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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Ringin’ Carrie’s Wedding Belles:
Big Sex and The City Pitties
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 5/31/08

Broadcast TV finally conveyed “Sex and the City” episodes to a wider public, albeit with a bit of editing here and there. The HBO breakout chick-flickette series gathered garlands and huzzahs, and a few brickbats, thru S&C’s long run on cable.  It quickly saturated the post-HBO syndicated broadcast market, and fell short of many assessments by conservative voices.  Much more mainstream than you’d have guessed, and far more than I’d guessed until the saturation distribution reached my eyes and ears.  And analytical synapses.
 
Now comes a summer release of the awaited feature film, with Big and Carrie rumored to wed.  It’s no surprise, if one came to “S&C” the way I did.  Thanks to circumstance, I saw middle episodes before the pilot, running thru the final season on LA outlet broadcast signal, before an unheralded repeat loop showed the series’ original concept.  All the chattering commentary escaped my eyes at its inception, so I risk an overlap with what may have been said way back then, but here goes:
 
Much better, and much more conservative, than one would have guessed.

That is, to listen to my fellows on the right, who convinced me back then to not feel deprived, as non-HBO viewer during its first-run seasons, I’d expected raunchiness and anti-tradition dripping from the screen.  There was quite a bit of that – most notably, Queer Power sub-plots and repeat characters galore, and gayloriously portrayed – but also, there’s something stated loudly and notably in the pilot. And that theme played out at series’ end, as if it had all been written over several seasons at one sitting, the pilot ‘statement’ in the key writer’s mind all along.
 
We meet The Girls individually in POV shots, each offering a theory on dating and the desirability of a dame’s diddlin’ without emotional remorse:  Can a woman have sex ‘zipless’ like a man?  Samantha drums that theme from pilot thru several seasons, as Miranda signs on at first, then relents. Along the way, sweetie Charlotte demurs, insisting a man and woman are different, though she has her share of bedpost notching.  All the gals seem to be grinding enough sawdust to compete with a 24-hour logging sawmill.
 
But two conservative themes emerge: first, one by one The Girls embrace commitment, even Samantha by series’ end.  Marriage, child-rearing, a suburban mortgage – these lifestyle elements visit the hard-edged, partner-tracking lawyer Miranda, initially a cold bitch with a bullet, who softens to the gentle pursuits of a mere bartender, then warmer and cuddlier as her Steve wins her heart and warms her furnace. And puts a bun in her oven, their son born a bastard – but by next season, they are a couple and moving to a mortgage in Brooklyn. After she enters a bi-racial relationship with an Obama-like too-good-to-be-true sports medicine M.D.
 
Carrie and Mister Big [bigger in real estate than Trump, it is said in the pilot] get on and off each other, on-and-off thru the series, and he finally warms the gals to his late realization that Carrie is most definitely The One.  He’s not averse to marriage – done that, been there, twice at least – but Carrie never gets his offer of a ring.  As the series’ voice, Carrie carries the load, and delivers some of the best narrative wordplay written for the tiny tube.
 
The second surprise is the very one which upset so many lefties over “Juno”: an abortion decision is cancelled, the mere ‘fetus’ magically becoming a ‘baby’ as Miranda opts for motherhood and the partner-track simultaneously.  Charlotte is the lone doubter to the D&C detour, and cries joyously when they all realize, “We’re going to have a baby” amidst the humpmeister Samantha and Big-gal Carrie. Not reading the trades at the time of that episode’s first HBO airing, I can only imagine how the abortion-on-demand femi-nazis ranted on that episode’s plot twist.
 
The holistic completeness of S&C is apparent to a writer’s mind, thanks to the compression of seven episodes a week, and starting mid-series before viewing the pilot, ultimately made it all so plain: ‘NO’ is the answer to the pilot’s thematic query. Women are different, sex even for voracious man-jumper Samantha is more meaningful with meaning between the sheets. One by one, The Girls show their girlie sides.  Doubtlessly dubious to the hardcore feminists, though many of my acquaintance did adore the series’ Cosmo drink choice.
 
