My Creation! Is It Real?
To the delight of some and the horror of others, I've been working on a Sex and the City Timeline for a while now.
Even though I initially put it online some time ago, Real Life and Other Things have gotten in the way of being able to devote anywhere near my full attention to it, so it's very embryonic and incomplete at this point. I'm not even sure how much of it will be done before the premiere of Sex and the City 2 in a few weeks, but that's not so different from the process I went through with the Firefly Timeline when Serenity came out in 2005.
I haven't really been talking about this anywhere until now--the closest I'd gotten to addressing the concept at all in a post was quickly noting that the feature film is in the same continuity as the television series (as is the new sequel, of course). I just quietly put a link up on the timeline site and kept adding information, waiting to see who might come across it.
Despite having those vague thoughts about general continuity beforehand, it wasn't until I started rewatching xandersgirl's copies of Sex and the City on DVD that I began to seriously consider whether the whole thing would hold up to scrutiny.
To be frank, most non-genre series never get the timeline treatment (in any medium), perhaps because their fans realise that those series are (generally) not going to have as much attention paid to their continuity, by producers and viewers alike. A quick glance at the Television Timelines on my site bear this out, with only a few series not falling firmly in the science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror genres: Bonanza, Dawson's Creek, House M.D., Little House on the Prairie, Married...with Children, Once and Again, Veronica Mars, and The West Wing are it, out of over a hundred timelines, and I think most people would agree that those eight shows make for an odd assortment.
Sex and the City Executive Producer Michael Patrick King seems to acknowledge this point explicitly, admitting on the DVD commentary for "All or Nothing" the degree to which such a choice was deliberate:We use so sparingly any reference to anyone's parents, or past, because we feel the girls exist totally in the present for the audience, and they each have their own opinions about who they are.
Because of this tendency, most episodes in the first couple of seasons are quite standalone, with very little continuity between them. An episode in that era usually lasts between one and two weeks--long enough for one or more of the girls to start seeing a guy, discover a trivial flaw about him, and kick him to the curb, never to be referenced again. It's only at the end of Season Two, when Big and Natasha get together, that ongoing storylines start to provide more definite dates for events.
At that point, the relative timing of each episode becomes much more intricate and interconnected, with episodes mutually referencing one another more often, and the timeline as a whole becomes more problematic as a result...but I can go into more detail on that in future posts.
As I finally sat down and shared my thoughts on this process with you in my own "column," though, I couldn't help but wonder: Is anyone actually going to care?
Even though I initially put it online some time ago, Real Life and Other Things have gotten in the way of being able to devote anywhere near my full attention to it, so it's very embryonic and incomplete at this point. I'm not even sure how much of it will be done before the premiere of Sex and the City 2 in a few weeks, but that's not so different from the process I went through with the Firefly Timeline when Serenity came out in 2005.
I haven't really been talking about this anywhere until now--the closest I'd gotten to addressing the concept at all in a post was quickly noting that the feature film is in the same continuity as the television series (as is the new sequel, of course). I just quietly put a link up on the timeline site and kept adding information, waiting to see who might come across it.
Despite having those vague thoughts about general continuity beforehand, it wasn't until I started rewatching xandersgirl's copies of Sex and the City on DVD that I began to seriously consider whether the whole thing would hold up to scrutiny.
To be frank, most non-genre series never get the timeline treatment (in any medium), perhaps because their fans realise that those series are (generally) not going to have as much attention paid to their continuity, by producers and viewers alike. A quick glance at the Television Timelines on my site bear this out, with only a few series not falling firmly in the science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror genres: Bonanza, Dawson's Creek, House M.D., Little House on the Prairie, Married...with Children, Once and Again, Veronica Mars, and The West Wing are it, out of over a hundred timelines, and I think most people would agree that those eight shows make for an odd assortment.
Sex and the City Executive Producer Michael Patrick King seems to acknowledge this point explicitly, admitting on the DVD commentary for "All or Nothing" the degree to which such a choice was deliberate:We use so sparingly any reference to anyone's parents, or past, because we feel the girls exist totally in the present for the audience, and they each have their own opinions about who they are.
Because of this tendency, most episodes in the first couple of seasons are quite standalone, with very little continuity between them. An episode in that era usually lasts between one and two weeks--long enough for one or more of the girls to start seeing a guy, discover a trivial flaw about him, and kick him to the curb, never to be referenced again. It's only at the end of Season Two, when Big and Natasha get together, that ongoing storylines start to provide more definite dates for events.
At that point, the relative timing of each episode becomes much more intricate and interconnected, with episodes mutually referencing one another more often, and the timeline as a whole becomes more problematic as a result...but I can go into more detail on that in future posts.
As I finally sat down and shared my thoughts on this process with you in my own "column," though, I couldn't help but wonder: Is anyone actually going to care?