Along those lines, last week we caught actor John Corbett canoodling and clinking beer bottles with actress/model Bridget Moynihan at a Chelsea watering hole. (Moynihan plays Mr. Big's new wife, Natasha; Corbett plays an object of Carrie's affection beginning in Episode 5.) Corbett was so inspired, it seemed, by his portrayal of the amorous Aidan, that he pulled down his jeans in front of this reporter to prove that he wasn't wearing underwear, adding that he was having the time of his life on the set. Ah, yes, summer in the city.

The June 4 premiere, titled "Where There's Smoke," exploded like a flame in an oil drum. In it, the slutty Samantha (played by Kim Cattrall) busts a move with a brawny firefighter who, true to he-man form, throws her up against the back of a fire engine and takes her standing up. The aforementioned scene, which could have been lifted straight from some late-night Cinemax softcore booty ball, elicited gasps and giggles from viewers. Days after the episode aired, women were still congregating by water coolers and in stairwells, sniggering with delight.

"The show is definitely more crass and has become more of a fantasy than it was," says ex-sex columnist Amy Sohn. author of "Run, Catch, Kiss." "The truth of the matter is, when I sit down with my female friends we talk about how we feel, and the tenor of the conversations is not that X-rated. So to women it's alluring because we would like to think we're as salty as the women on the show are. And at the same time it functions as a fantasy for men because men are really easily aroused when women talk dirty."

Blame it on the show's creators, who have written the Kim Cattrall character of Samantha Jones as the brazen hussy to end all brazen hussies. "I don't think a guy has ever gotten me that wet," Samantha gushes to the girls after the aforementioned fireman fling. "And let me tell you about his cock!" In fact, if episodes 1 and 2 are any indication, this is the season Cattrall, 43, will finally shrug off the monkey that was "Mannequin." Her role not only demands precise comic timing and sharp delivery, but nerves and buns of steel as well (she seems to disrobe in every episode).

"Kim is absolutely amazing. She just purrs in that role," says Degen Pener, entertainment editor for Details magazine and an avid fan. "She likes to get it and she likes to get it a lot. And she's not apologetic about it." Cattrall is such a knockout -- in talent and titillation -- that the show's producers may have a Christine Baranski/Cybill Shepherd situation on their hands if she continues to upstage Parker.

But forget the great one-liners and you've still got a show that consistently raps the upper registers of the raunch radar, if only because of the peculiar predicaments it presents. Take, for instance, anal sex. Or what to do when your lover's penis is too big (smoke a joint and pray for the best). Or the best way to respond when your charming and attentive new boyfriend wants to take a shower with you ... and get peed on. As the show's creators seem well aware, cross-dressing and blowup dolls are passé, too 20th century. Real men nowadays want it all: the beautiful woman, the successful career, the golden shower.

"I think the show is strongest, and appeals most to women, when the show's writers pinpoint things that haven't really been talked about before," says Sohn, who points out how gleeful she felt when Carrie discovered that her ex's new wife couldn't spell. "In the same way 'Seinfeld' tapped into the self-centeredness of people, 'Sex and the City' taps into certain things women care about and focus on. And viewers feel cool that they 'get it.'"

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