{"id":41819,"date":"2021-12-03T15:26:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T15:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=41819"},"modified":"2021-12-06T12:20:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T12:20:41","slug":"sex-and-the-city-series-recap","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Could You Recap All of \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kristin
Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall (Photo by HBO\/Newsmakers)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are less than a week out from the highly<\/a>, highly<\/em><\/a> anticipated premiere of And Just Like That<\/em><\/a>, HBO Max\u2019s Sex and the City<\/em><\/a> reboot. (Or is it a revival?) Now, technically, depending on when you\u2019re reading this, you might<\/em> be able to cram in a full re-watch of the original series before the first couple episodes of the new show drop on December 9. Maybe you\u2019ve already done so, in which case, stick around, \u2019cause I might need your help.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: I realized recently, to my mild horror, that I re-watched this show so much in the early 2000s that I think I can recap the whole thing from memory. To be clear, it has probably been about ten years since I\u2019ve seen an episode of Sex and the City<\/em>. But I\u2019m gonna try anyway! Feel free to let me know on social<\/a> if I get anything wrong.<\/p>\n

Ok, deep breath. Here goes\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Parker,
Parker, Nixon, Davis and Cattall in their Season 1 “looks” (Photo by HBO\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
SEASON 1<\/h5>\n

Meet Carrie Bradshaw, some sort of journalist who writes a weekly (?) newspaper column about the dating and mating habits of Manhattan\u2019s elite. Kinda like Gossip Girl<\/a> for grown-ups. She has lots of friends and acquaintances whom she uses as sources, but the series focuses on the core four: Charlotte, a prudish gallerist; Miranda, a jaded corporate lawyer; and Samantha, a campy libertine PR exec. Also, sometimes Carrie hangs out with her gay boyfriend Stanford<\/a>, but never invites him to brunch.<\/p>\n

At a party one night, Carrie meets a very rich man who she calls Mr. Big<\/a> and the two begin a casual flirtation that eventually evolves into a super toxic relationship. She\u2019s needy, he\u2019s withholding. He resists defining their relationship and she acts out by sleeping with a young Timothy Olyphant and making out with a young Justin Theroux and stalking his ex-wife.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, despite being frequently mistaken for a lesbian, Miranda ends up dating this dweeb named Skipper who she seems to actively hate. And Charlotte and Samantha sleep with a lot of men, one of whom wants Charlotte to do butt stuff.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Carrie breaks up with Mr. Big because he won\u2019t take her to church with his mom\u2014whom she also kinda stalks! <\/em>Notably, the fashion in Season 1 is\u2026just not there yet. It\u2019s a lot of late \u201990s basic normcore nonsense.<\/p>\n

\"Davis,
Davis, Cattrall, Nixon and Parker circa Season 2 (Photo: courtesy of HBO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
SEASON 2<\/h5>\n

So, Carrie and Mr. Big are still broken up, but she\u2019s definitely not over him. She dates a few different forgettable guys before they end up reconnecting. But, it turns out, their relationship is plagued by all the same problems as before. He won\u2019t spend the night at her house. He won\u2019t hang out with her friends. He gives her an inexplicable bejeweled duck purse\u2014which, let\u2019s be honest, is not that dissimilar from a lot of the accessories Pat Field<\/a> has Carrie carrying in later seasons. But, you know, timing is everything, and 1999 was not the time for a duck-shaped purse, nor was it the time for Carrie and Big. He ends up having to move to Paris for work and is just not as invested in the relationship as she is, and so they break up again. Also, Carrie wears a dirndl, to which I say: \u201cLive every day like you\u2019re Carrie Bradshaw in that f*cking dirndl!\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Samantha briefly dates a guy with a very tiny penis, which literally lands her in therapy. The relationship is, as Carrie might pun short<\/em> lived. Also, Samantha dates a very short guy and a very old guy and tries to have a threesome with two very gay guys and runs into Donald Trump. Yeesh!<\/p>\n

And Miranda breaks up with Skipper at some point and after a lot of flings ends up meeting this bartender Steve who is kind of like Skipper 2.0, only sexier and way more charismatic. And everything is going great until her friends realize that he\u2019s poor, and since none of these women have ever interacted with non-rich people before, that\u2019s a huge problem\u2014but they make it Steve\u2019s huge problem! <\/em>Like, he <\/em>can\u2019t handle dating a rich lady, because of internalized toxic masculinity. Which I guess is fair? But still kinda gross. Anyway, they have to break up. (Oh, god, also in one episode Samantha dates a rich guy with a Japanese servant, and that episode definitely<\/em> needs one of those warnings like Disney+ has before The Muppet Show<\/em> now.)<\/p>\n

Charlotte\u2026I have no idea what Charlotte gets up to in Season 2. I think maybe she also slept with a very gay guy?<\/p>\n

But, so, back to Carrie: She dates Bon Jovi and then another<\/em> guy played by Justin Theroux, but this time his mom is Valerie Harper (RIP). Then suddenly Big returns from Paris unexpectedly and he\u2019s engaged to a 20-something named Natasha. So, this sends Carrie into a fresh tale-spin in which she tries to be friends with Big and then realizes she can\u2019t and reenacts the final scene of The Way We Were<\/em> with him and walks away dramatically. Which would have been a really great way to end the series. And yet, we carried on. (Jesus. The puns.)<\/p>\n

