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  • Indigo Girls

    The late-80s bloom of radio-friendly female folkies came and went, as did the Lilith Fair phenomenon. But the Atlanta duo of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray hasn’t faded away. Their gift for hook-laden harmonies is part of the reason, but most of the credit for the Girls’ longevity is due to the fact that they’re both smart, accomplished songwriters. The contrast between Ray’s uptempo, punk-influenced rockers and Saliers’ more sedate, thoughtful folk has kept a liveliness to their collaboration from their breakthrough single “Closer To Fine” to their latest album, Become You . Getting away from the heavy production of the guest-packed 1999 disc Come On Now Social , Become You goes back to basics, aiming at a more acoustic feel with just a few backup musicians. It’s full of ruminations on the rocky road of love, but also sends a few salvos out to the political world, notably the title track’s stab against Southern racism and “Nuevas Senoritas,” a shout-out to Mexico’s Zapatista rebels. State Theatre, (612) 339-7007

  • Amelie

    If sweetness were a crime, then this movie would be a capital offense. Lucky for us that’s not the case. This movie is one of the most delightful and hope-filled creations to grace the big screen in years. Perhaps that’s because Audrey Tautou is as resplendent, charming, and beautiful as her namesake, Audrey Hepburn. Or because Mathieu Kassovitz is more waifishly dreamy than Mr. Smith tripping off to Washington. Maybe it’s that the oddball cast of supporting characters are a bunch of lovers weaving themselves into our heart like our own children at a school play. Certainly director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant know how to concoct an inebriating potion out of beauty and zaniness. With equal mastery, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel has a magician’s slight of emotion and flair for the pleasingly surreal. In the end perhaps Amelie’s true appeal is that it’s a fairy tale, and fairy tales are simply as good for us now as when we were seven. Whatever it is, DVD quality will only make this tour de eye candy all the more tasty. Careful, though. When our heroine looks into the camera it might be you who melts to the floor.

  • M*A*S*H Season Two (1973) Collector’s Edition

    There are two types of M*A*S*H fans: those who enjoyed the entire 11-year run, watching the rotating cast develop from two-dimensional joke machines to nuanced, complicated characters, and those who enjoyed the first three seasons (the Henry Blake-Frank Burns years) for its farcical tone and rapid-fire verbal jousting. The latter crowd abandoned the show when it started getting too serious and preachy. Whatever your affiliation, this three-volume set offers some M*A*S*H classics, including “The Sniper,” where Radar and Henry are trapped in the showers by a gunman thinking he’s firing on MacArthur’s headquarters, and “A Smattering of Intelligence,” where Hawkeye and Trapper John trick Col. Flagg and another intelligence officer into believing Frank Burns is a traitor—one convinced he’s a Communist, the other thinking he’s a fascist. Most of the 24 episodes here are deftly directed by former child actor Jackie Cooper (Treasure Island) and featured guest stars include Teri Garr, Joan Van Ark, John Ritter, Burt Young, Pat Morita, and Allan Arbus (photographer Diane’s widower) as Dr. Sidney Freedman. Both types of M*A*S*H fans can enjoy this collection in English, French, or German, and with or without that great I Love Lucy-era laughtrack.

  • The Royal Tenenbaums

    Writer-director Wes Anderson’s third feature film, The Royal Tenenbaums, is set in New York. That is, the enchanting New York of post-World War II, of glamorous old hotels, of The New Yorker in its prime. Gene Hackman plays Royal Tenenbaum, an absentee father who attempts to reinsert himself into his family by faking terminal illness. The siblings, all former child prodigies who have since self-destructed, have made their way back to their childhood home and under the care of their archeologist mother Etheline (Angelica Huston). Each child—struggling playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), washed-up tennis pro Richie (Luke Wilson), and tortured widower Chas (Ben Stiller)—must deal with Royal’s return in their own way, while coming to grips with their own disintegrating lives. As with his previous works Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, Anderson blends humor and pathos with just the right touch of sentimentality. Ex-Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh has composed an eclectic soundtrack that includes his own interludes, as well as gems from Nick Drake, Nico, and Elliot Smith. The DVD extras are pretty standard: behind the scenes footage, outtakes, interviews, and the like. But this is one you pick up for the feature, not the bells and whistles.

