every time I watch the show, I think about how badly I wish I could write a New York sex column and be a real-life Carrie Bradshaw. That’s the dream.
Let us not forget this show spawned from the brilliant work of Candace Bushnell; her book Sex and the City is the driving force behind the show!
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