Sex and the City may have technically debuted in the s, but the groundbreaking HBO dramedy defined the early s. It also inspired a generation of millennials who imprinted themselves on the show at a young age and dreamed of moving to Manhattan to live a life of glamorous brunches and shopping sprees.
Well, those young people probably ended up living a more harrowing, Great Recession-era, Girls -like adulthood. But maybe they were never really paying attention, anyway. Probing sex columnist Carrie Sarah Jessica Parker , uptight attorney Miranda Cynthia Nixon , prim trophy wife Charlotte Kristin Davis and man-eating publicist Samantha Kim Cattrall all patently struggled through the onset of middle age.
They faced cancer, divorce, financial collapse, unwanted pregnancy and the creeping existential dread that they may never be good enough for the men they loved. No one fantasizes about being lost in their 30s and beyond. Audiences were always meant to relate to and learn from these complex women, yet somehow, they got stuck adorning their personae like costumes.
Set in an Asian-influenced fantasy land where certain people can control one of the four elements — water, earth, fire, air — the animated series follows a year-old chosen-one figure Zach Tyler Eisen and his teenage allies on their quest to bring peace to the four factions. Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko balance rich world-building with intricate character work, yielding a series flexible enough to flit between goofy adolescent shenanigans and geopolitical maneuvering, and confident enough to balance episodic detours with long-form character development.
In doing so, it delivers one of the most compelling ruminations on the cost of war and the power of peace for viewers of any age. Across three outstanding seasons and one network shift — from Comedy Central to Max — the show zeroes in on the lovable hustlers who work at and frequent a dinky rent-to-own business in inner-city South Chicago.
