The 10 Best 'Sex and the City' Episodes, No Questions Asked
We know, we know—trying to make a definitive list of the best Sex and the City episodes?! That's almost as hard as trying to choose Carrie's best look from all six seasons. (Just kidding, that's easy, it's the Paris dress.) But for the show's 25th anniversary, we tackled the impossible. So grab a cosmopolitan, put on your favorite oversized men's shirt and get ready to debate. Here are the 10 best Sex and the City episodes, no questions asked. (Note: These aren't ranked, so feel free to put them in an order that suits your soul.)
Best Sex and the City Episodes
1. "The Chicken Dance" (Season 2, Episode 7)
Otherwise known as: the first one that really feels like SATC.
Tackling the unique trial-by-fire that is being a single woman at a wedding, this episode is where Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha hit their stride as characters. The writing manages to capture indignities like being the guestbook attendant and getting groped by someone's dad in ways that feel completely universal yet unique to each lead character, and striking that balance is what elevated SATC from a fun show to a great—and important—one.
2. "Ex and the City" (Season 2, Episode 18)
Otherwise known as: the one where Big gets engaged.
This might be the first episode in which Carrie's fully deranged main-character syndrome is on display: Singing "Memories" at the top of her lungs at a crowded bar! Lurking outside her ex-boyfriend's engagement party! Making dramatic pronouncements while a literal horse resists a bridle in slow motion! And that's a compliment. While fully reenacting a scene from The Way We Were with an ex might not be relatable to all viewers, the pain of seeing a former flame move on—and the exhilaration of realizing that now you get to move on, too—definitely are.
3. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (Season 3, Episode 12)
Otherwise known as: the one where "oh my God, Charlotte, please have sex before you accept an engagement ring," and "oh my God, Carrie, honesty is not always the best policy."
One of SATC's best and simultaneously most unbearable multi-episode arcs is Carrie's affair with Big and the devastation it leaves in its wake, and it's incredibly powerful (and awful) to watch Carrie look Aidan in the eye and confess. Like so many male HBO protagonists before her, Carrie was given space to be absolutely monstrous at times, and it's difficult to overstate what a groundbreaking creative choice that was. All that and Charlotte's realization that rose-colored glasses don't always make for rose-colored choices establish this episode as almost an embarrassment of riches.
Related: What Happens When Aidan Returns for the Sex and the City Reboot?
4. "My Motherboard, Myself" (Season 4, Episode 8)
Otherwise known as: the one where Carrie doesn't back up and the one where Miranda loses her mother.
Carrie makes some pretty baffling choices throughout the course of the series, but not backing up?! Seriously? It's hard to watch Carrie bat Aidan away as he attempts to support her through her hard-drive crash, and equally difficult to watch his try-hard energy tip into cringe territory. But what makes this episode one of the best is how it approaches the loss of Miranda's mother, managing to give equal weight to the grief of losing a parent and the grief of not having a partner to sit next to you at the funeral. Seeing Carrie step up to hold Miranda's hand as she walks behind her mother's coffin is a reminder of how—at its core, and at its best—this show is about how transformative women's friendships can be.
5. "I Heart NY" (Season 4, Episode 18)
Otherwise known as: the one where Big and Carrie say good-bye, Brady says hello and the show writes an inadvertent pre-9/11 love letter to New York.
This episode was written and produced before the September 11th attacks, but aired after, so while the show's "New York as a character!" angle could sometimes feel a bit overdone, here it feels perfectly lovely, accurate and devastating. Plus, there's no better metaphor for Big and Carrie's relationship than a romantic slow-dance to "Moon River"—cut short by a record that won't stop skipping. The episode also gets a more-than-honorable mention for making Miranda's transition into motherhood so uniquely Miranda. Her response to her child entering the world isn't gushing, head-over-heels love, but instead an admission that it feels incredibly weird.
6. "Plus One is the Loneliest Number" (Season 5, Episode 5)
Otherwise known as: the one where Carrie has a book party.
Most episodes are content to confine Carrie's career to her voiceovers, so it's refreshing that this one lets her work take center stage, if a little frustrating to see her focus so much on not having a date to the party to celebrate the release of her book. Even though Carrie doesn't start letting the weight of her accomplishment sink in until literally the last seconds of the episode, the payoff when she (with the help of a random limousine driver) finally celebrates herself is incredibly satisfying.
Related: All About And Just Like That Season 2
7. "I Love a Charade" (Season 5, Episode 8)
Otherwise known as: the one where Nathan Lane marries a woman.
SATC was great at being powerful, important and groundbreaking—but it was also good at being incredibly silly, as it is in this episode when Samantha breaks a window with a cantaloupe, Berger tries to ride a motorcycle, and Nathan Lane absolutely devours the scenery as a lounge singer. What takes this episode from good to great is how well it illustrates that a relationship doesn't have to make sense to outsiders in order to be good, right and real.
8. "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A Little" (Season 6, Episode 4)
Otherwise known as: the one where men just aren't that into you and women aren't likely to wear scrunchies.
The "He's just not that into you" episode spawned a book, a movie and a whole lot of conversation. What's remarkable is that it launched those pop-culture touchstones not by trying to be zeitgeist-y or trotting out a Very Special Episode—but by simply telling stories that resonated broadly. All that and an opportunity to see Jason Lewis dressed up as a sexy accountant? Outstanding.
9. "The Ick Factor" (Season 6, Episode 14)
Otherwise known as: the one where Carrie gets excessively wooed, Miranda gets married and Samantha gets cancer.
Carrie's swoon-worthy dates with Petrofsky are fun to watch, and seeing Steve and Miranda get married in a ceremony that is so quintessentially them is legitimately moving, but Samantha's cancer diagnosis is hands-down the most memorable aspect of this episode. Steve and Miranda make a promise in this episode, but it pales in comparison to the unspoken promise that Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda make as friends: to be there for Samantha whatever comes next.
10. "An American Girl in Paris" (Season 6, Episodes 19 and 20)
Otherwise known as: the (temporary) last one.
From the sweetness of Magda praising Miranda's love of her mother-in-law to the goosebumps-inducing delivery of the line "Go get our girl" to the satisfaction of seeing Carrie get a happy beginning with Big, this episode is basically everything a series finale should be. And if it seems a little too easy for this list to include an episode that is basically the length of a feature-length film, well, before too long, SATC would remind us that just because something is a movie doesn't make it good.
