Splat...IS IT TIME TO STOP QUESTIONING

Do you remember what you were doing at 9:00 p.m CST on Feb 8th 2004?

I do and I was glued to the tube watching my favorite season of SATC. Remember! Remember? 

That season, that episode is just everything for me right now......

You die hard Sex and The City fans will travel back in time with a smile (or a frown) on your face remembering the possible end to the life long love affair with NYC. And those of you who have never seen an episode ... I highly suggest resolving this asap. There's no doubt that Sex and the City had some pretty hefty cultural influence, elevating once-niche luxury brands to household-name status, serving as inspiration for countless blogs and articles about dating and city life and, anecdotally anyway, leading to a huge uptick in brunching. But really, who knows how many people actually followed the show's siren call to Manhattan, only to face inevitable disappointment. Long story short you will blow through the six seasons in like a weekend! It's so great, thrilling, maddening at times.....I have them all memorized and often watch an episode a night before bed ...

So just to recap the best season in my opinion.....

The final season, broken into two parts, is the show’s glossiest and most creatively assured. And the fashion... we cannot forget the beautiful gems this season had to offer. I personally copied Carrie so hard with season 6.  The smartest thing the season does is set Carrie up with a guy who should fit her to a tee: Aleksandr Petrovsky is accomplished, interesting, incredibly handsome and charming, an urban sophisticate, and isn’t too interested in the conventional trappings of coupledom. (You can't help but like these two together. It's so whimsical and romantic...I mean don't get me wrong Alek comes with his share of issues ... but we ALL have issues. But the show’s incredibly sneaky pitch-perfect season finale is having Carrie learn that there is, in fact, a happy medium between the settled, boring life the show had long been allergic to and the free-wheeling, relatively rootless fabulosity it supposedly preached. In episodes like the winsomely affirming “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” Carrie investigates the weight and worth of expectation and tradition as one ages, the expected options seemingly starting to wink out of existence while other, odder ones flicker into being. (this episode alone is a whole blog post in itself. Her manolos get lost when she has to take them off attending a baby shower and is shamed by the party hostess for how much she spends on shoes and is only compensated for half... well we know in manolo world that 200.00 is only going to buy one shoe so she takes matters into her own hands ...and brings up a very valid point about the money we spend on our friends.... graduations, bridal showers, weddings, kids birthdays and thats great and all but if you are single in the city... where's our gifts?) 

Season 6 is the most grown-up the show ever felt, fitting for its final run. All the main characters begin gracefully closing one circle or another in this season. While dealing with breast cancer, Samantha enters into a relationship that is surprising not because he’s a younger soon-to-be-movie star, but because it’s genuine and equal. Charlotte and Harry have a nice rapport throughout as they explore their fertility options and struggle with very real setbacks. And Miranda assures her place as the show’s most scrappily lovable central character, creating a life in the relative sticks of Brooklyn with a goober like Steve in her own defiant way, becoming comfortable with the hard-won realization that compromise doesn’t mean giving up. Yay for life lessons!

Splat! (the best episode of season 6) A deliriously nasty kiss-off to the show’s old party girl ways, people mostly remember this episode for Kristen Johnston’s gloriously brash guest appearance as the doomed Lexie Featherston. But what happens after that scene is the true jewel of the season: a raw, bruising fight between Carrie and Miranda—in the snow! There’s never snow on this show!—that lays bare some of the problems gnawing at the entire series’s foundation. Who are we in relation to where we live (our city), our relationships (our sex), and what we do for a living? Is tying our identity up in any or all of those things missing some vague forest for more easily definable trees? The show never quite answers these questions, but that it is willing to address them at all is admirable. Plus, that fight scene is probably some of the best writing and acting in the show’s entire run.

And our beloved Carrie (OMFG) has been invited to Paris..........................................................................

(EEEEEEK)

(SEASON 6, EPISODE 18)
AP: You know I'll be in Paris for some time with my exhibition.
I'm going next week and I'm not sure when I'll come back.
CB: Unfortunately, having a man leave me for Paris was not foreign to me.
AP:I'm hoping you'll come.
CB: Sure, I'll come for the opening and maybe another weekend also?
AP: No, you misunderstand.
I'm hoping you'll come and be with me.
CB:In Paris?
AP:Yes.

CB:For who knows when we'll come back?
AP: Yes. I need you there.
CB: But this was foreign to me.

