S_x And The Scissors

By James Poniewozik

A few seconds into Sex and the City, the HBO sitcom cleaned up so it can be rerun on TBS (starting this Tuesday), you notice something missing. It's not the sex; it's the samba. The opening credits are cut radically, bars of the Latin theme song snipped. What does a risque pay-cable show look like on basic cable? For one thing, shorter.

Sex and the City is not the first HBO show to have its reruns syndicated; The Larry Sanders Show has run on Bravo. But here the dirty talk and naughty bits are more integral. To phrase it like one of those koans sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) earnestly types into her laptop, Can you have Sex without all the sex?

A look at a few episodes from TBS (like HBO and TIME, a unit of Time Warner) shows that you can--sort of. The most conspicuous cuts are, surprisingly, not in the nudity--we lose breasts but not buttocks--but in the language. When Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the randiest and thus most excised character, trysts with her fireman lover, TBS cuts a scene of them humping against a fire engine. But it's more jarring when another fire fighter catches her trying on his uniform and yells, "Get the freak out of my freakin' gear! There's a freakin' fire!"

As a picture of urban reality, that's pretty freaked up. Yes, profanity can be a crutch for lazy minds. But used by good writers, it helps create character and place. And on Sex, the talk is ultimately more important than the action. In the original version of the episode The Real Me, Margaret Cho, playing a foul-mouthed fashion-show producer, personifies New York City: stressed out, uninhibited and slightly nuts but vital, driven and alive. Divested of her F bombs, her character practically disappears.

So does some of Sex's character, encapsulated in that now condensed credit sequence, in which Carrie wanders awestruck through Manhattan--then gets drenched by a bus that hits a puddle. It's part fantasy, part dirty reality--the chaos of city life, the comic messiness of sex. Even a judiciously censored version will inevitably tilt toward the fantasy. TBS's Sex is a fine, perceptive comedy; it's just not quite the same fine, perceptive comedy. The difference is the difference between making love and a certain gerund I can't write here. Both are wonderful things. But we all know they're not the same.

--By James Poniewozik