  • Burning to Know

    I realized this weekend, with a sense of horror and shame, that I don’t know a damn thing about the world I live in, and I just can’t go on like this. So I did some searching around on the web, and I came across some advice from a soldier in Kandahar who says that if I want to imagine what it is like there, I should put a handful of dirt in my mouth and set myself on fire. I see that breaking out of my cave isn’t going to be easy. After all, my world didn’t shrink overnight. I barely saw it happening.

    As a college freshman and an aspiring writer rooming with my sister and taking poetry classes at the U of M with John Engman, I was set on a course of political activism and outreach, even if it was youthfully shallow. I went through a short phase of going to protests with my friend Adam, wearing all black, chain-smoking Marlboro lights, and drinking diet soda by the pitcher. I wore old men’s overcoats scrounged from thrift shops and started dyeing my hair just a little more auburn than it already was. It was exhilarating, but short-lived, because within two years I was engaged, within another year married, and within weeks of the vows, pregnant. Out with the protests and the Marlboros and diet sodas and hair dye, in with the cottage cheese and vitamins.

    During that pregnancy, I began working full time in sales management and gained about 60 pounds. Instead of black turtlenecks, I found myself donning floral hand-me-down maternity frocks that I tried and failed to pass off as business attire. I barely recognized myself and wondered if I ever would again.

    When my beautiful daughter was born, I experienced a fantastic post-partum elation. I was so overjoyed to have a miraculous, tiny, gray-eyed daughter that those extra 53 pounds still flopping around on my body and the lingering pain of childbirth became almost irrelevant. So did the rest of the world’s problems. My single mission was to shield my daughter from all harm.

    Back home from the hospital, my then-husband brought me—along with the standard bouquet—a gift that underscored my joy in the most poignant way imaginable. I found it when I walked into our bedroom, where the open windows let in the comforting aroma of processed oats from the General Mills factory across the street. There, atop my small, scratched wooden dresser sat a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi and a hard-pack of cigarettes.

    Gross, yes, but exactly what I needed in the moment: a signal that someone other than me remembered the part of me that was not an Earth mother, not a floral smock. The part of me that had barely invented a grown-up identity before impending motherhood turned me on my head.

    I couldn’t actually smoke the cigarettes or drink the poison, because I was breastfeeding, a state of affairs that went on for a total of 10 virtually uninterrupted years and two more children. Eventually, the Earth mother chased off the budding intellectual activist for good.

    Or so I thought, until this past weekend, when several small events jolted me out of a thick fog. It started on a Friday afternoon when I left town with my friend after the last day of school for a short getaway in Stillwater. By the time we reached the inn, I was beginning to lose my focus. When I awoke on Saturday morning, utter disorientation had taken over.

    At first, I thought it might simply be the horizonless intoxication a teacher feels after passing through that celebrated portal from the school year into the heat of summer. Since my friend and I are both teachers, this theory would add up nicely. But no, I think there’s more at work here. I mean, have you ever had that vaguely bizarre feeling of… not having the foggiest notion of who you are?

    You think I’m exaggerating. But I’m not so sure. Because yesterday, after 23 months of uncertain denial, my divorce decree arrived in my mailbox. I—a child of divorce, who spent my whole childhood and young adulthood vowing that if I ever got married, it would be forever—am now officially a single parent, a divorcee, a marriage failure, a head of household in a “broken family.”

    And through the fog I holler, so what? Can I imagine stuffing a handful of dirt into my mouth and lighting myself on fire? That’s still the question at hand, and at the moment the answer is no. So I’m going to step out of my cave and start trying.

    Jeannine Ouellette is Associate Editor of The Rake.

  • Road-Tripping Through the Dew

    Last year my friend Terry moved back to Nashville to take care of his ailing mother. Last month, when she passed away, I packed my kids, 11 and 14, in the car and drove an unplanned 820 miles in 15 hours to be with him. We left on a Thursday at 5 a.m. I worried about keeping two kids in the car like that, like veal, but we had to rocket if we wanted to make the memorial service. I had $100 in my pocket and no cash in my cash card until Friday. No fast food, no amusement parks.

