Sex and the City is one of the most important television shows ever. I had a mildly unusual experience watching the show. I watched most of the show when I was 13-15 years old, and I did not watch it week to week but sporadically on-demand and out of order. So, before re-watching the show in 2023, I had seen just about every single episode but really had no concept of when things happened. Besides the end. Boy, did I ever remember the end of this fucking show. This column will rank all movies and seasons of the Sex and the City world.
12. Sex and the City 2 [2010]
Sex and the City 2 is genuinely one of the worst movies ever made. It is extremely Islamaphobic as well as being an artistic hate crime. That is all I got.
11. Sex and the City: The Movie [2008]
Okay, for starters, this is a TERRIBLE movie. It does not even feel like a movie. Secondly, your response to the movie is probably going to be dependent on how much you enjoyed the arcs the four characters had. Carrie and Miranda once again had very frustrating stories, and they felt like the center of the movie. Carrie and Big in particular had yet another miserable story where you’re just like “what is the fucking point of this show? is this the point??”
10. And Just Like That…: Season 1 [2021]
So, yes. This is VERY bad. And finds ways previously unfathomable to make an audience uncomfortable at a show instead of with a show. But the movies are worse. So.
9. And Just Like That…: Season 2 [2023]
There is one big strength to this sequel series. Kristin Davis and Evan Handler’s portrayal of rich NYC parents is both spot on and extremely touching at points. Beyond that, most of this show is a mess. They brought John Corbett back for another run of Carrie/Aidan. Che continued to be a disaster. The writing of Miranda continued to feel off. The Samantha cameo felt worse than not bringing her back at all. However, I will keep drinking that garbage.
8. And Just Like That…: Season 5 [2025]
This show was a complete disaster in every way. And yet, I could not stop watching. And I am devastated that it is over. (Well, I am not devastated. But the show was getting marginally less humiliating to watch so it would have been fine to keep watching.) The finale to this universe featuring an extremely late gag of Victor Garber (?) desperately trying to prevent full shits from coming out of a clogged toilet is just so wonderfully bizarre. What a show.
7. Season 4: “Sex with an ex can be depressing. If it’s good, you don’t have it anymore. If it’s bad, you just had sex with an ex.”
Season 4 of Sex and the City features Carrie Bradshaw become an even bigger villain than I ever thought possible. She becomes so over-the-top self-involved in relation to Aidan and Big that it was just too cartoonish to engage with. Obviously, the show was always exaggerating and making liberal use of hyperbole for an effect, but things this season went too far. If before, Carrie felt like an anti-hero for being emotionally stunted in a show about relationships, in this season she became inhuman. It marked a huge drop in quality for the show.
6. Season 7: “Go get our girl.”
Disclaimer: I consider the two halves of the final season of Sex and the City to be two different seasons (same with The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and countless others). It is just bullshit Hollywood cheapness that this season was not two.
The final stretch of episodes for Sex and the City is like a slow-motion car crash when you know how it ends. Big not only returning at the very end to get back together with Carrie but to have her friends and Miranda in particular tell him to get her is The Worst Moment on the Show by far. It is cheap, bad television that should be left to the lesser shows like Friends. The ending felt like the show abandoning the core of what this show sought to explore.
It was all the more annoying because up until the two-part finale, the season is yet again a continuation of the “back to form” era of the show that season 5 kicked off. All the women are in relationships at this point, and other than Miranda choosing Steve over Dr. Blair Underwood, all the relationships feel natural for the show. But that ending really is a souring experience and casts a dark cloud throughout the whole season (and the show as a whole quite frankly).
5. Season 3: “Hey, you almost masturbated, he almost got it up, together you almost had sex.”
This season of Sex and the City is always going to feel like the “time capsule” season to me. It perfectly captures genuinely acceptable-at-the-time views that will seem weird and uncomfortable at best for the generations to come. There are so many whole episodes that have a homophobic/transphobic/racist/etc TONES (not mere undertones); it is often nauseating.
There were some positive developments at least. Charlotte and Trey was a very necessary story. Miranda and Carrie tried to make a go of a serious relationship (and failed). On the whole, the show still felt pretty fresh and funny through in ways I was not necessarily expecting. The one narrative aspect I really was over though this season was Carrie and Big. Some people really are like this but knowing how this show ends with the “happy ending” makes the constant presence of Big pretty fucking tiring given how he turns Carrie into the most selfish/unsympathetic person in the world. It would feel more like the point if not for the series finale.
4. Season 6: “I’m having a Jewish wedding and I look like Hitler!”
Disclaimer: I consider the two halves of the final season of Sex and the City to be two different seasons (same with The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and countless others). It is just bullshit Hollywood cheapness that this season was not two.
Season 6 (or the first 12 episodes of the final season if you’re a corporate pervert) is a continuation of the good vibes season 5 brought back to the show. The majority of the season revolves around the sincerely interesting relationships the women have with Burger, Harry, Smith, and Steve. The Burger relationship in particular stood out to me because it just seemed like he and Carrie was a very natural and real couple that would exist. Both coming off of traumatic relationships and working hard to be good to their new partner. It feels like the kind of relationship that would have been more authentic to work out for the character than what ended up happening with Carrie.
3. Season 5: “It’s times like this I wish women could go to male prostitutes.”
This season of Sex and the City was a near full return to form for the show. It was a “back to basics” mindset that made the show once again really about four single women trying to navigate their lives, and it did so cleverly and occasionally hysterically. The key to this season’s success was getting away from the soap opera of Aidan vs. Big which just sucked up way too much oxygen on a show that was threatening to run out of air. Carrie is single and ready (and failing) to mingle, Aidan is completely absent from the season, and Big’s lone appearance was actually well done and interesting (he was grappling with his side of their terrible relationship while Carrie was desperately horny). The season is a shining example of how a show losing its way can right the ship.
2. Season 2: “Now I’ve laid down a gauntlet. He either has to say ‘I love you’ back or I guess I’m going to have to break up with him.”
Season 2 is where the show unwittingly (imo) turns Carrie into an anti-hero. “Carrie Bradshaw – an anti-hero” is such an unoriginal concept at this point that I became cynical about it before embarking on this rewatch. In my mind, Carrie and Big was less of a constant presence of a storyline but clearly I was wrong. This situationship between the two causes Carries to be so selfish and self-involved. Carrie is acting a decade younger than she is in regards to Big while Charlotte (the naive optimist, Miranda (cynical realist), and Samantha (sex-positive not wanting to be locked down) all feel like avatars for very real people in this world. At this point in the show, the story and character development feels well done at least. (It would not stay that way for long.)
1. Season 1: “I only give head to get head.”
Consistent with my scattered memory of Sex and the City, rewatching this season reminded me of how grounded the show initially was. At this point, the show absolutely felt like it had a clear POV rooted in the experiences of actual people that navigated their sex lives in New York. The events and characters may be extremely exaggerated, but there is a genuine truth captured here that later felt greatly missing as the show later leaned on the soap opera elements more and more. It is a fantastic season of television and at a quality could never fully reach again.
The Reel World 