Sex and the City

angielahlah

angielahlah

Member
Jul 11, 2006
49
0
#1
Hello gals!

So i need some help - i'm currently writing my thesis on Sex and the City - and there's something i can't quite put my finger on. First let me start by saying i just LOVE this show - but something happens in seasons 5 and 6 which i believe are the weakest seasons of the series. (my favorite is season 4) Does any one else feel this way? I can't pinpoint why i didn't really like that latter 2 seasons...

anyone care to chime in?
thanks in advance!
 
#2
Because Big is out of the picture?? Aiden's not around? lol

Season six is very different from the previous seasons because the girls have changed so much, their lives are different. Charlotte is with Harry and trying to adopt, Miranda moved to Queens with Steve, Carrie gets with Petrovsky..who we don't like, Samantha has cancer and is dating the same (hot) man. :smile:
 
#3
My perspective is going to be a little different, because we never saw it when it was on TV. It was only very recently that we got the DVDs from Blockbuster and watched them one after the other, in sequence.

I think that the last couple of seasons were subject to the same phenomenon that always occurs when TV shows become extremely popular.

By the 5th season, the show had left popular waay in the dust, and become so iconic, such a convenient standard cultural reference point that I find myself using the show to make points or concepts more accessible!

But as you will have noticed with all shows that even approach such dizzying heights, (there are none that have surpassed it, to my knowledge, Friends may be close), anyway, there is a sort of, well, I call it "cartooonization" that takes place.

Whatever elements appealed most to the public, for instance on some sitcoms it will be a phrase or word or even facial expression used by a character, will transition from an occasional thing to something that is constantly repeated. If the character had slightly big hair in seasons one and two, and becomes wildly popular, you can count on that hair being a caricature of itself in season 3.

With Sex and the City, one of the things that was most evident in the last two seasons was the budget! The girls were all dressed in fancier clothes. In fact, the actor who played Steve, forgive me for not remembering his name, was quoted as saying that the budget for each girl's clothing was around $5000 per episode, while the figure for the men was $53.

So while the girls always represented a relatively affluent socio-economic group, by the fifth season, it looked like they had all suddenly come into sizeable inheritances :smile:

Also, the last two seasons, in my view, moved well into the cartoonization phase in terms of character development, though much of the changes that we saw the girls undergo were done very well, and were in fact, as realistic as I guess anything in that show was.

But I found myself yelling at Carrie a lot more the last two seasons, so I guess they were doing something right, cartoonization and all!

For a very classic and hm, cartoonized example of cartoonization currently taking place, go over to the Food Channel and note the difference between the older episodes of Paula Deen's cooking show in comparison to the new "Paula's Party!"

To return to Sex and the City, I can tell you that through every season, the thing that kept Mr Puff and I in stitches - and shoving the next DVD in and planning the show into our Lounging time, was that we both could totally identify with everything that the characters went through.

It reminded us so much of experiences of ourselves and people around us - when we were 14.
:biggrin:
 
#4
I agree, I think the girls have changed so much during the last two seasons.

Usually, when a show is cancelled, people look for the exact moment when a show 'jumps the shark.'

Do you think Sex and the City jumped the shark at all? If so, when?

The phrase refers to an episode of Happy Days when the Fonz literally jumps a shark on water skis. The phrase refers to a point where the show has passed its peak or has introduced plot twists that don't make sense in terms of everything that has preceded them. After a show has jumped the shark, fans can't relate to the show anymore. Too many changes have been made for the show to keep its original charm.


I could follow what went on in Charlotte's, Miranda's and Samantha's lives. And while the other girls' lives went on, Carrie's stayed the same. She's still with Big. It was almost like you wanted something else to happen to Carrie (she gets a book deal, or something, you know?) but it doesn't.
 
#5
Thank you caitlin! You said it much better than I could. The other girls all seem to grow up a bit, get smarter, and Carrie stays the same airhead as she ever was, and this is why both Mr Puff and I yelled at her so much those last 2 seasons.

I haven't read the book, maybe that was Miss Candace's point - she has called it a semi-autobiographical work, so maybe people who have read the book can tell us if Carrie is as um, ok, stupid, in the book as in the series, and if all that is simply the author saying that she took longer to grow up than her friends did!

And again, I am only speculating because I have not read the book, and hope that people who will will share their views, but I imagine that the series may have gone on beyond the book, just because it was a series, became unprecedentedly popular, so they had to just keep going, and that was the direction they kept going in.

The end sort of reminded me of Majid Majidi - and other directors influenced by him, of just sort of leaving the ending up to the viewer. We never know whether either Carrie, Big, or both actually undergo complete personality revisions and live happily ever after, with each other or anybody else, or whether they both spend the rest of their lives being 14.
 
#6
OMG is this telephathic or something, I was thinking about his last night? AND THE PHRASE JUMPED THE SHARK ENTERED MY HEAD!!!

I think the change actally began in series 4 but it was subtle. One by one, the girls stopped being carefree New York thirty somethings.

