I've only ever watched a couple of episodes of Sex and the City, and I thought it was extremely lame, basically reactionary wish-fulfillment. Much like Pretty Woman, it simply fuels the degrading generality that women want to sleep around like whores while being treated like princesses. Is this feminism?

Gene Healy, who's seen many more episodes than I could possibly sit through, says no:

I don't take Sex and the City seriously enough to have anything invested in its politics. But if I did, and if I were one of those guys who liked to score points by yammering about wimmen's empowerment, I'd yammer about the fact that the whole thing tied itself up like a Jane Austen novel--albeit an unusually skanky one. But for the gratuitous, usually unglamorous sex, the series really could have been storyboarded by the Concerned Women for America. I thought that, having paired off the other three gals, the writers would have at least left Carrie single. Happy, on her own, maybe with a new prospect, maybe another book contract and the promise of good things to come, but getting by just fine even though she's late-thirtysomething and not yet hitched. But no. If you're a single chick pushing 40 in this show, you end up pitching spiked-heels-over-ass out the window and falling to your death eight stories below.

In the end it's all about fulfilling societal roles and expectations, right? I read an article the other day in which a woman remarked about how "real" the show had been.

Sorry lady, but it was the biggest fantasy on TV, four Cinderellas in fuck-me heels.