    The kids got into the spirit of the trip—after all, three days off school is three days off school. We ate PBJ’s and hard-boiled eggs out of the cooler in the back like an America’s Most Wanted family. After a period of silence, somewhere before Kentucky, I heard from the backseat. “Mom, make Isaac stop touching me.” My spine froze. I looked in my rearview mirror to find two dust-covered faces with puffy, punch-drunk eyes and dry, angry mouths.

    I pulled off at the next station to fill up the tank. After paying, I had 60 bucks left. I looked at the kids, who were tussling by the diesel pump, whisper-fighting through clenched teeth. They’d hit the wall. Getting back in the car would be a big mistake. In the distance, just off the highway I saw a motel sign that read “Rooms $39.95. Cable, Indoor Pool.”

    The Budget Inn was two stucco buildings, the main two stories, the other a long strip of rooms facing a swampy field, a “they’ll never find your bones” field. We parked in the deserted lot, walked to the front desk, and rang the bell. A narrow-eyed old troll wearing a Peterbilt cap sprang forth and asked me what I wanted.

    “I’d like one of your $39.95 rooms, please.” I said. He sized us up. Single woman traveling with two homicidal kids. Easy pickings.

    “Don’t got no rooms for $39.95. That’s last month’s special. Ain’t changed the sign yet. Room for you plus two gonna run $45.” “Fine,” I lied. “I’ll take it. I’d like a room in the main building, by the pool.” I dug in my pocket. I’ve been a woman traveling alone before. You always have to stay in the main building. It’s where people can hear you scream. It’s also where the free “coffee” is in the morning. “That costs extra,” smiled the Troll. “You want budget rate, can’t be by the pool. Gonna have to be in the strip.”

    “How much for a room by the pool?”

    “$75.”

    I looked out the window into the empty parking lot and laid my money down.

    “I only have $60. We’ve been on the road all day and we’re tired.” The troll snatched up the small pile of bills on his counter. “S’okay,” he smiled magnanimously. “We getcha by the pool. You the only folks here tonight.”

    The kids swam. I took a tepid shower, and we tumbled into bed. I woke up at 3 a.m. to hear puking in the bathroom. My daughter had too many hard-boiled eggs. I stayed awake till 5 a.m., then roused the kids to get back on the road. I turned to my son, still snoring face down next to me, and nudged him.

    “Honey. We have to get moving. You can sleep in the car.” In response, he lifted his sweet, sleepy head, and spray-vomited all over the bed. The kid was set on mist. He sputtered an apology, and I cleaned him up. We got our stuff together to make a hasty retreat. I glanced around the room to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind. I walked to the bed, and pulled the covers over the mess like covering a corpse at a crime scene. Our gift to Rumplestiltskin. Under normal circumstances, I’d have rinsed the sheets in the sink, but 60 bucks is 60 bucks, and you get what you pay for.

    Colleen Kruse is a Twin Cities actress and comedian, mscolleenkruse@hotmail.com

  • Affirmative Inaction

    Years ago, my father told me a little rhyme he learned growing up in Mississippi. “If you are white, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” This little ditty seems to capture what happens when Minnesota publishers of white mainstream publications put black people on the cover of their magazines. They simply do not sell as well.

    In April 2002, The Rake put a Somali woman on the cover to highlight a top story about strained relations between blacks and Somalis. According to The Rake editor Hans Eisenbeis, the issue had nearly twice as many returns as the previous issue which had Bob Dylan on the cover. “That issue was one of our strongest issues editorially. The writing was great. But people just did not pick it up. Tom [Bartel, The Rake’s publisher] warned me that putting a black person on the cover could be a problem.”

    Bartel admits that when he owned City Pages, he found that putting dark faces on the cover torpedoed the pickup rates. “We tried it enough times to know that we were taking a risk.” According to Rebecca Sterner, a Minnesota-based publishing consultant, “magazine covers with black faces just don’t sell as well. This is not just a Minneapolis problem. It is a national problem.”

