Sex and the City - Essentials

Review By: Freddie LaFemina
FreddieLaFemina@TheCinemaSource.com

I’ll admit, I was not a regular watcher of Sex and the City during its run on HBO. The only time I really watched the show in any sort of depth was when my friend’s gay roommate at the New School was away for the weekend and left us with nothing but the Season 1 box set to entertain ourselves. So we had a sleepover, popped in one DVD after another, and proceeded to giggle and cry like little girls into the early morning. I’m pretty sure that story is true. Let’s not worry about that though – I can tell you I have seen enough of the first and last seasons and scant episodes in between to know what the show is all about. On to the business at hand…

HBO has had much success with the DVD releases of each season of Sex and the City, and the Collector’s gift set of the complete series is still among the top 200 best-selling titles on Amazon four months after its release. We all know how popular the show is and how successful HBO has been at marketing it. Now comes a new sort of release – Sex and the City Essentials, four discs (with more to come) comprised of three episodes linked by a common theme, such as Lust, Breakups, and Romance. If this marketing effort is a success, other shows will surely follow suit. At the top of my wish list is Seinfeld: Newmanium, a special edition box set featuring only those episodes of Seinfeld that feature Wayne Knight playing the scheming (though lovable) mailman, Newman.

Being a typical guy, I started with Lust. I found the episodes – like the series in general – to be fairly light on sex scenes, but entertaining and quite clever nevertheless. The show’s on-location filming in Manhattan is of course an attractive feature, while its over-the-top wardrobes will likely bring out the inner fashionistas in all of you, though it had no effect on my own steadfast manliness. Though its viewers and creators often attribute too much sentimentality and profundity to the show, Sex and the City is at heart a lighthearted comedy series about sex and relationships, and a rather good one at that.

Sex is unabashedly cynical and urban, but it is also highly stylized and far from realistic. As a result, supporting characters on the show are often caricaturized and stereotyped in contrast to the main characters, who we tend to sympathize with more often than not. But the main characters themselves, despite their vanity, are well-constructed, complex human beings, played by four actresses who know their counterparts very well. If the show’s creators and its fans take it too seriously, I am the complete opposite, but I’ll say to the cynics out there – Sex is much more than a premium cable runway for making fashion statements and showing naked bodies.

The Essentials method of ...