Conflict doesn’t make it toxic.
The Big Picture
- Friendship has flaws, even among the core four of
Sex and the City
, depicting realistic conflicts and growth. - The characters represent the four temperaments, providing a balanced dynamic that fosters deep discussions and personal growth.
- True friendship is about embracing imperfections and using strengths to support and help each other move forward, as shown in
Sex and the City
.
From Daria and Jane to The Gang of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, television history is made up of iconic friendships, more often than not in comedies. When done right, there’s something so uplifting about a collection of colorful characters that share a close platonic bond. As television has evolved, audiences have looked at the sitcoms of yore, even those of the previous decade, and realized that some of these groups prove that Hell is other people. Sometimes that’s the point. The clique of HBO’s Girls gave us a moment of genuine catharsis when they (but mostly Shoshanna) decided to call it quits in the final season, but many other times, the toxicity goes completely unaddressed or even rewarded. The “witty banter” of The Big Bang Theory often crosses the border into genuine disrespect, and every member of Friends is awful in their own special way. But I’ll be there for you, right?
One fictional friendship of often-debated quality is the core four of Sex and the City. Our perspective character and the “sexual anthropologist,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), the sharp and sassy career woman, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the “try-sexual” who lives her life for pleasure, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and the moralistic hopeless romantic, Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) form the tightknit group the series focuses on. When it comes to all-female awesome foursomes, this group has serious competition, including girls of the Derry and Golden variety. Shows depicting strong feminine friendships at their center dispel the ridiculous idea that female friends are all drama, but often, Sex and the City is unfairly excluded from the conversation. While every romantic relationship in the show comes and goes, Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie have the strongest connection.
Sex and the City
A group of four single women in New York City date all several eligible bachelors while forging strong friendships with one another.
- Release Date
- June 6, 1998
- Cast
- Sarah Jessica Parker , Kim Cattrall , Cynthia Nixon , Kristin Davis
- Main Genre
- Comedy
- Seasons
- 6
No Friendship Is Perfect, And ‘Sex and the City’ Is A Prime Example
It would be disingenuous to say that this friendship is without fault. A show needs conflict, and what’s better than a friendship having a bit of a breakdown? However, it’s also disingenuous to say that Carrie was the only bad friend of the group or even the worst one. Audiences tend to dog pile on her because we see her make the most mistakes, but that can be said of many main characters. In reality, all four women have their moments and fatal flaws that have caused tension in the group.
Starting with Carrie, while people tend to exaggerate the scope of it, she is undeniably extremely self-centered. She habitually ditches her friends for men, usually the emotionally unavailable Mr. Big (Chris Noth). She hesitates to step up and help a friend out, such as helping them when they’re injured in the shower, and she constantly drags her friends into her monotonous romantic drama. Miranda is sometimes considered the best friend of them all simply for putting up with Carrie’s BS for so long, but she is, to put it in modern parlance, a massive hater. She’s cynical and bitter, projecting her own failed relationships onto her friends, especially Charlotte, and often falls into the trap of confusing brutal honesty and mean-spirited judgment calls. Charlotte’s uncompromising morals and standards, mixed with her conservative upbringing and perspective, can make her incredibly holier-than-thou, levying the most criticism toward Samantha’s lifestyle. While Samantha has the least egregious faults, she lets her pride and stubbornness get in the way of showing real vulnerability towards her friends.
One big example of a collective failure in friendship is everything leading up to Charlotte’s marriage with Trey MacDougal (Kyle MacLachlan). Yes, Charlotte was rushing into it because of her own need to achieve her fantasy life, and her friends had a right to worry, but that doesn’t excuse the catty comments and cab-light speeches. Whether or not the cab-light theory is true, the monologue begins to shoot Charlotte down, and the disinterest continues as they pick out bridal and bridesmaid dresses and up to the wedding. It’s not cool, and all four women made it uncool in different ways, each reflective of their personal issues.
‘Sex and the City’ Brilliantly Struck The Four Temperament Balance
They are deeply flawed individuals, but so are we. If their friendship is broken because of their flaws, then the same can be said of our own. And while their negative traits can get on each other’s and the audience’s nerves, their positive ones give their clique a perfect balance. Samantha may be detached, but she’s also open-minded, never judging harshly but shelving her pride to help a friend, whether for babysitting or diaphragm removal. Charlotte’s morals are indeed rigid, but that’s also needed when someone needs to be held to task, like when your friend cheats on her perfectly nice boyfriend with a married man that she can’t seem to quit. Miranda can be brutal, but she’s always honest and usually the one who listens and responds to the needs of her friends, especially when they need someone to talk to. People don’t tend to bring up Carrie’s positive traits as a friend, but she has arguably the most important: She’s the glue that holds the group together. Three women as wildly different as Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda likely wouldn’t have hung out together if not for Carrie being right in the middle to balance them all out.
They are the classic four temperaments, sprung from the humoral theory of ancient times. Carrie is a neurotic and analytical melancholic, Charlotte is the empathetic and trusting phlegmatic, Miranda is the tough and straightforward choleric, and Samantha is the charming and indulgent sanguine. The same balance of personalities that makes the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so beloved, and it means that each woman isn’t in an echo chamber. Their diverging outlooks allow for deep and meaningful discussions on many topics with different perspectives, so while they do support each other through everything, they can also give a much-needed reality check. Charlotte is the one to point out how Big’s wife Natasha (Bridget Moynahan) must be feeling about Carrie’s affair with him, Samantha is the first to point out her friends’ hypocrisies and slut-shaming, and Miranda tells Carrie point-blank that Big is bad for her and she’s right.
The fact that they are four very successful individuals who would usually run in entirely different crowds is the core friendship that makes the show and the relationship so great. While it takes a full season, or the entire series, for any of the love interests to finally get it together, conflicts between the core four are usually resolved within an episode. They fight and may say out-of-pocket things at the moment but come together and talk things out like adults. They don’t indulge in petty vengeance or hold a grudge any longer than necessary, and even when they fall out, they come together when the chips are down. Sex and the City shows us that a true friendship isn’t about being perfect but about accepting the imperfections in each other and using your best traits to help each other move forward.
Sex and the City is streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com