    Illustrating her point, Sterner spoke about a major national magazine that featured Cosby Show kid Raven-Symone on its cover. The photograph was “gorgeous.” Yet the issue bombed. “The magazine was very frustrated. They thought the issue would fly off the racks.”

    Sterner believes there are two explanations—one harsh and the other a bit more politically palatable. “One could simply say these things happen because we are a racist society. The more charitable view is that people are more comfortable buying a magazine when they can identify with the cover subject.”

    Brian Anderson, editor of Mpls-St.Paul magazine, insists that “it is the topic, not the person” that moves the magazine. However, he was not willing to categorically state that his staff did not talk about race when designing covers, conceding that the color of cover subjects is a “factor” in how well a particular magazine sells.

    One thing is certain. Local publishers are very skittish discussing race and magazine covers. Publisher Bartel says “it’s a dirty little secret” in the publishing business. Yet, no one other than Bartel was willing to say so on the record. “Publishers do not want to appear to be racist. And they do not want to appear to accuse their readers of being racist either.”

    I matched the covers of Mpls-St.Paul magazine and Minnesota Monthly with the actual newsstand sales numbers as verified by the Audit Bureau of Circulation for the past two and a half years to see if sales dropped when black people were on the cover. Most of the time they did, sometimes dramatically. For example, Mpls-St.Paul ran its annual “Top Docs” issue in January 2000, selling 19,165 newsstand issues. The next month’s cover featured African American Tonya Moten Brown, U president Mark Yudof’s right-hand person. Sales dropped 60 percent. According to Anderson, this drop was to be expected because the “Top Docs” issue is always such a big seller for them. Yet the next year, the issue following “Top Docs” actually did better than “Top Docs.” Hmmmm.

    Minnesota Monthly’s statistics tell the same story. In January 2001, the magazine put Paul Magers and his dog on the cover and sold 5,879 newsstand copies. When black Viking Robert Smith graced the next cover, newsstand sales nosedived nearly 40 percent.

    MSP editor Anderson still maintains that topics and notoriety are the deciding factors on who makes the cover cut. “If I have the opportunity to put Randy Moss or Kevin Garnett on the cover and it made sense, I would do it.” Unfortunately, Anderson misses the point. I certainly do not doubt that he will put a black person on the cover of his magazine again. But the numbers do not lie. The explanations and the rationalizations are endless as to why they do not sell as well. However, when it comes to selling magazines—as with nearly everything else in our society—race matters. Pretending otherwise does not make it so.

    Clinton Collins, Jr. is a Minneapolis attorney and commentator.

  • Summer Pleasures

    According to Sir Winston Churchill, the Royal Navy has only three traditions, “Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.” It’s certainly true that until only a few years ago every enlisted man in Her Britannic Majesty’s fleet had the right to a substantial tot of rum every day at midday. It was powerful stuff. The custom went by the board when it was agreed that perhaps it was not a good idea for sailors in charge of Exocet missiles and other lethal modern ordnance to spend their afternoons in a condition that would make it illegal for them to drive a car.

    Things were different in the days of sail. The wooden walls of an 18th-century ship enclosed a community that was often cold and always wet. Sailors needed their comforts. The British warmed their men with rum made from sugar plantations in the West Indies; so did notorious pirates like Captain Henry Morgan (he of the “Old Bold Mate of Henry Morgan” song) and Long John Silver (“Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum”).

    But as far back as the early 1600s, the Dutch provided for their sodden sailors by giving them a spirit called brandywine (literally “burnt wine”). To make it they needed to buy substantial quantities of relatively bland wine to distill. Much of this they shipped in from France, particularly from the port of Nantes, at the head of an estuary where the lovely river Loire runs west toward the Atlantic.

    To provide for the Dutch trade, the area around Nantes was planted with a heavy fruiting grape called the Melon de Bourgogne, which was brought in from Burgundy. People suggest the name of the grape comes from the round leaves on the vines, but it might as well come from the fact that these grapes taste like melons—which is to say, they taste like nothing much at all. When the Dutch export market dried up, the farmers around Nantes found a way to turn the grapes they were growing into a very palatable white wine called Muscadet, ideal for summer drinking, pleasing with a Welsh Rarebit (sharp cheese grilled on buttered toast), wonderful with fish.

