"Sex in the City" and "The Sopranos"
by
lucabrasi
05/31/2008, 6:52 PM #
"SITC" predated "The Sopranos" by a few years on HBO, but for awhile there, they were astride the network together, and I rather came to see them as a matched pair (and yes, I saw most of the SITC episodes; I was compelled by my significant other to do so and certainly entertained by the all the sex -- though it got rather silly how the once-nude co-stars started having all these sex scenes with their bras on.
The two shows were set in and around New York City ("The Sopranos" much more in Jersey, but with plenty of New York City scenes and characters.)
Both shows concerned characters who were hyper-materialistic, motivated by greed, sexually ravenous but easily moved to dump an amour and move on to the next one (or to cheat simultaneously DURING an ongoing relationship), self-absorbed, narcissistic and sociopathic, and in perpetual denial about same -- whlie not particularly caring about the feelings or lives of the men AND women they tossed aside in their movement forward for self-actualization.
Two characters in particular seemed a fine match:
Tony Soprano's wife Carmela famously told him that he was driven to "stick your dick in anything that has a pulse." Samantha (Kim Catrall) was driven to have stuck within her any dick that HAD a pulse.
And so on. HBO knew what it was doing with those two dark, dark comedies.
I rather wondered at times, if HBO might pull a broadcast network gimmick one day -- ala "The Beverly Hillbillies" visiting "Green Acres" and have the two series' cross. It would have fit; they took place in the same vicinity. Perhaps the shows could have merged at the Plaza Hotel, where both shows filmed scenes: Tony could have had a tryst with Samantha after checking into the Plaza because of getting the old heaveho from Carmela yet another time. I could just see Sam reporting to her three pals at brunch: "Girls, I just met Mr. Bigger...he made me an offer I couldn't refuse!"
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"Sex in the City" looks to open at $75 million this weekend; I'm starting to believe that there is life for Tony Soprano after that "quick fade to black" after all....