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Sex and the City: 

The 4th Season

A Techtite Review

For anyone who's just joining in to Techtite.com, suffice to say, I was no big fan of Sex and the City's third season (i.e., the one prior to this one). My review, as of the season finale, was one of great hesitation to believe a fourth season would be anything more than a tough sell. Well, surprisingly, the one-hour 4th-season premiere (that was actually two totally different episodes edited together) was far better than most of what last season had to offer. Well, let's just say it succeeds in upping my current rating for the series from "marginal thumbs down" to "marginal thumbs up." Well, at least that's progress, right? Such quality writing in the premiere might not have lasted all season, though at least it's still a step upward.

The opening scene of the premiere is what really gave me high hopes for the overall season. Why? Because much like the best films, it revitalizes the art of interesting conversation. The story opens with the girls musing over an engagement party's sappy invitation, labeled "Two spirits, one thought." Carrie then muses the best line of the whole premiere: "If two people have only one thought between them, something is very wrong." Later, Samantha and Carrie admit each had once slept with the potential groom...with Miranda only confessing to flashing him one of her breasts. "Just one...?" muses Carrie. "I sensed he couldn't commit," says Miranda. Later, the now-engaged man forgets Miranda's name completely, with Carrie saying he might have remembered her name, if she had showed him both breasts. Sure, it isn't Shakespeare, though this is as witty as I've seen Sex and the City in years.

Unfortunately, the first story of the season --titled "The Agony and the 'Ex'-tacy"-- was not as intriguing as the dialog snippets that held it together. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), is having her 35th birthday, and is feeling a bit old and lonely. Old...? Unless she saw Logan's Run 5 years ago, I don't get her beef about being 35. Lonely...? She hangs around with three of her best friends. The final scene just makes it worse, with her finding salvation thanks to --ugh, him again?-- Mr. Big, who drives up, hands her a bouquet of balloons...then drives away. She then concludes the story saying she's happy to have, at least, that one terrific guy in her life. Yeah; nothing like the guy who still gives you balloons, after wrecking his marriage last season. While on the subject; how cheap is the budget of this series, when Carrie's "balloon bouquet" consists of cheap balloons you can get for $1.00 a bag? If Carrie is this easy to please, why is she still single?

The rest of the season's stories were a rag-tag bunch, yet still much better than what was offered the prior summer. Charlotte, for example, wants a baby, yet biologically has only a 15% chance of naturally conceiving one. Meanwhile, Miranda --who is one of the most neurotic, non-maternal characters of the whole show-- gets pregnant without even really trying, and with similarly low chances of conceiving at all (her boyfriend, shall we say, is less one of two important body parts). The conflict this leads to, between the two female characters, was one of the finer acted stories of the season.

Other stories were still a bit implausible. With all of her alleged maturity, Carrie screams when she goes to a log cabin and sees...a squirrel? To her, squirrels are mere rats with a better tail; one of the bigger pieces of malarkey spoken this season. A similar moment had Carrie taking her boyfriend's dog for a walk, only to eventually put the dog in a diaper (apparently, she had no idea a dog's business would be so...dirty!). All this pales in comparison to the most implausible claim this season; that Carrie doesn't know how to back up her files (her computer crashed), nor does she use e-mail (she begins using it this season). Um, if she can't save a file to disk, nor e-mail it, how does her newspaper office get her latest column every week? Hmmm? Regardless, Sarah Jessica Parker continues to get Emmy nominations for this often implausible role. I guess I'm just a bit more difficult to please than the Emmys.

Speaking of being hard to please; this season continued to confirm my biggest beef with this series; a lead actress who refuses to give her part her all. With Charlotte (Kirsten Davis) daringly performing her first-ever (brief) nude scene last season, Sarah  Jessica Parker is now the only actress on the show with the myopic, diva-caliber attitude that she can be in a sex-oriented, racy, R-rated cable series, yet still offer a mere network-TV sitcom performance. The premiere alone had at least four moments which would have been much funnier, if performed by an actress willing to go that extra mile...yet Sarah's "no nudity clause" consistently reduces all potential "cable TV" moments down to network-TV banality. Example: Charlotte walks into Carrie's apartment while she's in the shower. Why is Carrie screaming in embarrassment, when she has the surprising ability to grab a dry towel to cover herself, in all of one split second, while still inside the shower? Consistently, I'm amazed at how Sarah insists on portraying Carrie as being rather "shy." Isn't this character supposed to write her own sex column every week?

As always, the under-appreciated supporting cast saved the season from G-rated monotony. This of course includes the resident vamp of the show, Samantha (Kim Cattrall), whose unabashed self-confidence, during an amateur nude modeling session, humorously left even the photographer flustered. Later plots, where Samantha dabbles in a lesbian relationship, might have had a few weaknesses in plotline, yet still were well performed. Charlotte (Davis) continues to be the believable, shy friend in the bunch. As for Miranda, her pregnancy can prove to provide intriguing plots next season, though for now it was at least funny --even if unintentionally-- to see an "overweight" Miranda take to the gym treadmills after hearing Carrie was accepted as a runway model. If anything, Miranda could stand eating a cheeseburger once in a while.

The big ballyhoo --if you can call it that-- is that 6 episodes have been held over, to air early January, 2002. Why the oddball publicity stunt...? Well, let's just say I'm not surprised. After all, any series has reached it's highest peak, at around the time it reduces itself to incongruous guest appearances. The premiere alone was filled with typical why'd-they-agree-to-this? cameos, including Ed Koch, Heidi Klum, and Margaret Cho (who should lend the emaciated cast half of the meals she's been eating lately). A good series never needs to rely on cheap, one-second cameos. It's too bad Sex and the City is no longer such a series.