    I recently considered a bottle of Domaine de la Cognardiere “Bella Verte” Muscadet (substantially less than $15 on the Minneapolis side of the Edina-Minneapolis frontier). It had an initial taste that was pleasingly round, perhaps like the smell of a sun-filled cabin that has not been opened up for some months, slightly sharp, pleasantly musty. But the full benefit came on breathing out. This generated a taste like the fume of two flints clashed together. I can see this taste mingling with the smell of burning sparklers, now apparently legal in Minnesota, on July 4.

    The secret of the wine lies in the way it is allowed to ferment on its lees, “sur lie,” as it says on the labels. The liquid derived from the grapes picked each autumn is left over the winter in casks together with the solid dregs, and it is this which gives depth and complexity of flavor to what might otherwise be a rather dull drink. Sometimes the dregs impart a slight but refreshing fizz.

    Muscadet is like nothing else. Many other wines are made along the banks of the river Loire. They vary from the delightful vintages of Pouilly-Fume, with their heavenly smell of blackcurrants, redolent of country gardens in midsummer, to beverages which in wet cold years would be better employed as battery acid. But most of these are made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape, none from the Melon de Bourgogne.

    This is a wine to sip in a hammock. If you need summer reading to go with it, try Flying Colours by C.S. Forester, a novel in which Captain Horatio Hornblower of the Royal Navy escapes from Napoleon’s France by drifting in a rowboat down the Loire, past the chateaux, past the vineyards. Life could be worse.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • Herbal Essence

    The first time I heard Martha Stewart say “herbs” with a pronounced H, I had to laugh thinking the übermom had a glitch in her matrix. Then I learned there was a whole H / no-H debate, and you had to pick your side with the courage of your convictions. Those who Proudly Pronounce feel as if they’re on the cutting edge, the smug in-the-know trendies looking forward and not back. The anti-H bunch feel like purists, traditionalists who won’t shy away from a pinch of French affectation.

    Herbs and spices have enchanted humans from the beginning. Sure their aromas have drawn us and their flavors have tantalized us, but we’ve discovered other uses such as healing our ailments, wooing our mates, telling our future, and cleansing our pasts. Herbs and spices have a rich role in the human history play, playing integral roles in creating and shaping cultures at points along the way.

    Officially the definition of an herb is a bit loose. An herb is classified as the fragrant leaf of any plant that grows in temperate zones and does not have a woody stem, which basically encompasses anything not a tree, bush, or shrub. Most people define an herb by use: Plants in the kitchen or medicine cabinet are herbs. Plants that are merely decorative are flowers—or just, well, plants.

    Historically “spices” referred only to tropical-zone aromatics, but the American Spice Trade Association defines spices as “any dried plant product used primarily for seasoning purposes” (my emphasis). Included are tropical aromatics (pepper, cinnamon, cloves), leafy herbs (basil, oregano, marjoram), spice seeds (sesame, poppy, mustard) and dehydrated vegetables (onions, garlic). So it seems that all herbs are spices, but not all spices are herbs. Whether you call it coriander or cilantro, the power comes not in the name but in the ability to bewitch.

    Some 5,000 years ago, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung compiled the first documentation on herbs. The Sumerians cataloged hundreds of plants on clay tablets around the same time. The ancient Egyptians were huge importers of Babylonian thyme and coriander and Chinese star anise, cumin, and saffron. The Egyptians were quite versed in the aromatic properties of herbs and spices. In fact they produced oils and essences specifically for the grave, hoping these treasured commodities would help ease the transition from this life to the afterlife.

    Maybe we should thank the Romans for kicking butt all over the world. As they conquered they spread their culture—and with it their herbal influences in the form of garlic, parsley, dill, mint, thyme, and sage. They further expanded local spice stores by creating a trade network throughout the far-reaching Empire, bringing cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and the like from the Orient.

