Netflix recently made Sex and the City available for streaming, which is great news for all of us who had our beloved DVDs permanently borrowed by a friend. It's also great news for women who have never seen the show before.
If you're one of them, bless your sweet 2000s-born heart. Here's what you need to know before you descend into the depths of SATC bingeing, not to be seen again until there's snow on the ground. (You'll see. Oh, you'll see.)
Are you worried that you ruined the show for yourself because you caught the movie versions on cable or streaming one day? Don't be. Sure, the films (especially the first one) spoil a certain amount of the series' ending, but this was never a show that was all about getting from point A to point B. Especially if your main memory of the franchise is that time they almost missed the flight home from Abu Dhabi, you'll be just fine. And don't worry for a second about The Carrie Diaries—the connections are super tenuous. We're not even going to talk about And Just Like That…
You're going to want to take this journey with three friends. Because it's hard to enjoy America's pastime—Who's the Carrie, Who's the Charlotte, Who's the Samantha, and Who's the Miranda—by yourself.
Get excited because... You'll now understand why your mom (or cool aunts, as we like to think of ourselves) refer to the guy on The Good Wife as "Mr. Big" and the guy from the Applebee's commercials as "Aidan." Also: Yes, this is why you know a lot of kids named Aidan.
Chances are you're in college, as many of we were when we discovered Sex and the City. A word to the wise: Don't let the show influence your fashion choices too heavily. Carrie Bradshaw could experiment because Carrie Bradshaw did not have her personal fashion revolution, ages 18 to 34, documented on social media. Your future employer will not be amused by your ill-fated sophomore year affair with flower pins.
Similarly: Don't start ordering cosmopolitans. Unless you really want to talk about Sex and the City with a stranger at the bar, which is a legit possibility. This will definitely signal to everyone around you that you've just started watching the show, especially if you're using your new Samantha-inspired purr.
Keep in mind that this show began in 1998. We don't want to think about how old you were in 1998. Or if you were even born. That's not the point. The point is: Some of the female sexuality stuff that made this show groundbreaking might not seem all that groundbreaking to you. But lest you roll your eyes at the pilot's talk of women "having sex like men," remember: This was the pre-Euphoria, pre-Girls, largely pre-Web world, and SATC busted it wide open.
We want to reassure you that Miranda's clothes will get better. Judging from the Adidas pants and giant parkas of season one, you may conclude that Miranda is trying to silently signal to the audience that she's having a nervous breakdown. But don't worry. Her "12-year-old-boy-picked-last-in-gym" phase is a short one.
You won't be the first to wonder about Carrie's finances. It's been well-addressed on the Internet, and the show eventually nods to it as well. But generally, don't hold out hope for a lot of sensible math on this front. When she buys Berger that Prada shirt like it's nothing—LOL.
A word on the technology... Carrie got famous writing for a newspaper, a.k.a. the Internet printed on tree pulp. Uber hadn't been invented yet—that's why the girls are always looking for a cab—and even if it had, it wouldn't have found a home on Carrie's flip phone. When you see her talking to people through a handset in her bedroom, that's called a landline—and when she listens to a voice mail, it's coming out of an answering machine, which is a device that used a cassette to...oh, forget it.
Sadly, no: You won't have this much time to walk down the street/eat lunch with your friends in the real world. The point of the show—the legacy of the show—is to remind you to try to make it happen anyway.
This article originally ran in 2015.
