Here’s something I found very interesting about “Sex And The City”.
Carrie finds herself in a great relationship, it’s easy and it’s perfect, like there’s nothing wrong with it. No obstacles, easy get-together, easy being together, no issues, no problems, perfect compatibility. And that is what makes it all feel so wrong.
Carrie says:
“When things come too easy, we’re suspect. Do they have to get complicated before we believe they’re for real? We’re raised to believe that the course of true love never runs smoothly. There always have to be obstacles in Act Two before you can live happily ever after in Act Three. But what happens when the obstacles aren’t there? Does that mean there’s something missing?”
What’s funny is that she’s subconsciously leaning towards sabotaging that relationship because the impeccability feels wrong. And later on in the episode Carrie notices by accident in the opera (where she wasn’t even going to go) - who, would you have thought? - Mr. Big. He broke her heart and they broke up and he married a younger woman and his relationship with Carrie was never easy, it was always complicated and flawed and there were issues and arguments and drama but somehow there was harmony in that and it must have been right. And, what’s more Carrie ends up with Big in the show finale.
His re-appearance in this episode was no coincidence, it was an endgame cue.
And I just want to say that an easy, safe, obstacle-less relationship is not what is endgame about. Endgame is about struggle and character growth. Complications make or break the relationship. The lack thereof certainly only breaks it in fiction where there’s a triangle (and it ain’t no stable triangle in SATC, might I add; it’s always Carrie, Big and what I like to call “not Big”, that’s the triangle).
