Top 10 Small Details in Sex and the City You Never Noticed

You may notice that while the girls are running around NYC, they encounter surprisingly few of the posters, billboards and ads that one would encounter in real life. That’s because the producers of the show intentionally omitted anything that would date the show too much, though there are some exceptions throughout the series where advertisements are left in. Notably, in the episode "The Good Fight", when Samantha and Richard Wright are dancing on the rooftop, originally you could see the towers of the World Trade Center in the background, but they were digitally edited out in post-processing to keep the focus on the scene at hand.

For the first four seasons it seems as though it’s always either spring or summer. This let the girls travel around the city in their most fashionable outfits without ever having to cover up for warmth. They also rarely celebrate major holidays on the show so we never see Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day. It’s only in the season four finale "I Heart NY", we finally see the seasons begin to change for the first time on the show. In the later episodes, we do get to see the characters living through New York’s harsh winter, and it definitely gives the story a different feel.

Justin Theroux, who has in recent years become best known for his relationship with Jennifer Aniston, was on “Sex and the City” not once, but twice in the early seasons, playing two completely different characters. In season one, he plays a guy named Jared that Carrie uses to make Big jealous when she realizes that their relationship isn’t monogamous. He plays a bigger role in season two as Vaughn Wysel, a man that Carrie starts dating and who turns out to have some “shortcomings” that cause them to part ways despite the fact that Carrie loves his family.

Something that goes hand in hand with not celebrating holidays is the fact that we see surprisingly little of the girls’ families throughout the run of the show. We never meet any of the girls’ parents – or really learn much about them at all – with the exception of the episode where Miranda’s mother dies. Even when Charlotte is planning a wedding and eventually gets married, her family never plays a role. The idea behind this seems to be to show that the family you’re born into doesn’t always matter as much as the one you make for yourself.

How’s this for ironic? In the season premiere of the show’s sixth season, Carrie unexpectedly runs into her ex fiance, Aidan. It’s a dramatic moment as Aidan slowly turns around and you see that he actually has a baby strapped to his chest. The audience is just as surprised as Carrie herself is, but what must have made this moment more lighthearted for everyone on set is the fact that Aidan’s son, Tate, was actually played by Sarah Jessica Parker’s little boy! This might be why that timeline doesn’t exactly make sense...

When Charlotte meets Trey, their relationship is a love at first sight whirlwind and before viewers knew it, they were heading down the aisle. Were there some red flags before they said their “I dos”? Oh definitely. But there was one subtle hint that the producers gave you viewers that you may not have picked up on. The Scottish bagpipe music playing as Charlotte walks down the aisle isn’t typically a wedding song, but rather a funeral dirge, which was meant to symbolize the fact that Charlotte is walking straight to her demise.

Though “Sex and the City” was created by Darren Star, most people know Michael Patrick King has the man behind the show. He worked as a writer, producer and director for many episodes and it turns out he also found his own ways to insert himself into the show. In one memorable episode, he played the voice of the “sandwich” that Miranda thought was sexually harassing her, and he also leant his vocal talents to yelling “feces” in an episode that takes place at a mental health facility. His handwriting also makes an appearance in an episode where Miranda is writing a letter to Steve.

One of the elements that remains consistent is that Carrie poses questions to the audience which often form the basis for her columns. They vary widely from episode to episode, but at the end of season six when the series is coming to a close, Carrie actually stops asking questions altogether. In the episode “Splat!” when she decides she’s going to move to Paris to be with the Russian, she asks, “Is it time to stop questioning?” but ultimately changes the question mark to a period. According to the DVD commentary, this is the last time she asks her infamous questions in the series.

According to Michael Patrick King on the DVD commentary, the street we see Carrie walking down at the end of the series finale as she takes a call from Big – where we also find out his real name – is actually the very same street she walked down in the opening credits. He says though that this time, she’s actually walking in the opposite direction, signifying the changes that she has made throughout the series. King says that this artistic choice was supposed to symbolize the fact that as a character, she had finally come full circle.



Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:


Carrie Only Rides the Subway Once



Charlotte's Prenup with Trey was Actually Written by a Lawyer



The Women At the Benefit Were Real Cancer Survivors

The four women wear countless pieces of clothing and jewelry throughout the show’s six season run, but there’s one that really stands out. Carrie’s nameplate “Carrie” necklace was meant to symbolize her comfort with herself and at the end of the sixth season, she loses it, implying that she has lost something much bigger in the process. When she finds it again, viewers knew everything would be okay. And this wasn’t the only important piece of jewelry on the show – in the episode where Carrie breaks up with Aidan, SJP wore her own earrings, which she claims are good luck.