Charlotte got married, then split up. She tried to get back in the dating scene but it didn't happen; eventually she married Harry. The thing about the Charlotte story was that she was always looking for the perfect husband. and that was it: the chase was over, she became the park avenue princess. the onyl was to keep the storyline going was to break it all up and throw her back in the dating game.

Miranda got pregnanant. It wasn't so much motherhood that chanhed her, but the fact that she stopped being the sassy, sarcastic lawyer. Of all the men she dumped in earlier epidoses, she settles with the unambitious bar tender who's barely as tall as her and makes a fraction of her salary. From series 5, she begins to fade into the back.

Sam holds on for as long a she can but her peak came with Maria, her first skirmish with relationships. Then there's Richard who breaks her heart and she settles with Smith. Having said all this, Samantha's story works because it's plausible. She evolves little but never appears to lose her style and character. Marriage, babies or even co-habiting ever came into the questions. It was still, PR, sex and fashion.


carrie of course, never appeared to settle down on screen. she certainly got older and gained a bit of sphistication, but there was sitll the will-they-won't they (with both BIg and Petrovsky) charade that was only revealled at the end. Even then, the only thing we saw was that Big was on his way back to NYC?

So did SATC jump the shark? Well if they did, it was perhaps when charlotte got married. Because one by one they began to settle.

Or perhaps it jumped right when they began to launch the second season. when they moved away from Candace Bushnell's book and began to evolve the characters.

or my third idea (which I belive more than others) is that it jumped in the middle of series 4, where it just wasn't about SEX or THE CITY. By the city, I mean new fads, partying, new fashions, new men on the horizon etc.

I loved every episode of SATC but I truly belive it changed from being a comedy of 4 single gals in NY to a soap about 4 friends who happened to live NY.
 
#7
I didn't get the sense that any of them settled, really. On the contrary, they all seemed to me to put up very heartfelt if useless fights when they finally did fall in love. Samantha discovered that Richard was not functional, and although the vodka hunk is not my type, from what I can gather he is considered pretty hot, not a settlee.

Miranda did her best to become involved with other people, and found that she was unable to do so because she was, in fact, in love with Steve, who did not conform to the notion she had of the man she would fall in love with. I can relate. I had always planned to fall in love with a plastic surgeon. I thought it would be a very sensible and forward-thinking thing to do. But then I met Mr Puff, and there went my plan!

And Charlotte was trying to learn to have a no-strings, purely sexual relationship with Harry. I don't think either of them were particularly pleased about falling in love with each other, so I guess they settled in the sense that they acknowledged there wasn't anything they could do about it.

Carrie did make the attempt to settle, I think, with Aidan, but sorry for the cliche, her heart wasn't in it, and Aidan did not want to participate in anybody's settling, and I never liked him much from the beginning because he essentially told her he wouldn't like her if she continued to smoke.

I can understand if someone feels very strongly about smoking, but why even go out with someone who smokes, if that is the case?
 
#8
hi,

I've just realised that "settle" has two reasons. I wasn't thinking of "settling for second best" but rather "settling down in a good relationship with someone" :smile:
 
#10
ShimmaPuff said:
So I typed all that and made such good arguments because I didn't realize you just left out a preposition. :roflmfao:
Click to expand...

never mind.

didn't get the sense that any of them settled
Click to expand...

what I meant is that the girls went from being single (or dating various guys) to havving long term relationship. Even if Carrie and Samantha split up the days after the finale.Mirianda and Char chose to get married, and I'm imagine, planned to say married :smile: that was my point, anyway.

Carrie did make the attempt to settle, I think, with Aidan, but sorry for the cliche, her heart wasn't in it, and Aidan did not want to participate in anybody's settling, and I never liked him much from the beginning because he essentially told her he wouldn't like her if she continued to smoke.
Click to expand...
I dont under stand this part, Aiden was the one who proposed? and then badgered her to set a date. :shrugs:
 
#11
i loved seasons 3 & 4. season 5 was my least favorite - i didn't like berger at all. season 6 part 1 was ok but i loved season 6 part 2. i thought part 2 was so emotional miranda got married and moved to brooklyn, samantha survived breast cancer, charlotte got her baby.. everyone grew up everyone moved on except carrie. which is what miranda wanted. i wish carrie got married to someone or moved in with big something...
 
#15
I don't think Sex and the City jumped the shark. I just think that while the others settled down in their lives, Carrie's life had too many unanswered questions.

At least with shows like That '70s Show, you finish watching the series finale secure in the knowledge that the characters have changed and they're moving on with their lives. All the loose ends have been tied up. (We still don't know Fez's real name or what country he came from, but those things aren't essential to the plot. Everyone knows him as Fez the foreign guy. It's almost like something would be ruined if we knew those things.)

Eric comes back to Donna. Fez and Jackie get together. Red gives Hyde back all the rent money Hyde has paid over the years. Kelso was living in Chicago.
 
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