Let's step back a bit: this is based on a novel which Julie Burchill wrote a long time ago. We shouldn't be surprised to see an ending which is not designed to enable a second series, and that's exactly what we get. The season ends dramatically, finally and metatextually. It's the last episode, and the narrative is finally liberated from the tyranny of consequences. Anything can happen.
Sugar has stabbed someone and is covers in blood. There are extenuating circumstances- it was an attempted rape- but she is still going on the run, fleeing, with nothing in particular planned, to the only possible destination: London. Kim, still infatuated, goes with her, and both of them irrevocably outlaw themselves by stealing a car.
Both of them are outside the law and doomed to capture and consequences; all that matters is how they spend the few hours before that happens. They talk; Kim tries to tell Sugar that she's wasting herself on useless men who don't care about her, but it's no good; the series has always had a subtext of social class, and it is here that Sugar points out that she and Kim were always going to have different futures.
The two of them illicitly stay at a penthouse in central London for what must surely be their last night of freedom. A lot is said; Kim loves Sugar and will do anything for her. She always comes running, while Sugar does nothing but take and take. But there is kidding, and implied sex. And then, finally, in slow motion, the police, Stella and Nathan arrive at the hotel...
This is a perfect, beautiful, clever ending to a perfect, beautiful, clever series. Can the second and final season be as good...?
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