Sex addresses complex love issues

With seven HBO channels now to choose from on digital cable, I often catch up on the latest… With seven HBO channels now to choose from on digital cable, I often catch up on the latest episodes of “Sex and the City.”

“Sex” is a comedic-dramatic mini-series, in its final season, about four fashionable – and rather sexual – women living, working and dating in Manhattan, and sharing their sexual secrets with half of America.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays the lead character, Carrie Bradshaw. Carrie is a columnist for a daily newspaper in New York City and draws on the problems and events of her own life, and those of her close friends, as inspiration for her columns.

Carrie and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), along with their two closest friends, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York – Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis, respectively – discuss everything from dating and relationships to bed-hopping and being single – all while being fashionably accessorized and maintaining successful careers.

None of the four women seem quite satisfied as they bounce from one man to another, looking for anything from the biggest and best orgasm – Samatha’s quest – to the picture-perfect family, which is Charlotte’s goal.

So, how did four women in their mid-40s and then some – Kim Cattrall is nearly 50 – seem to steal the hearts of their viewers?

Despite the characters’ ages, many of their viewers are much younger. Some say it doesn’t matter, because relationships are complex at all ages. But could these images of being single and still bed-hopping in your 40s give wrong impressions to those in their teens and 20s? I think that’s a very valid claim, but at the same time, we must remember that people like Samantha are extremes.

So what keeps viewers so eager to tune in to “Sex”?

Is it Carrie’s persistence to find out what love really means? Samantha’s shocking sexual comments and actions? Miranda’s need to be a successful career woman? Or Charlotte’s desire to be happily in love? Whatever it is, millions of Americans tune in to HBO every Sunday night to see what these women will do next.

Perhaps many viewers want to see Carrie back with Mr. Big. Mr. Big, a former love interest of Carrie’s, is the one that got away – or rather the one that won’t go away.

Many viewers can relate to her feelings toward Big and maybe even have caught themselves in that scenario. Once Carrie gathered up the courage to say goodbye to Big for good, it wasn’t the end. She asks, “Just how dangerous is an open heart?”

The episode “One” caught my attention. Miranda was having a difficult time saying, “I love you” to her boyfriend, Robert, perhaps simply because she doesn’t love him in return.

Robert doesn’t tell Miranda how he feels in words, but in chocolates. He buys her a large cookie that says, “I love you” on it with chocolate chips. Miranda got the message. Unsure of how to react, she quickly ate the evidence.

She kept hoping that the right man would come along and everything would just fall into place, because after all, weren’t we all, as Carrie says, “looking for the one thing to make our lives complete?”

Being upset and unsure what to do, Miranda calls her close friend Carrie.

After a long and exhausting conversation, Carrie went straight to her computer.

She musters up the question: “When will waiting for ‘the one’ … be done?” Good question. Personally, I have no answer.

Maybe that’s what keeps viewers tuned in. You meet these characters and get wrapped up in their lives. You want them to find happiness and fall in love. I find myself awaiting the reunion of Carrie and Mr. Big. Although they have a rocky past, they just fit. Maybe if she gets her happy ending, there’s hope for the real world.

Yes, Christine Claus knows she’s a hopeless romantic, but this world needs some extra love in it. E-mail her at cmc89@pitt.edu.