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I loved the show … I may be one of about 10 heterosexual males who did, but I thought it was funny and very well-written and acted.

OK, as for the truths … you would, in fact, need to watch longer to begin to see these, and probably all six seasons to really get the full sense. I’ll sum it up briefly, although it would take a while really extract it all.

First, I will stipulate that there is no overt religious message in it. No one gets converted or anything. But because it is realistic fiction and honest about human need and human nature, it cannot help but reflect truth.

The first thing to notice is the overall arc of each of the four main characters.

Miranda (Cynthia Nixon): Miranda is emotionally closed. She does not trust men or believe in love, really. Sex and her career are, she tells herself, enough.

But then she meets Steve (David Eigenberg). They come from two very different worlds; she’s a lawyer, he’s a bartender. They have a brief relationship and break up because of their differences. But he keeps coming back, insisting he loves her. When she has eye surgery and asks him to help her get home after, she tries to make him leave once she’s safely in her apartment. She does not want to show any vulnerability. But when she wakes up the next morning, he’s there, sleeping on the floor next to her bed, having stayed until the bandages come off.

They end up married and with a baby. And then (this is the really greatly overlooked aspect of their story) Steve’s aged mother, suffering Alzheimer’s moves in. By now Miranda has given up her resistance to a man’s love, had a baby she thought she would never want and even left Manhattan for Brooklyn so they could afford a house. Having his mother move in seems like a last straw and yet … when the woman wanders off one day, Miranda spends hours finding her, and then takes her home and gives her a bath.

True selfless love, something that would have been completely foreign to her six years earlier.

Charlotte (Kristin Davis.) Charlotte is the wealthy WASP of the group, all about status. She lives with an aspiration to marry someone wealthy and highly placed, and finally does: Dr. Troy MacDougall (Kyle MacLachlan.) But the marriage is ruined by a combination of his sexual dysfunction, his emotional distance and his domineering (in a very funny way) mother-in-law. She ends up married very happily to a pudgy, bald divorce lawyer — having figured out that wealth and social status is the least of what’s important.

Samantha (Kim Cattrall). She’s the fully most sluttish one of the four, having absolutely no tolerance for monogamy and no interest in love. Just sex sex sex all the time. The one time she does try loving a man, he betrays her and only hardens her cynicism. But eventually, she does become involved with someone, a much younger man who is becoming an actor. When she develops breast cancer and loses her hair to chemotherapy, he shaves his off in sympathy and support … unconcerned that he might lose a good movie role because of it.

Carrie: (Sarah Jessica Parker). Her story is largely about perseverance and recovering after failing. She has a chemistry with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but he can’t commit. She’s with him, then without, then with … she has other suitors and other relationships, and eventually leaves New York to move to Paris with a Russian artist (Mikhail Baryshnikov) … who leaves her essentially alone in this strange city because of his work. Mr. Big finally comes to his senses and, as the series concludes, they’re clearly going to marry (which they did in the unnecessary but fine movie that came along after the series.)

Along the way, there are a lot of important moments. When Miranda becomes pregnant, she considers abortion, and gets as far as going to the clinic … but then doesn’t. We find out that Carrie did have an abortion many years ago … when someone asks her how long it took to get over it, she says: “Any day now.” So rather than glamorize or glorify abortion, the show makes clear that it has consequences.

I could go on but it’s time to go home. Suffice it to say, the main characters all come to us at the start of the series as fun-loving socialites who have bought into the myth of the pleasures of consequence-free no-strings-attached sex, and who, over the six-year span of the show, come to see the value in monogamy, fidelity and true, vulnerable love.

I just think there’s a lot more there than many people see.

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Interesting. What truths have you observed it pointing to?

I ask as one who endured a couple of episodes of the cleaned-up version. It struck me as tedious and insipid — the sort of thing that Seinfeld fans might be forced to watch in hell, with all the self-absorption and none of the humor. Fans who like to see what each of the four co-stars will be wearing in each new scene might love it, but there didn’t seem to be much else to it. Should I have stuck with it longer?

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My wife and I saw it when it was released, and own a copy. (also the cd, where Mr. Hanks wrote or co-wrote much of the songs)

My kids also love it, but we will see it again with your comments in mind.

-take care

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