The end times are upon us:
Has sexual anthropologist Carrie Bradshaw run out of questions?
Or is it that when women grow up, they stop trying to understand what makes relationships work?
Probably neither.
But after six lubricious seasons and 91 episodes, the 45-minute final installment of HBO's Sex and the City will air at 8 tonight, with an hourlong countdown special beginning at 7.
Only 91 episodes? Funny, it felt like so many more.
But it isn't just my local rag talking about the end of the show. Seems like all the major news outlets are getting into the act:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte say adieu on Sunday night to a nation captivated for six years by their frank sex talk, dating hijinks and outrageous outfits on HBO's "Sex and the City."
The show, which has been the subject of books and university courses and may become a feature movie, touched a chord with women who saw something of themselves in the characters struggling to find love, happiness and great shoes.
There's plenty more to be had: CNN's Wolf Blitzer has an interview with creator Darren Star, whom you may remember as the creator of such weighty TV fare as Melrose Place. And everyone from USA Today to the New York Times are falling all over each other to sum up the Sex and the City experience for the rest of us hopeless plebes.
I admit, I underestimated this show's appeal to women in flyover country: women who'd just as soon spend $300 on a pair of Manolo Blahniks as flush a payheck down the toilet. And yet (and ignoring the whole "university courses" angle), it seems like the amount of attention given to the show's imminent demise is a bit much.
What's the attraction? I ask this as a man who - while not naming names - knows many women near and dear to his heart who have been following the last season with the same unhealthy fascination usually reserved for fans of Babylon 5 and Buffy. It can't be the longevity of the series...hell, six seasons doesn't even outdo Perfect Strangers, and I can remember a nationwide sigh of relief when that dog finally called it quits. Same for Full House, which cast a pall over our great nation for eight years. Was it Sarah Jessica Parker's Doogie Howser-esque musings that drew audiences in? What about the vicarious boning of every man you ran into at the health club, a la Kim Cattrall?
Maybe it's something more prurient. Is dishing about the size of your boyfriend's penis groundbreaking television? Can all of you sympathize with Carrie when she has to choose between the hot, successful financier(?) Mr. Big and the hot, successful artist Aleksandr Petrovsky? How hard is it for everday women to relate to Samantha when she contracts breast cancer, even though you know her health insurance will cover everything but the wig?
Everyone wants to fall in love. I understand. But I'm afraid Sex and the City's legacy is going to be this manufactured parallel universe where every man who's not a goddamn cheating scumbag is either physically or emotionally unattainable. That's entertainment.
Whatever. One more show and I can start looking forward to the next season of The Wire.
Did you see the SNL parody of SITC? Christina Aguilera's Kim Cattrall impression was.... shockingly good.
Sure fire ratings winning formula: plot and characters to appeal to women with the occasional flash of nudity to appease their boyfriends/husbands/lovers. Can't miss.
You are SUCH a man.
The show was groundbreaking because women got to use the technical, scientific names of their own body parts and functions...ON TV!
No longer was the "vagina" shamed by the grade-school "hoo-ha!" And the archaic trappings of romance novels, like "mounds" and "arousal," could be replaced with "tits" and "fucking!" The shackles of oppression were cast free, and Earth Mother Gaia burned both her bra and chastity belt for oppressed women across this great land!
(But I still have no idea what that "clitoris" thing they kept yammering about was. They way those sailor-mouthed tramps went on about it, you'd think that it might be important, like maybe having something to do with a female...what's that other word they always said...um, "orgasm?"
Sheyeah, right...the unhealthy belief in imaginary nonsense like a "clitoris" or "female orgasm" is what I'd expect from fans of Babylon 5 and Buffy.)