With these eight episodes, HBO's grand sitcom concluded, leaving untold numbers of women--and many men--feeling deprived. The six-year series certainly did not outlast its welcome; the final season is some of the best TV had to offer in 2004. In many ways, the eight episodes served as a single finale, with all four characters approaching a kind of destiny and happiness, the theme of this last half-season (which aired weeks after the first half). Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) continues her romance with Russian artist (Mikhail Baryshnikov), a flippantly arrogant man who's been around the block, but able to supply Carrie's needed desire for magic. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has settled down with Steve (David Eigenberg), but there is more that will change with her, including her address. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) continues to make baby plans now that the husband slot is filled quite nicely (Evan Handler). Samantha (Kim Cattrall) brings a good sense of drama to the show with a breast-cancer scare.

Going down the final stretch--and Samantha's cancer--gives the series a more serious tone, but there's always a jab to tickle the funny bone: Miranda's awkwardness with happiness, Charlotte's latest passion, Carrie typing someplace new, and Samantha getting into Paris Hilton territory. Like any series winding down, there is a wedding, a baby, old faces popping up, and some star-ladened new ones (like creative consultant Julia Sweeney as a nun). In the final two-part episode, "An American in Paris," Carrie faces her romantic destiny, but also solidifies herself as a fashion icon, an Audrey Hepburn for 21st-century television. In the penultimate episode, she asks her friends an emotional question: "What if I never met you?" Certainly fans can ask of themselves the same question and reminisce how much better TV became since they first tuned in these four women of the City.

C.K. Ogi

The commentary by C.K. Ogi prompted me to submit my first review. C.K. expressed a lack of credibility in Carrie's being attracted to Mikhail Barishnikov's character. According to C.K., it just didn't make sense. I think this is precisely the point. Love and our attraction to certain people seldom "makes sense". In fact it seems to me that the most obvious meant for each other couples are frequently the most unhappy. Simply put, you need some kind of challenge in the relationship. If both partners like the same cuisine, the same movies, the same art, etc., their lives are quickly going to become incredibly boring. On the other hand look at the more realistic relationships on the show. Miranda and Steve: a corporate lawyer and a bar owner. Samantha and Smith: a high powered publicist and a struggling young actor. Charlotte and Harry: a Jackie Onassis style beauty down to her bone marrow but who was willing to change religions for the man she loved and an unattractive but financially well off short bald Jew.

I believe that for most of us, if we look back on the high points in our lives the events going on at the time were new, challenging, even scary sometimes. But then we realize that these events were so fulfilling, so eye opening, that we find ourselves planning the same events for other friends or future partners. Every place that I travelled to in my life that I found to be an unforgettable experience, I eventually ended up returning to that place with a less adventurous friend.

If there was one thing I found rather hard to believe in the Paris episodes of Sex and the City, it was how quickly Carrie gave up on the city. What did she expect? It was her first trip to a foreign country, she didn't speak the language, she didn't know the culture. Of course it's' going to be scary and daunting and yes, depressing. I still remember my first two weeks in Paris. I was completely alone and unlike the Hollywood takes of "April in Paris", the sun literally did not come out once in two weeks. But I didn't just stay longer. I caught a train and went to Lyon and then to Nice. Although the weather still sucked, I was lucky enough to be in the area during the Cannes film festival and the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. I found wonderful shopping, and wonderful museums, and wonderful restaurants where I could spend a whole afternoon. Then on to St. Tropez to some of the most beautiful coast line I've ever seen.

Back to the series. In the end all of the characters were willing to make gut wrenching changes in their lives except for Carrie. Unless you count her decision to move to Paris but that never went anywhere. I think that says a lot about her character. If the series was about nothing else, it was about that urban creature that we find in every generation. The person who goes from being a poverty stricken twenty some year old to achieving some significant measure of success by their thirties except for one gaping hole. They are essentially alone. New York wasn't dead as Lexi Featherstone said in the Splat! episode; it had just become inhabited by a new generation that she was no longer a part of. In retrospect I think the series was about this transition that so many of us urban dwellers make. If you're lucky it can go as smoothly as Charlotte's and Miranda's and Samantha's but there will always be a Carrie that it doesn't go so well for. By the way in case you're thinking that Carrie achieved salvation in the end with Big, you're making a very big assumption. Given Big's history there is no reason to think that he has really fundamentally changed.

Thank You,

Steve K.

We're Addicted

Every night we are watching SEX AND THE CITY, which gets us in the mood for
hot loving with the moves we learned from the DVDs "Goddess Worship" and "NEW SEX NOW. "

Carrie and her girlfriends are so fiesty and provocative and sexy, it works like
a charm for night after night of steamy sensuous lovemaking, especially with what
we've learned from Clint Arthur.

The End (or The Beginning)

Season Six did a wonderful job in closing the arcs of the 4 New York women, but not tying everything up into a neat little package with a bow on top. It could be the end of one series, or the start of a new series.

One theory I had throughout watching the show (which I did not watch on HBO during its run, but started watching via DVD after the show ended its run), was that none of the women other than Carrie actually existed, that they were all various aspects of a whole personality. A viewer often wonders how the women could have ever met or become friends without a catalyst. For example, when or where would Samantha and Charlotte have met without completely hating each other at first sight? One Amazon reviewer said, rightly, that Carrie seemed to be always outclassed by her men, Big and Russian in particular. But when you combine all the women into a whole person, you get someone who would be a match for anyone or anything, including the City of New York. Yes, it's rather Freudian, with Samantha playing the Id, Charlotte the Ego, and Miranda the Super-ego. Or maybe Jungian, with each woman being an archetype - Carrie being the child who needs the other 3 archetypes to become a fully realized adult. S&TC never resorted to such gimmicks, but Season Six carries enough symbology that such a theory is possible without ever being overt.

All the characters were so delightful, from the primaries to the cameos. The 4 women all have to make difficult choices, and must give up something in order to gain something so much better. Their men - Big, Steve, Harry, and Smith - all become the men we wish we knew and loved. And their lives have all becomed entwined with ours.