AP: New York is wonderful but there is nowhere like Paris.
You'll see Carrie.
Friends:- Are you going? For the opening? -

AP:Yes she's coming with me. To live.
CB:Well, we hadn't actually discussed the details but...
yes, I have been invited to go to Paris.

CB:Later, my friends wanted a tour of the apartment.
A.k.a, time to ask me what the hell was going on.

(Carrie discussion with friends)
- You would go live with him? - I don't know.
When were you planning to tell us?
He just sprang this on me two hours ago.
- How long would you go? - Where would you live?
- Is there a guest room? - Are you really thinking of going?
I'm not sure. I haven't digested it yet.
- I'm still digesting dinner. - This is so exciting.
I know. My boyfriend has just asked me to go to Paris with him.
This is the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me.

CB:So. I spoke to my girlfriends and they have a few questions about Paris.
AP:But you are the one who's going.
CB:Well we don't know about that yet.
I mean...
how could this work? Would I get my own place?
AP:- Why do you get your own place? -CB:  I don't know.
I've never done this before.
AP:You'll live with me. I have a beautiful apartment at the left bank.
But it's been remodeled.
So we would stay at the plaza ?
CB:Okay but are we talking a year? Indefinitely?
Don't I need to learn French? Would I be able to work there?
What about my cell phone? Would it work there?
AP:So many questions. Which is yours?

CB: I can't remember. I think I drank too much Barolo at dinner.

CB:Okay. Here's one of mine.

CB:What about my apartment here? Would I sublet it?
AP: I would pay for your apartment. - CB:That's crazy. I can't let you do that.
AP:Why? I have plenty of money.
But I don't have plenty of Carrie Bradshaws.

CB:And I've always wanted to learn French and drink wine before noon so basically
it's my fantasy complete with Parisian parties and museum openings.
Friends:But for how long?
CB:As long as it's fun. Indefinitely.
Friend:So you'd be moving there?
CB:No. Cause I'd still have my apartment here.
-Friends:Which he'd be paying for. - He can certainly afford it.
CB:Do you think you might get married? - No. That's..
I don't think that's the point.
Friends: Then what is he promising you? - CB:The world.
Friends:But what about your job? Your column is all about New York.
You're all about New York. How would youˇ
CB:I don't know.
How can you people still have questions? I got all of your questions answered.
And they were good answers by the way.
So this is the time when everybody should be really excited for me.
Friends: We are excited. It's fabulous. CB: No. Forget it. Forget it.
Friends:No, I think it's really romantic.  CB:Then stop killing it with questions.

CB:They say the unexamined life it not worth living.
But what if the examining becomes your life?
Is that living or just procrastinating?
And what if all those helpful lunches and late night phone calls to friends
have made us all girl talk and no girl action?
Is it time to stop questioning?

Voulez vous a la discotheque?
Voulez vous a la ???
voulez vous allez au restaurant?
Later I still had questions filling my head.
But at least they were in French. Voulez vous a Paris?

AP: Are you coming?  CB: Yeah I just have to put my earrings on.
Ap: No, to Paris

CB:I haven't decided yet.
AP:I'm inviting you to go to France, not to jail.

CB:  I just have..  AP: More questions? Is it possible?

CB; Things to figure out.

CB: My whole life is here.

CB: Could we stay in New York and then...
just go to Paris for few months for your show?
Then it wouldn't feel like we're moving.
AP: I need to be in Paris now.
I've been here for three years. I'm finished with New York.
It's time for Paris.

CB: But.. I'm not finished with New York.

CB: Maybe we could... do long distance for a while?
Going back and forth?
AP:It's never worked for me.
You know, someone meets someone, someone gets bored.
I don't know. Voulez-vous an ultimatum?

An hour later, the snow really started to fall.
The first time that winter.
And it didn't stop.
The city was silent.
There were no more questions.
Only white noise.

CB:I want to go to Paris.

Maybe I was living in a fantasy.
But I found a man who could make it a reality.
And I wasn't gonna question any of it.
Not even how he found a horse drawn sleigh in the middle of Manhattan.

SWOON. I think this episode is so powerful to me because I am really living a version of it. So with that i leave you with some news...

I have been invited to Barcelona....to move...to live......like really go and do it . And I said yes. 

It's like my own real life season 6.  Maybe i live in a fantasy world too but I am not going to question any of it. And I hear Paris is the quickest train ride away from Barcelona... the only ? I have is will I start smoking again? I hope not...but doesn't everyone smoke abroad?!

Now I am off to the couch fort to re-watch this episode again....

(all images are via getty images)

Channel your inner SJP here...

XO,

Sam