It was a familiar scene: a dimly-lit living room packed with friends, friends-of-friends and random, television-less acquaintances, all gathered together for the small-screen event of the year. Energized by hours of pre-game hype, the crowd was beginning to get restless. Some gnawed anxiously on nachos and cookies, while others debated the outcome, making predictions and reminiscing about seasons past. Months, even years worth of hopes and dreams hung in the balance as we awaited the kickoff. Suddenly, the TV went black and the fans fell silent, grappling for each others’ hands.
“It’s like our Superbowl,” someone whispered, as the parental warning flashed up on screen. Despite the promise of impending nudity, this was not, in fact, the Superbowl – at least not in the traditional sense. The living room congregation, entirely made up of females, was gathered together for the series finale of “Sex and the City.” Rather than rooting for the home team, we were cheering for Charlotte, Samantha, Miranda and Carrie. Many of us had been watching religiously (or as religiously as possible without direct access to HBO) since the show’s inception in 1998, and thus had as much invested in its outcome as that of any major sports event. While the characters touched us on a multitude of levels, they were most effective because they were real – because we couldn’t relate to them as much as we could, because we hated them as much as we loved them, because we saw a little bit of ourselves in each of them. Sunday marked a momentous evening for women and gay men across America, and much like die-hard Patriots fans, we got everything that we wanted.*
When we first met Charlotte York (Kristen Davis), she was the epitome of über-femininity. As an uptown art dealer, she was classy, well-bred and entirely obsessed with finding a husband. For many of us, she was too counter-feminist, too naïve, and not nearly as much fun as her bawdy girlfriends. But over time, Charlotte grew on me. I began to admire her grace and her elegant, fifties-inspired style. Over the course of the show, Charlotte endured a divorce, infertility, religious conversion and, finally, the adoption process – and through it all, remained optimistic. She taught us many of the show’s most important lessons: that it takes exactly one half the span of a relationship to get over it, that an Episcopalian beauty can find true happiness with a bald, hairy Jewish man, and, of course, that “nobody wants to marry up-the-butt girl.” Charlotte reflected the traditional, feminine side that many of us tend to neglect, and therefore gave us a precious gift. And so, when we learned on Sunday that she would be given her long-awaited precious gift – a child – we cried with her.
At the opposite pole, Samantha Jones (Kim Catrall) was the only character to consistently honor the pact made in Episode 1: to have sex like men. From the beginning, she was sexy, confident and unashamed of her insatiable sex drive. While many television shows have featured stereotypical vixens, “Sex and the City” was the first to delve inside such a character. Samantha was certainly shocking, but there was more to her – she was self-sufficient, yet sympathetic and vulnerable. We watched her engage in casual sex, but we also watched her fall deeply in love with two men. Samantha represented every woman’s internal sex goddess, while simultaneously reminding us that all women – even goddesses – can be hurt. During the final season of the show, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Instead of giving up, Samantha inspired her girlfriends and viewers alike with fabulous wigs, a fresh attitude and a gorgeous young boyfriend – and in the final episode, that gorgeous boyfriend flew halfway across the world to tell her that he loved her. In that moment, Samantha’s initial question was answered – sure, you can have sex like a man, but you can also make love like a woman.
Like Samantha, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) was presented as an independent, self-possessed career woman; she reflected the fiercely intelligent feminist in all of us. She was a successful lawyer, wealthy and fantastically witty – but as she reminded us, “it’s all fun and games until somebody has a child.” It was Miranda, and not the maternal Charlotte, who became pregnant in Season 4. Through her relationship with her son, both before and after his birth, we learned that anyone – even a headstrong workaholic – can be a good mother, as long as they have love and a devoted housekeeper. Miranda’s storyline touched me perhaps most deeply in the final episode. Through her generous care of her ailing mother-in-law, we saw that Miranda had finally learned how to love unselfishly. As Magda, the aforementioned devoted housekeeper told her, “what you did today…that was love.”
Miranda’s intelligence and sass, Samantha’s sensuality and Charlotte’s romantic nature – all of these fundamental female traits were unified in Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). Carrie’s work as a columnist provided the infrastructure of the show; each episode featured her sitting at her computer, attempting to answer a juicy question in her column (e.g., “Can women have sex like men?,” “How much does a father figure figure?,” and my personal favorite, “Are we sluts?”). For many viewers, Carrie was the most entertaining and yet the most frustrating character to watch. She was smart, sexy and funny; she had a style all her own and she never seemed to miss a party. She dated The New Yankee, Mr. Big, the perfect Aidan and a bevy of other beautiful men. And yet, at certain points, we were disappointed in her. She cheated on Aidan, she let her friends down on occasion, and she was flagrantly irresponsible with money. But, in the final episode, that was somehow all forgotten – she was spunky, stylish Carrie again, wearing a dress that we weren’t so sure about, and, as usual, having trouble with men. And we were rooting for her. Despite everything that had happened in the past, we wanted Big to show up in Paris and remove her from the clutches of “The Russian” – and he did. Through this ending, we learned “Sex and the City’s” final lesson: others may love you, be they friends, boyfriends or viewers, but in the end, what truly matters is “the love that you have for yourself.”
* If you have not seen the final episode of “Sex and the City,” and don’t want the ending spoiled for you, don’t read past the second paragraph.
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