    As new and exotic herbs and spices were being introduced through the Middle Ages, the secrets to their many properties were being unlocked. Fervent naturalists set out to compile exhaustive catalogues of information about herbs. These massive compendiums were like medieval Good Housekeeping mags, chock full of herbal gardening tips, a recipe or two, spiritual spells and witch repellent, medical advice, hair tonic ideas, and some general words of wisdom about life.

    Each herb became a story, symbolizing the needs of the people who used it, entangling their cultures in the roots of the plant. Rosemary is the herb of remembrance, stemming from the practice of medieval students who intertwined sprigs of rosemary in their hair to stimulate their brains during study. A presence at both beginnings and endings, rosemary was worn as a crown in Greek and Roman wedding ceremonies and placed in the hands of the dead during funeral rites. Mint has always been a bit “loose.” Named for a flirtatious water nymph, Minthe, who was changed into the plant by the underworld goddess Persephone, mint spreads promiscuously through Minnesota gardens. There are many different varieties of mint, but all were thought to be associated with lust and white magic. Except by the Victorians, who oddly decided that mint was the symbol of virtue. Garlic is practically as old as time. The Islamic tradition states that garlic sprouted in the devil’s footprints as he left Eden. If you are Buffy or Balkan, you believe garlic dispels vampires and can cure whooping cough, as long as you place a bulb between your toes.

    Herbal remedies and their healing properties have always existed hand in hand with an herb’s spiritual worth. Sage is from the salvia genus, from the Latin salvere—to save. Up to the 18th century sage was thought by doctors to be an efficacious fertility treatment, and if taken daily, would ensure a long life. Dill is named after an old Saxon word related to “lull,” and Southern Baptist mothers used to give the wrigglin’ chilluns bouquets of dill, fennel, and caraway to chew during church. Think it’s all ballyhoo and poppycock? Well, echinacea has been named the Herb of the Year 2002.

    Soothing the mind, body, and spirit has been the charge of herbs for centuries, but the majority of users today just want a sassier piece of chicken. The culinary advantage of herbs is forever exploited by young chefs who “discover” the varied uses of fennel or designate thyme as the It-flavor of the month. For those who wish to cultivate some ancient alchemy of their own, it’s as easy as popping down to Target and picking up an Herb Garden Kit.

    If you’re more inclined to large-scale herb gardening or heirloom varieties, there are many local resources to help you. The best and brightest on the scene is the Shady Acres Herb Farm, located in Chaska, with outposts at the Minneapolis and St. Paul farmers’ markets. They have unique varietals, crazy amounts of information, funky herbal dinners (on the farm), and you can order online. And they say “erb” not “herb,” but they probably won’t mock you.

    Shady Acres Herb Farm
    952-466-3391
    www.shadyacres.com

    Stephanie March is a Minneapolis writer.

  • Less Sex, More City

    These women have done it all. They’ve done threesomes, S&M, lesbianism, exhibitionism, shoe fetishism, tantric sex, phone sex, and Viagra. They’ve done younger men, older men, married men, gay men, uncircumcised men, small men, big men, too-big men, Catholics, baseball players, bartenders, millionaires, celebutantes, porn directors, personal trainers, drag queens, movie stars, sports fanatics, control freaks, alcoholics, politicians, firemen, doctors, bisexuals, underlings, liars, cheaters, thieves, and jazz musicians with ADHD.

    Thanks to the four vixens played by Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Sarah Jessica Parker, we know that sex with an ex can be depressing, that compromise can become compromising, that you can become impregnated by a man with one testicle, and that relationships and partial lobotomies go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

    We also know that it’s possible to afford a massive Manhattan apartment and a closet full of $300 stilettos on a writer’s salary, that a girl can feel perfectly comfortable hobbling down a crowded city sidewalk in the world’s raciest, most bizarre fashions, and that New York women pick and choose between available, attractive men the way the rest of us select liquid hand soap.

    For four years, Sex & The City has brought us dynamic caricatures of the sexually ravenous, urban, single woman in four flavors: sweet (Charlotte), sour (Miranda), spicy (Samantha), and bittersweet (Carrie). They’ve made us laugh, and they’ve consistently made unabashedly slutty behavior look like fun.