One lovely LA resident of Houston derivation, who packs heat in gun-control environs, adored the series, and slurped Cosmopolitans by the pair during one celebratory evening in Studio City.  Maybe S&C’s themes were too subtle, for its ratings crossed many cultural bordertowns.   Amidst the cascade of Cosmos was a slow, encroaching inculcation of these two notions which conservatives value, and liberals denounce.
 
That pro-life and pro-relationship themes would permeate the series from start to finish would never have been my expectation. Nor that of many who jumped into reviewing it without waiting six seasons to find its overall, holistic package.  [So little patience!] My fresh eyes were there by pure circumstance: but for broadcast saturating it along with cable superstation distribution as well [with considerably less editing], the full series may never have met my retina.


But it did, and despite the whiny, girl-as-victim quality, and endless pity party prattling, S&C has guts, charm, and cojones. Testicular cancer, breast cancer, unwanted pregnancy [leading to a much wanted infant], gay blades galore, silly financial elements [shoes instead of a nestegg – we got to know a shoe brand very well, thanks to these frivolous inclinations] – plus bisexuality given casual inclusion and eternal adolescence intrinsically endorsed with Carrie’s choice of boys to boink, made for clever plot lines.
 
But amidst it all, the key writers seemed to hold firmly onto a serious ‘spine’ – the ‘theme’ or connective tissue of a feature film, or compact mini-series – which persistently confirmed: WOMEN ARE STILL WOMEN. Men are not women with penises, women are not men without penises.  Four girl-women began the pilot with an intriguing interest in zipless humping. Four women ended the show as more women, and less girlie prancing thru the percales.
 
Which will make the feature film a worthwhile viewing, or hopefully so. Will Carrie be pregnant in white?  How much time has passed, due to negotiations with the stubborn holdout of the quartet, Kim Cattrall, in the storyline?  Who’s had more kids?  A mortgage in the ‘burbs? Or the ex-urbs?  Is Big very big on fatherhood – one issue not visited in all the S&C episodes?
 
My question: Will the heart so growing and glorious in the series, survive into the film? Two of the finest emotional tugs in my viewing life were Big’s getting permission from The Girls, to rescue Carrie, stranded with an emotional runt-artiste in Paris: “Go get our girl” are his marching orders from Miranda, as she reaches to touch his hand and give him the group’s belated moral approval.  And more tears cascade, when Harry kneels and proposes to Charlotte, amidst a roomful of hopeful Jewish singles.  The tagline by an observing female competes with “When Harry Met Sally” restaurant line by Meathead’s mom.


Can that subtlety saturate the film?  Will Harry be a hero, as a chubby divorce lawyer, bald and sweaty, but as adoring of his shiksa bride as ever was shown on the screen?  Is Steve now a rising entrepreneur, maybe in partnership with Big to expand his bar club into a franchise?  Has Samantha graduated another level, in her new acquaintance with attachment to more than a body appendage?  Has Miranda gone ‘mommy track’ and not remorseful?
 
Six seasons of S&C gave us femi-girls’ alchemy into women, one forgoing a D&C and taking a mortgage in, of all places, Brooklyn [No one ever leaves The City, after all – it’s just-not-done among the elite], another who was born to bear babies finding herself to be barren, and adopting a Chinese orphan infant girl into a Jewish surname…
 
And on and on… So much emotional materiel for the writers to maneuver our hearts. From prancing thru the percales [I stole that from Woody Allen – can’t get him out of my system, especially his juicily biblical “Retribution” from which I lifted that catchy term] to an almost medieval mantra of true-love with the Soulmate, it’s a lot to address in a mere two hours.  But “Star Trek” was exploited for the best of all its movies, in “The Wrath of Khan” – if that series could yield a core episode into a vast big-screen story, S&C may stand a chance.
 
Unless of course, the original tiny tube judgment – that it was all leftwing all the time – comes to be totally true on the Big Screen.  I’ll take my chances – rooting for Harry and Steve, and relishing what may have come of manhandling Samantha, and baby-machine Miranda.  And that Chinese cutie with an Episcopalian-turned-Jew mama and a Jewish surname, preparing for her bat mitzvah.  So much is possible. Let’s hope they kept the faith with the original pilot theme.
 
Women is women, and men is men – VIVA LA DIFFERENCE. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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