Picture the scene: it’s autumn of the year 2000. We’ve escaped the world falling apart at the hands of the Millenium Bug, Who Let The Dogs Out by the Baha Men is number one, the Nokia 3310 had just come out and you’d got to level 10 on Snake. Life is good.
What makes life even better is you are just about to witness some of the best television of your life - for it was autumn 2000 whenSex and the City’s third series was airing for the first time. Not only was series three one of the best of all six series (it’s really got everything: the arrival of Natasha, Aidan AND Magda, for a start, not to mention Bunny Macdougal), it features some of the best episodes in SATC history.
The Los Angeles episodes, of which there are two: Escape from New York, and Sex and Another City, have an undeniable alchemy. Away from the ever present setting of NYC, new, less serious, dimensions of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte are revealed. There are all the hallmarks of a regular girls’ trip: it’s hot, there are cocktails the pool, holiday romances - although I’m not sure how many dildo launch parties make it onto a girls trip these days (not enough, probably!).
A social media post this week suggested that the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, will soon be filming back in LA after a casting call for extras there was featured on gossip site Deux Moi - which adds up because the end of season one saw Che Diaz and Miranda set to move there for pilot season.
In honour of the news, here, I will break down exactly what makes the Los Angeles episodes of Sex and the City so perfect, so special, so rewatchable…
The Outfits
We have to start here, of course. Carrie’s LA wardrobe contains some of her strongest, most memorable looks. We have the purple jumpsuit and pink sparkly bumbag that she wears to march out of the hotel for a defiant cigarette, Samantha’s head to toe blue PVC look, Carrie’s gold bandeau top and white shorts, not to mention the gold glittery sheer kaftan Carrie wore to the Playboy mansion. Every scene is a noughties lookbook and - let’s face it - Gen Z would wear all of it now.
The Cameos
Sex and the City has some of the best cameos in the game (Jon Bon Jovi? Alanis Morissette? Geri Halliwell? I mean, come on!) but the LA episode really pulls out all the stops. We have Matthew McConaughey as a fictionalised, unhinged version of himself, who wants to adapt Carrie’s columns (even pitching himself to play Big). Then there’s Vince Vaughan as a grifter who feeds Carrie an entirely fake Hollywood lifestyle and tricks her into dating him. There’s Sarah Michelle Gellar’s star turn as Debbie, a junior development executive who Carrie meets with ('You're a loser! You are!). And of course, there’s Hugh Heffner, who throws Samantha and the girls out of his mansion after a contretemps over a fake Fendi.
The Dates
Whether it’s Miranda’s date with Lou, the New Yorker-turned-LA-cliche date who spits out every mouthful of food after a few bites, or Samantha’s dalliance with a ‘perfect girth’ dildo model, the dates in these episodes feel like a bit of light relief from Charlotte’s ongoing issues with Trey and Carrie’s back and forth, and back and forth...and back and forth, between Big and Aidan. Men suck on both sides of the US, it turns out.
The Locations
The male model posing in a fish tank, lounging by the pool at The Standard, the Playboy Mansion, the Hollywood studio.. these episodes (along with Clueless) were some of millennials' first taste of what Los Angeles was like and it felt impossibly cool.
The Smoking
A true calling card of the time, the Californian smoking ban features heavily in Los Angeles, and is dismissed by Carrie as overly health conscious crap which will never catch on. Little did we know the rest of the world was soon to follow suit. But while Carrie does finally quit smoking on and off over the years (under some duress from Aidan), in And Just Like That our health unconscious queen makes a characteristic return to the fags. For some reason, it just feels right.