    Americans are not exactly known for their long history of fondly embracing promiscuous women. In fact, most of us can rail off the names of high-profile temptresses faster than state capitals: Monica Lewinsky, Fawn Hall, Jessica Hahn, Donna Rice, Gennifer Flowers, Anna Nicole Smith. While we’ve certainly had our fill of fictional male characters with strong sex drives—James Bond, Han Solo, Rhett Butler—when a strong female lead hits the sack, you know that either the hero’s about to fall, or a demon with a hatchet is about to bust out of the closet, his heart set on some messy Judeo-Christian vengeance.

    But as the show enters its fifth season, the only question left is this: What more can they possibly do? After jumping into bed with a steady flow of men (and women) from every walk of life, skin disease, and/or personality disorder, our casual sexperts must be exhausted. The show’s go-to formula certainly is. Instead of showering, shining those Manolo Blahniks, and slinking down to the theme bar du jour with the girls for the umpteenth time, we’d really rather crawl into bed with a box of Pop Tarts. Suddenly it’s easy to see why people get married. Because staying single for years on end is just way too much work.

    Over the course of Sex & The City’s last season, its writers seemed to sense that their one-trick pony had been beaten to death. Despite winning an Emmy and two Golden Globes, there’s only so long you can have all four of your leads hopping into bed with one special guest star after another, until each subplot features all the high-jinx and zaniness of your typical Love Boat story line. So instead, the girls got serious real quick-like.

    The writers seemed to toy with serious drama and depth the way a cat fiddles with a half-dead shrew before it loses interest and wanders off. The same dramatic turns that transfixed us last season—Carrie’s affair with a married Big, Miranda’s troubles with eminently likable bartender Steve—felt arbitrary and flat this season. Show after show, Charlotte is frustrated with Trey, despite the fact that the relationship was obviously destined to fail before they even got married. Show after show, Carrie is embroiled in some mundane drama with boyfriend Aidan, as played by John Corbett with all the feisty enthusiasm and unpredictability of dry wheat toast. And some of the dramatic turns weren’t just lacking in laughs, they were downright unfathomable: Fertility drugs that cause hormonal rage? Dogs with leaky diapers? Testicular cancer? These are dark twists best left in the hands of the masters of dramatic subtlety across the hall at Six Feet Under or The Sopranos.

    Which is not to say that the writers of Sex & The City don’t occasionally hint that they’re capable of a much greater range and depth. Strangely enough, the most satisfying episode of the season was the darkest. Miranda’s mother dies, and the way each woman responds to the event beautifully reflects her particular blend of coping strategies and dysfunctional tics: Charlotte kicks into neurotic preppy high gear, planning bouquets and fruit baskets and booking flights to the funeral, Carrie has a petite-sized nervous breakdown, and best of all, Samantha is utterly unfazed but suddenly can’t achieve orgasm, only to break down sobbing in the middle of the funeral like the class bully who weeps openly through the school production of Godspell. Denial wears many veils, indeed.

    Otherwise, it seems like the show’s creators have become so charmed by their own cleverness that they’re treading water, yet the show hovers around the level of cliche introspection (“Is a bird in the hand really worth two in the bush?” “Does love bite, and if so, will that bite become infected?”), instead of gracefully tackling complex subjects with humor as it’s done so well in seasons past.

    Will Carrie find a mate who’s appealing and multifaceted enough that we can stand him for more than two episodes in a row? Will Miranda’s experiences with a new baby fall into whining cliches? Will Charlotte transcend her prison of tedious yuppie desires? Will Samantha do anything but chase meaty boy toys? Most importantly, will it be funny?

    Lest we hold Sex & The City. up to HBO’s impossibly high standards, let’s appreciate what these women have done for us already. They’ve swilled and swaggered and squealed without a thought to their reputations or to whether oversized lapel flowers or bunny tails would ever really catch on with the wider population. Best of all, they’ve shown us that sluts’ dreams really do come true. Here’s hoping that our favorite sex fiends can mature gracefully, and continue to make us laugh while refusing to shy away from the complicated terrain of adult relationships.

    The fourth season of Sex & The City is now available on DVD. The fifth season premieres on HBO July 17.

    Heather Havrilesky eats Pop Tarts in bed in Los Angeles.