[Ed. note: You've seen Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall on the talk-show rounds -- you know it's the last season of "Sex and the City." To shed new light on a show that's drawn many cultural critiques in the last five years, we had James Norton pick an episode and watch it for the first time]

The Taliban are unsympathetic dudes.

They have unkempt beards. They treat women abominably. They're irrational religious fanatics, and they implacably hate the West for its materialism and sexual immorality, among other things. Overall, they're slightly less lovable than a hard kick to the balls, depending upon the footwear involved.

But having recently watched 15 minutes of "Sex and the City," I suddenly have a much better understanding of where their critique of Western culture is coming from.

That's right -- a mere quarter-hour of everyone's favorite series had me ready to invite Mullah Omar over for a friendly game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Thank you very much. That's my article on "Sex and the City."

What?

Oh, you want me to defend my thesis? And I suppose you want an explanation of how I've come to such a sweeping judgment after a tiny sampling -- yeah, a mere drop in the bucket of the SatC universe.

You asked for this. Like life, this will be brutish and short.

For reference purposes, my encounter with SatC began (and ended) with episode 13 of season four. You can argue that the first season has much of the best material, and the characters are, at that point, still actually characters, and not caricatures. You can argue that you can't just jump into something as complicated and artfully crafted as "Sex and the City" -- you need all the back story, all the delicate nuances of character, and all the establishing details.

Fair enough. If that's your perspective, don't read this story as a sweeping indictment of an entire beloved series; read it as a story of one man watching part of a TV show and getting physically ill.

My discontent really began in earnest when Samantha blew her boss in the office. I've been led to understand that she is the show's "slutty" character, a statement akin to saying Uday was the Hussein family's "mean" relative.

At any rate: It's not cute to blow your boss in the office, particularly after he's done something as romantically cliched as giving you a pink rose (evocative, as the series drives home with an insistent voiceover, of his long, pink dick.) It's not daring or fresh. It's not reclaiming sexuality. It's stone-cold repugnant, and deeply unimaginative. It's actually much like that old Beetle Bailey cartoon where General Halftrack chases Miss Buxley around the desk, except that "Sex and the City" actually consummates the courtship, and Halftrack gets a hummer.

"Ah," you think, "the writer is a prude! He can't handle SatC's zesty embrace of urban, carefree, complicated and highly sexual relationships."

Like hell. I'm down with "Six Feet Under," which explicitly depicts messed up modern relationships, both gay and straight. The major difference: the relationships in "Six Feet Under" seem to be based on something other than income levels and mutual prurient interest.

Speaking of income levels: The show's materialism is, in a nutshell, a great demonstration of Why They Hate Us. Lurching from bistro to bistro, spending hundreds of dollars a week on footwear, the women and men of "Sex and the City" seem to divide their time evenly between bickering, whining, spending money, backstabbing people, and having sex.

Christ, I sound like an agitated 80-year-old.

But there it is: There was nothing liberating in the 15 minutes of show I watched before a fight between Carrie and her boyfriend, radio DJ Chris from "Northern Exposure," completely drove me from the room. The show featured nothing particularly funny, nothing transgressive, nothing fresh. The women highlighted weren't trailblazing anything but a path of vacuous sensualism and materialism so shallow that it would make Imelda Marcos look like Kant.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get to Target to do some turban shopping. I'm heading up to the cave this weekend, and I want to make sure I'm looking properly fanatic.