I am fairly sure there is not a writer or opinionated person in this world who would feel comfortable with re-stating a widely fostered opinion, for the idea of having and sharing opinions is based on fostering unique, breakthrough, new, and sometimes controversial ideas about art, society and the like. However, in writing this column, I will not extrapolate any new theories on the evolution of society. I will not analyze the vocal crappings of Britney Spears. No, I will simply resign myself concerning the topic of this column and I will just agree. I will agree with the already-stated general opinion when I say that HBO’s series Sex and the City is, by far, one of the best shows in the last 20 or so years of television. There. Now that I have said it, I will tell you why (and this goes along with the regurgitation of opinion, but bear with me and maybe I’ll say something some one else hasn’t yet).

My love for the pay-channel’s sexy and hysterical series came as a shock to my system, for the show runs on HBO, and I am an avid supporter of all-inclusiveness when it comes to access to art and media, which is impeded by the high cost of cable TV. The idea of paying for movie channels at times seems elitist and stupid, but after being hooked by the show, the extra money paid to AT’T Broadband in return for my deliverance to the island of Manhattan via HBO for a weekly date with my four favorite women is more than worth the extra ante. I was also shocked because usually watching a movie channel series is like sucking a chainsaw (Arliss, Chris Isaak Show); you don’t know why you did it, but you never want to do it again. Not so with Sex and the City, a show that grabs viewers by the balls (eye or otherwise) and invests them in the four-woman circus of dates, shoes, dinners and fashion (and of course, sex) that is New York City. The storylines are catchy, the women are hot, the dialogue is amazing, and the sex? It’s great. So great, in fact, that it recently garnered the show’s standout sister, Sarah Jessica (yes, she’s married to Ferris) Parker, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.

Yes, the above is all things said before; all things already articulated, but wait, there’s more. There is the inevitable discussion of the show’s impact on sex in the millennium and the buzz-topic of sexual revolution, which has probably been previously illuminated by the media at large, but I will delve into the topic and shame my moral high-ground because I have seen the effect of the show first hand on my family. It was my mother who first began to watch it, a television connoisseur, my mother will credit herself as being the “viewer who viewed when no one was viewing” of the prime time TV world. She “discovered” Friends back in the early 90’s when she was one of the few saps in America who found herself not finding the remote to channel surf in desperate anticipation of Mad About You. Without the clicker, and 23 minutes until Mad About You, my mother trusted NBC with her sanity and sat through the pilot and continuing episodes of Friends, which she began to love along with the rest of the nation. It caught up to cultural visionaries like my mom, and six stars were born. Flash-forward to the late 90’s to find my mother, the cultural visionary, was sitting down to test the waters with the first episode of the much-talked-about HBO series about sex and nightlife in Manhattan. Once again, the “sleeper” show awakened the nation and now everyone in my family watches the show on Sunday nights.

To some, the show’s content can be quite offensive, but like it or not, the hot dialogue in the show has started a dialogue about sex in otherwise sex-silent places, or it has at least broken down some barriers between what evils we can see or hear in the same room (or house watching on a different TV) with our parents, siblings, lovers and friends. The fact that I can watch the show with my mother and have Miranda Hobbes discussing her beloved vibrator without my mother flipping out or gasping or without me slitting my wrists in total embarrassment says a whole lot about what that show has done for our sexual conversational skills. Maybe I just have a cool mom. However, if watching the bawdy show is a sign of cultural aptness and sexual revolution, then maybe I have a cool family. Because on Sunday nights at my house, you may hear the squeals of the four woman partaking in the pleasures of the flesh (and Manolo Blahnik shoes) in double sound because one or more of my family is camped out in one room watching in awe of debauchery, while a second contingent is staked out in another area in similar fashion.

I find that I can talk to my mom and sister more about sex and they also have more “mother-daughter” space in the realm of sex and passion to speak to one another because we have all had the ice broken for us. Among my friends and acquaintances, the discussions of sex and relationships seem to be more descriptive and explicit (without being too much information) along with the advent of Sex and the City, even if they may or may not have seen the show, simply because there are so many people who have seen the series who are clearing the airwaves by talking about the sex on the program and sex in their own lives. Some people may think that this is the next circle of hell, that we’re all becoming desensitized to sluttery, promiscuity and sex before marriage, but I feel that this new show and dialogue is more a sign of progress rather than a glimpse of the “four whores of the apocalypse” ushering in the annihilation of man and womankind. At the root of sex and relationships is said to be communication. At the root of the very chic and provocative series, Sex and the City lays the strong communication between four sexy, smart, and sometimes single women who are making love, relationships and 5th Avenue their battlefield, and I am very happy to hear more of their communiqu