Samantha slept with everyone from a fireman to a female; Carrie had sex with a man named "Berger" and a man named "Big;" Charlotte's husband Trey didn't satisfy her, although her hairy-backed divorce attorney did; Miranda got it on with an overeater and a pink bunny vibrator; but the final episode of "Sex and the City" was all about love.

Along with millions of viewers around the country, many HBO-subscribing Milwaukeeans literally and figuratively tossed back one last cosmopolitan on Sunday night when "Sex and the City" aired its final episode.

By Monday morning, many local viewers agreed that the final episode was pass-me-a-cigarette satisfying. The entire season launched the show to another level, tackling issues like cancer and infertility with grace and wit, and the last show brought an unmatched element of soul to the screen, allowing the characters to evolve more in one half hour than they had in the entire series.

Samantha finally gave her heart to Smith; Miranda displayed a previously unseen gentle and selfless side with Steve's stroke-sick mother; Charlotte and Harry moved on to the joy of international adoption; and to most viewers' delight, Carrie ended up with the debonair Mr. Big. (Best of all, the writers finally disclosed his real name -- John -- in the final seconds of the show.)

"I always thought Aidan (a former boyfriend on the show) was 'the one' and she blew it, but that was just me projecting myself into her character," says Stacy Conroy, 32, who named her 16-month-old son Aidan after the one in the show. "After seeing the final episode, I clearly think she should be with Big."

"Sex" completely redefined how women, especially single women, are portrayed in the media. The show also made it okay, even glamorous and hilarious, to be without a lifelong partner but to still have, ahem, needs.

And even though the four characters pinballed from romp to romp, their friendship was rock solid.

"It's not like my girlfriends and I couldn't talk about sex with each other openly before, but there was something about this show that made it seem okay, even ladylike, to put the topic out there," says Kelly Beisbier, a 26-year-old graphic designer who routinely spent Sunday evenings with her female friends, drinking martinis and analyzing the characters' relationships.

Most "Sex" fans couldn't help comparing themselves - and their friends - to the gals on the show, all of whom were completely different and hauntingly, hysterically familiar: Samantha the slut; Charlotte the perfect prude; Miranda the anal attorney and Carrie, complex, confused, clumsy and confident.

"I'm most like Carrie," says Didi Byrd, a 43-year-old video producer. "And the least like Miranda."

"I can totally relate to Miranda's hard-nosed approach to life and love," says Conroy. "I think I possess some of the same feelings of insecurity when it comes to being vulnerable in relationships."

"I feel that for women like myself, we see Carrie as someone whom we could have been," says 39-year-old Beth Braun, a nurse practitioner who watched the show from her treadmill. "She (Carrie) may have moved to NYC from Milwaukee and lived there a while, got to know people, and ended up with a glamorous job and life. It could have been me."

"I think I'm like them all," says Beisbier. "I have a friend who is just like Charlotte, trying to find the man to marry, to have kids, to settle into that fantasy."

Carrie's outlandish outfits were also a big part of the program's popularity, and viewers wore opinions about them that are as different as Prada and J. Crew.

"I hated the majority of them," says Byrd. "She looked like a horse dressed like a clown in stupidly expensive high heels."

"I think she looked amazing," says Beisbier. "A lot of the fashion 99 percent of women would look absolutely ridiculous wearing, and 99 percent couldn't afford, but with Carrie, the setting, the context, her incredible figure, it all worked."

"In a way the show was bad for my body image," says Braun. "I always wished one of them was fatter and had more body flaws and still looked really good in new styles."

But in the end, the show was what it was: For some, the opportunity to vicariously live among the beautiful, successful and insatiably sexually active. For others, simply a way to ditch reality before a long week ahead.

But undeniably for all, the show popped the cork on appropriate conversation. "Sex" taught us there is never a wrong time to talk the truth, no matter how trashy it sounds to the cafe table next to yours.

"In my mind, the pendulum swung a little further in the direction of independence and respect for all American women," says Conroy.

"I do have to say that Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha were my friends. I'm not ashamed to say it. They were, and I'm going to miss them, the smile they brought to my face and everything they taught me," says Beisbier.

And in true Carrie Bradshaw fashion, this can only end with a question: Whatever will we do on Sunday nights?