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'S*E*X*' needs a rest
Enough oohing and aahing. The premiere stunk.
By Ed Robertson
This will certainly seem like a preposterous suggestion, considering the huge ratings for Sunday's season premiere of the greatly celebrated "Sex and the City."
I almost dare not offer it up, but here goes.
This show is tired and needs a rest. What HBO ought to do, rather than pushing forward, is to yank the show from the air, give it a seriously needed facelift, and bring it back in January.
True, the debut garnered the show's fourth-best ratings, and true, people buzzed about about it on both coasts and all the areas in between, but in the very opening minutes it was evident that something was seriously off.
Here we have, just five minutes in, a frazzled Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) in the middle of changing her baby when she stops to wipe her brow with the back of her hand. In the process of doing so, she unwittingly leaves an unsightly brown smudge across her forehead.
Hardly the note on which to launch the sixth and final season of one of HBO's most celebrated series. Strong audience numbers notwithstanding, the rest of the opener was just as stinky. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) looked fabulous, but her vacillating over dating the annoyingly nerdy Berger grew increasingly tiresome. The surprise cameo from Aidan (John Corbett) was nice, but even that sequence fell flat. Where is Big when we need him?
Meanwhile, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) was as randy as ever, but she was also as predictable as the plot twist for Miranda's storyline. After years of discouraging Steve (David Eigenberg) from pursuing her, Miranda finally decides to pursue him, only to find that he's moved on and is now involved with someone else.
One hopes that Sunday's episode was one of those rare misfires to which even the best TV shows are occasionally prone.
From the looks of things, though, this could be a long season. Only two episodes were available for review instead of the usual four. Not a good sign. One of those shows was Sunday's opener. If that's the best "Sex" has to offer, that doesn't exactly portend well for viewers.
Granted, Sunday's season premiere drew 7.3 million viewers, making it the fourth-most watched episode in the history of the series. The question is how many of them will tune in next week.
History is replete with examples of shows that start off strong, only to drop off precipitously week after week. Simply put, if viewers don't care for what they see, they aren't likely to come back.
Case in point: Fox's "American Juniors," which scored boffo numbers for the opener, but has struggled ever since. Fans of "American Idol" likely checked out the opener out of curiosity, but weren't impressed enough to try it again.
Even with its impressive showing Sunday night, the numbers for "Sex" are down from last year. If the show continues to lay eggs like the one we saw last week, viewership will continue to drop. That would leave HBO with a big problem.
HBO wouldn't cancel "Sex" outright -- the series has earned the right to end on its terms, and besides, dumping it would incite subscribers to revolt en masse. What the network can do, though, is pull the series from the lineup and allow it time to rejuvenate.
Call this the equivalent of putting the show "on hiatus, " a practice frequently used by the major broadcast networks when it comes to struggling shows. "Sex and the City" is currently to slated to leave HBO in September before returning in January to air its final eight episodes.
In essence, that means it already has a hiatus built into its season. Putting the series on hiatus now would enable it to tighten the writing and strengthen its existing story arcs so that it can back strong later in the fall.
Some quick suggestions: Keep the potty-mouths. Eliminate the potty gags. Beautiful women swearing like sailors in the middle of Manhattan is just plain funny. Beautiful women with baby poop on their foreheads just plain isn't.
Dump Berger (Ron Livingston). He's a writer, so he can't be all that bad, but the man has absolutely no spark. Why doesn't Carrie see this? Bring back Big (Chris Noth), the sooner the better.
Sure, he's snide and only wants Carrie when he can't have her. But "Sex" clicks when the two of them are together, and besides, deep down, this is the ending viewers really want to see.
Last week HBO secured its future by ordering a sixth season of "The Sopranos," thus keeping the mob drama aboard Sunday nights through the end of 2005.
Now the network must focus on the present. With "Sex and the City" gone bad, it's time to retool it so that it ends on the high note the series and its audience deserve.
June 26, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Ed Robertson is a writer from the San Francisco Bay area who covers television.
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