\"Willie
Willie Garson, Parker, Davis, Cattrall and Nixon in Season 3 (Photo: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
SEASON 3<\/h5>\n

Ok, this is the season when the clothes start getting really good. Or maybe they just start getting more expensive. Like, in Season 2 Carrie in particular kind of develops this downtown, eclectic, adventurous sense of style, which goes off the rails a little in Season 4. But here, she\u2019s in this really sexy disco glam phase\u2014the big nameplate earrings, all the gold Bvlgari<\/a> jewelry\u2014that is\u00a0very\u00a0<\/em>New York, and which I personally feel is the show\u2019s apex. But there are other people<\/a> who are more qualified to talk about the clothes.<\/p>\n

So, Carrie briefly dates a politician played by John Slattery\u2014who I am 100-percent not convinced isn\u2019t<\/em> the same character Slattery would later play on 30 Rock<\/em>. But he wants to pee on her and she gets super freaked out and judgey about it and breaks up with him. Then she dates a bisexual guy and kisses Alanis Morrisette, but gets all freaked out and judgey again and breaks up with him too. Then she meets a furniture designer with a dog and lots of turquoise jewelry named Aidan Shaw<\/a> (who is literally named after a gay porn star) who makes her quit smoking and strips her floors for her. Seems great, right?<\/p>\n

But no!<\/em> Carrie and Big, who is now married to Natasha, start having an affair. This, of course, ends badly when Natasha catches them and Carrie decides to end it. Wracked with guilt, Carrie inexplicably decides to tell Aidan about the affair and he breaks up with her.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Miranda and Steve get back together and he moves in. But then like a\u00a0week\u00a0<\/em>later, he starts talking about having a baby with her and she breaks up with him. Samantha briefly dates a Black guy whose sister has a problem with her brother dating a white woman, but we never get a chance to explore the probably very complicated reasons why; she\u2019s just an obstacle for Samantha, who gets dumped by the brother and then moves to the Meat Packing District where she terrorizes the Black and brown trans sex workers whose turf she is colonizing. Great season for Samantha all around. (And we ask ourselves why Kim Cattrall<\/a> didn\u2019t want to revisit<\/a> this character\u2026)<\/p>\n

\"Parker
Parker and Chris Noth in Season 3 (Photo: Paramount Pictures\/Newsmakers)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And Charlotte, well, she marries this old money doctor named Trey (Kyle MacLachlan) who has erectile dysfunction and won\u2019t take Viagra and has a crazy Oedipal relationship with his mother who is named Bunny<\/em>. Insanely, by the end of the season, they\u2019re already separated!<\/p>\n

The back half of Season 3 has some all-time great, fun, low-stakes summery episodes, like when Carrie gets stoned with this guy who owns a comic book shop who I think is Dan Cortese from MTV<\/em> Sports? [Ed note: it\u2019s not.] Also, the whole crew takes a girls trip to L.A. where all kinds of crazy nonsense happens. Like, Carrie sleeps with Carrie Fisher\u2019s houseboy (Vince Vaughn) and gets sexually harassed by Matthew McConaughey who might actually be on mushrooms in this scene, and they all go to the Playboy Mansion. <\/span>Then, one day, Carrie and Miranda discover that Aidan and Steve are friends now, even though they\u2019ve literally never met, and this freaks them out. And then, totally unrelated, they have a big fight, which is really upsetting (and is an emotional beat the show will go on to slightly overuse) because Carrie decides to be friends with Big, who is getting divorced. But everybody makes up, and Samantha has a BBQ and that\u2019s the end of Season 3.<\/p>\n

So, how am I doing? I\u2019m gonna stop now, so we can all take a breath and maybe pretend that Sex and the City <\/em>ended with this really kind of random and poignant line at the end of the Season 3 finale: \u201cDon\u2019t worry. They have a very lovely life.\u201d Meet back here on Monday when I\u2019ll try to remember all of Seasons 4\u20136<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":41825,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16,3925],"yoast_head":"\nRecapping \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Could You Recap All of \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Grazia USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-12-06T12:20:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/12\/GettyImages-1306034-e1638475853652.jpg?fit=1984%2C1116\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1984\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1116\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/\",\"name\":\"Recapping \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-03T15:26:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-12-06T12:20:41+00:00\",\"description\":\"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Could You Recap All of \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/\",\"name\":\"Grazia USA\",\"description\":\"Driving tastemakers in Fashion, Beauty and Culture\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Recapping \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory","description":"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Could You Recap All of \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory?","og_description":"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.","og_url":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/","og_site_name":"Grazia USA","article_modified_time":"2021-12-06T12:20:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1984,"height":1116,"url":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/12\/GettyImages-1306034-e1638475853652.jpg?fit=1984%2C1116","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/","url":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/","name":"Recapping \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/#website"},"datePublished":"2021-12-03T15:26:42+00:00","dateModified":"2021-12-06T12:20:41+00:00","description":"Grazia's contributing editor hasn't seen an episode of Sex and the City in a decade. But he's going to try to recap the entire series from memory anyway.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/sex-and-the-city-series-recap\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Could You Recap All of \u2018Sex and the City\u2019 Entirely From Memory?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/#website","url":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/","name":"Grazia USA","description":"Driving tastemakers in Fashion, Beauty and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Grazia USA","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/41819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}