Looking for love

Sex and the City girls find stability they seem to have longed for | Meghan Keane

The predictably label-loving and man-hungry film version of Sex and the City begins with a familiar voiceover from the show's protagonist: "Year after year, twenty-something women come to New York City in search of the two L's: labels and love." We are to expect that the show's lovable foursome will end up with both. And indeed they do. But what's surprising about this tale is not so much what the girls get, but what it turns out they wanted all along—mostly monogamous, stable, and matrimonial relationships.

HBO's series spent much effort trying to justify the extended adolescence of urban thirty-something women, but as much as Sex and the City tried to play up the benefits of the single life, even the creators seemed to realize that this bit of whimsy had a shelf life. After six years on HBO, as the girls started pushing 40, the series wrapped up.