Sex, the city and the price of freedom

In the latest whirling, surprising season of "Sex and the City," our four heroines get what they (think they) want.

By Joyce Millman

Aug. 21, 2001 | HBO's "Sex and the City" ended its summer season Aug. 12 with a fairy-tale beginning -- Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the independent-minded, 35-year-old sex columnist, accepted a marriage proposal, complete with a substantial diamond, from her nouveau-hippie furniture-making beau, Aidan (John Corbett). (The series is on hiatus until January, when it returns with six more episodes.)

Like all fairy tales, this one is fraught with dark psychological underpinnings. Carrie said yes to Aidan, even though the thought of such a commitment literally made her vomit. And even though she secretly got a look at the ring Aidan had planned to surprise her with and dismally informed her girlfriends that any man who would expect her to wear a tacky pear-shaped rock is clearly not the man for her. So why did Carrie say yes?

Well, did you really expect her to refuse? "Sex and the City" has always been an astute little fable about the lies otherwise intelligent women live by, the bad choices they make as they take advantage of the post-feminist freedom to pursue "dangerous emotions" (as writer Steve Vineberg so aptly put it in a recent New York Times piece about the show).

This season (its fourth), "Sex and the City" retained its cocktail-fizzy dialogue, its fabulous fashions, its naughty bedroom scenes and its too-true slices of upscale New York life. But the show has also toughened up and tackled the implications and consequences of the choices its characters make. "Sex and the City" is still fizzy and funny. But it has become unsettling and, sometimes, infuriating, as it mercilessly homes in on the dirty emotional secrets of modern, post-feminist women's lives. Watching the characters obsess over finding Mr. Right or worry that they'll never have babies, you don't know whether to laugh, because it's all so embarrassingly retro, or cry, because you know women exactly like them.

Charlotte (Kristin Davis), the most traditional of the four friends and the first one to score a husband, is living a society marriage nightmare. First, her great catch, Dr. Trey MacDougall (played by Kyle MacLachlan with his old "Twin Peaks" combination of Eagle Scout earnestness and raving kinkiness), turns out to be impotent. Then, when he finally gets the wind back in his sails, Charlotte, envious of new mothers of her age and social standing, becomes obsessed with having a baby. Her inability to conceive only makes her that much more determined to succeed, by any means. The depressing moral of the Charlotte story is that women (some, anyway) continue to approach marriage and child-raising as a competitive sport -- after "winning" the race for a husband, it's on to the next grueling test of female mettle, the momathon.

Then there's ambitious public relations executive Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the most cartoonish character on the show, who revels in living her life like a man, having sex for pleasure with no strings attached. But this season, her cartoon bubble burst (momentarily, anyway) when she almost lost a big job because of a past sexual indiscretion. She had to face the fact that even though she went after sex like a man, she could still get screwed like a woman in the business world.

Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), the workaholic attorney, had her stark moment of truth this season, too. Poor Miranda; it's not enough that she always gets the most unflattering hair styles and clothes on the show -- her character, as written, is unflattering, too. She's a stereotype of a single career woman, a knee-jerk feminist and a klutzy magnet for loser guys. Thankfully, Nixon plays Miranda with fascinating complexity; she gives her a credible vulnerability under the superwoman armor, and always manages to salvage some dignity out of the ludicrous situations the writers put her in (flummoxed by a date who wants to rim her, being rescued by Aidan as she lies naked and immobile with a neck injury on the bathroom floor).

Next page: A remarkable show about abortion