A Love Note to New York

“One of the best things about New York is that on any given night there are a million things to do,” writes newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) on her laptop. “One of the worst things is trying to pick one.”

There are many ways to light a torch.

Salutes to New York have been arriving in waves since Sept. 11, surely all of them sincere and heartfelt testimonials to the character, backbone and resilience of the wounded metropolis and its residents.

Among the tenderest, though, and surely the subtlest, is one that was not even intended as a memorial.

This is not a Gershwin tune or Woody Allen ode to his beloved town. It’s a love note to the city that originates, of all places, in a bawdy comedy series about four women who worship orgasms, freely use the fornicate word and tend to run through New York men like egg creams.

Emmy-winning “Sex and the City” is not about urban cutups, though. Nor does it light G-spots like Broadway marquees, although its libido soars. It long ago ceased being about just laughter or even sex, having joined TV’s tiny club of select comedies that touch minds and hearts as well as funny bones.

Yet how does such a series--one bolted to Manhattan geographically and emotionally--address what happened to the twin towers at the city’s World Trade Center? How will it honor thousands of New York victims when returning Sunday with the first of six new episodes that finish out the season?

Here’s how: Without black crepe, teary tributes, huge swells of emotion or overt references to tragedy. That’s because this set of half-hours was shot before Sept. 11.

Nonetheless, executive producer Michael Patrick King has his characters somehow meeting the challenge of that nightmare merely by celebrating New York, as they always have done. There are no direct references to ground zero, of course, only this poignant addendum that King attached to the Feb. 9 season finale as it was edited:

Dedicated to our City of New York ...

Then, now, and forever.

“When it happened, I thought, ‘How do we keep going?’” King said from New York about his series. “Well, we keep going the way the city keeps going.”

King said that even if filming had not wrapped before the terrorist attack, he “would never have done a specific Sept. 11 thing. That would seem somehow macabre.” As for next season, there will be references to what happened, he said, but “not a flashback to where the girls were” on that day. “We’ll try to find a balance.”

That may be dicey in these edgy times when just about any contemporary series can be blindsided by news events. “I keep wondering where people will be in June when [next season’s] 12 episodes air,” King said.

His “Sex and the City” characters are still survivors, still works in progress when resuming their lives on HBO Sunday. Carrie’s live-in nest with her tolerant fiance, Aidan (John Corbett), is under stress, as is Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) marriage to middle-aged preppy Trey (Kyle MacLachlan). Hot-blooded publicist Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is naturally having torrid sex without strings, this time with her equally robust client, hotel mogul Richard (James Remar). Yet that alien sensation growing inside her: Could it be an attack of monogamy? And pregnant Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) belly and self-doubts about motherhood are swelling as fast as Carrie’s panic about marriage.

“I’m missing the bride gene,” Carrie says in a coming episode. “I should be put in a test tube and studied.”

No series--not even NBC’s “Law & Order” trio--has a New York state of mind as this one does, albeit crimeless and slum-less. Manhattan wallpapers “Sex and the City,” from cabs and rent-control apartments to a scene in the finale that was shot inside the Museum of Modern Art with huge Pollock and Monet canvases as backdrops.

NBC’s “Seinfeld” had its New York coffee shop for chitchat, and so does “Sex and the City,” one difference being that, additionally, these women make all of Manhattan their coffee shop. Some of the show’s best dialogues occur on the street. When Miranda tells Carrie she “faked a sonogram” in the Jan. 20 episode, the city is bustling around them. Just as the Columbus Circle fountain fills the frame majestically when Carrie and Aidan have a pivotal talk about their future.

This episode affirms that outside events can sometimes imbue art with meaning not intended when it was created. It is beautifully written by Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky and directed by Alan Taylor, and its emphasis on walls separating people can be taken as a metaphor for Sept. 11, when the unifying force of adversity caused barriers dividing New Yorkers to come crashing down with the twin towers.

And how was King to know when he wrote and Martha Coolidge directed the amazing, affectionate, appealingly sentimental season finale, titled “I Heart New York,” that a coming terrible event would magnify its resonance? Or that its sweet nostalgic sadness would deliver misty eyes and lumps in the throat related to real-life suffering?

How sentimentally does “Sex and the City” depart? There’s a carriage ride in Central Park under the stars, and instead of somber funereal music, the stereo sounds of “Moon River” courtesy of Andy Williams and Henry Mancini echo from an earlier time.

“I’m always surprised when anyone leaves New York,” says Samantha, referring to a person they all know who is moving to Napa, Calif. “I mean, where do they go?”

So total is Carrie’s devotion to the city (you might also call it provincialism) that she, too, finds moving away unthinkable. “New York, New York,” she says to her traveling friend, trying to make sense of this inexplicable act by someone she always found so reasonable. “Aren’t y’gonna miss it?”

She doesn’t get the reply she wants. Nor should she necessarily, for the shine given the apple since Sept. 11 is largely cosmetic, and the systemic problems confronting New York remain. When you hear angry complaints about them again you’ll know New Yorkers are finally healing.

But romantics will always have “Sex and the City.”

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“Sex and the City” airs Sunday nights at 9 on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17).

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard .rosenberg@latimes.com.