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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: February 10, 2002
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Sex and the City, “I Heart NY” (Season 4, Episode 18) [Stream on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: As we’ve discussed before, few TV shows became more closely associated with New York City in the months after 9/11 than HBO’s Sex and the City. After all NYC was right there in the title, and after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the show recognized that the City was often just as important as the Sex when it came to their identity. What’s interesting is that the last SATC episode to be filmed before 9/11 was as much a love letter to New York as the first one to be filmed after it.
“I Heart NY” closed out the show’s momentous fourth season with a bang. Two major events shook the four main characters: in the first, Mr. Big told Carrie that he was leaving New York in order to chase some dream or another in the wine country of Napa, California. In addition to giving Carrie the excuse to deliver one of the absolute worst puns in the history of the show, it also made Carrie focus on what it is about the city that she could never think to leave.
Of course, the other big event of “I Heart NY” was Miranda having her baby. In many ways, the run of Sex and the City could be divided between before Miranda giving birth to young Brady and after. Obviously, Miranda’s character was never quite the same, but the show itself took on this air if inevitably hurtling towards commitment in a way it hadn’t really before.
If “I Heart NY” was the end of an era for Sex and the City, it was also the beginning of a new one. SATC would be a bit more sentimental, sure. A bit more focused on the endgame for the series that would soon be approaching. But it crossed that river in style.
