Sex and the City: Season Six, Part 1 HBO Home Video Sex and the City: Season Six, Part 2 HBO Home Video   Reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum	Sex and the City was, from the outset, one of those must-see shows that grew more lustrous with age. Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show three decades ago, Sex and the City was about a girl and her friends, all trying to make their way in the big city. Of course, as an HBO program, it had, shall we say, a bit more latitude to explore the more prurient areas of Carrie's life. For example, while Mary Richards' stress level shifted with her boss Lou Grant's mood, Carrie's shifted with how her date performed the night before (and with how well her Manolo Blahniks matched her outfit on any given day). Like Mary, Carrie had her best girlfriends -- Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha -- each about as different from the others as you could get. Carrie (played by Sarah Jessica Parker), the writer of a weekly column called "Sex and the City," was the girl in love with the city itself; whatever it provided was a thrill. It was through her eyes that the show found its voice, usually punctuated with the questions she posed in each episode. Miranda (played by Cynthia Nixon) was the lawyer who seemed resigned to playing the role of the man in her relationships -- yet who longed to find a man who'd actually want to be the man. Charlotte (played by Kristin Davis) was the New Yorker so in tune with the city's posturing that her last name was even York. Charlotte longed for the New York life everyone dreams of, yet found ultimately that that life wasn't all it seemed. Samantha (played by Kim Cattrall) was a PR queen who lived for sex. She bedded whoever she could, whenever she could, however they wanted. Lots of fun, virtually no discretion. For a while, these women seemed to bounce from man to man, with storylines that were mostly clever. But even when they were contrived, Sex and the City never stooped as low as, say, Seinfeld for a laugh. It was content to find the humor in its characters' daily -- or nightly -- lives. Based on the book by Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City was soap, but it was hypnotic, brilliant soap, and it defined Sunday night television for six seasons. When it ended, my wife and I were suddenly at a loss as what to do on Sunday nights before bed. For so long, we'd talked about Carrie and Big and Aiden and Alexandr and the other girls and their endless assortment of guys. Now what? Well, the answer lies in DVD. Thankfully, the last -- and perhaps the best -- season is now available, in two separate DVD packages. This is the season that saw Carrie hook up with Mikhail Baryshnikov. In which Miranda and her baby find a husband and father in the man who was under their noses all along. In which newly-Jewish Charlotte and her husband struggle with infertility. And in which Samantha finally commits to a relationship, and then discovers she has breast cancer. It was an amazingly rich season, and it managed to bring new levels of life to these women who we already knew so well. The actresses seemed to lay back a little, trusting their characters and their scripts and their audience a bit more, allowing the magic to happen naturally, versus working so hard to make it happen as in seasons past. The season was a joy every week, and just as the ending of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was both so right and so sad, so was the ending of Sex and the City. We learn what happens to these women, yet still there are no pat answers. Instead, in the spirit of Carrie's weekly newspaper column, there are just questions of the sort that can either shape whole lives or be dismissed out of hand, depending on your mood. The DVDs have a few bonus features, such as deleted scenes and a fascinating farewell documentary -- but the truly special thing about Sex and the City is the show itself. To go too far behind the scenes of this everlasting gem of a series would spoil the magic and answer too many questions. And besides, I think Carrie would almost consider it bad taste even to ask. | January 2005   Tony Buchsbaum is the author of Total Eclipse. He writes advertising for a large marketing firm and is building a small book publishing company in Lawrenceville, NJ, where he lives with his wife and sons.	Carrie (played by Sarah Jessica Parker), the writer of a weekly column called "Sex and the City," was the girl in love with the city itself; whatever it provided was a thrill. It was through her eyes that the show found its voice, usually punctuated with the questions she posed in each episode.