THE FACTS
Two weeks ago, Sarah Jessica Parker announced the end of HBO Max’s series And Just Like That..., by posting an ode to her character, the iconic Carrie Bradshaw, on Instagram.
My initial surprise was almost immediately replaced with excitement: surely they would finish the show with an epic, heart-warming finale for all the long-time fans. Something really, truly worthwhile, to mark 27 years since Carrie first strutted across our screens in her Manolo Blahniks.
Did I fantasise about Carrie flying to London for the launch of her new book, and reuniting with Samantha while she was there? Yes. Did I hope that everyone would end up at Carrie’s for Thanksgiving dinner and fill her vast void of a house with love and laughter? Absolutely! Did any of it happen? Of course not.
And Just Like That... has been a rollercoaster of disappointing storylines and the finale was no different. While a few episodes of the series were endearingly reminiscent of Sex and the City, on the whole AJLT was abysmal. People readily admitted to “hate watching” it, clinging on with nostalgia simply because they loved SATC. We were like rubberneckers passing a car crash, unable to look away even though we knew that whatever we saw wouldn’t be good.
Most AJLT episodes had cliched messages, and the finale was certainly on-brand in this respect, repeatedly hitting us over the head with its revolutionary theme of “women don’t need to be married to be happy”. It was hellbent on conveying a message of supposed female empowerment, while simultaneously portraying 50-something women as clueless (Carrie can’t understand someone pointing at a menu and saying “pick two”? Come on!) and younger women as completely self-absorbed (“I only eat cucumber, brown rice and seaweed,” declares Mia when she arrives at Thanksgiving dinner, after accusing Miranda of “violating her aura”). Depicting women as idiots is not exactly a convincing way to show how empowered and capable they are.
This condescending characterisation has been consistent throughout AJLT, and is ultimately why I found the series so deeply disappointing. The writers took the smart, funny, fierce, kind and capable women of Sex and the City and changed them beyond recognition. Carrie became extremely rich, boring and entitled; Miranda became anxious, irrational and erratic; Samantha disappeared. To paraphrase Robbie Williams, it was like watching my favourite pub burn down.
I spent my 20s watching Sex and the City on TV every week with my flatmates, all of us shrieking and laughing together with shock and delight. I was obsessed with this show; I even played episodes of it at my pyjama-party hen’s night. Back then, Carrie was in her early 30s and she seemed to have it all: the ultimate job, a stylish apartment in the world’s most fashionable city and impossibly cool clothes. (Okay, the clothes were often wacky, but she wore them with indisputably fabulous shoes.)
Most importantly of all, Carrie had the best friends in the world. They were absolutely dedicated to each other. When Charlotte declared that a woman at a baby shower had “stolen” her baby name, Samantha didn’t judge or ask questions, she just eyeballed the woman and announced: “You b****. Let’s go,” and marched Charlotte out of there.
In another episode where Charlotte was upset but wanted to be alone as she walked home, Miranda followed behind her the whole way, just in case Charlotte changed her mind and wanted to talk. And let’s not forget the time that Samantha helped Carrie to remove a stuck diaphragm.
Their friendships were committed and real – more real than most of the romantic relationships they had. Their liaisons with men (and occasionally women) supplied most of the comedy in the show, but the romances came and went (Harry excepted, of course) while the friends stayed. Sometimes they disagreed or even let each other down, but they always made up. They loved each other, and it was true love.
This, then, was what SATC knew but AJLT lost sight of: the friendships were what we coveted most. In SATC, Carrie didn’t always make perfect decisions, she was frequently blinded by romance with questionable men, and she once turned a shirt into a crop top and paired it with a belt around her bare waist (Patricia Field, what were you thinking?), but her friendships were aspirational.
Sure, AJLT continued those friendships, but they had noticeably changed. Carrie was hesitant to invite Miranda to stay with her, despite living alone in a vast townhouse. Samantha didn’t reply to most of the texts that Carrie sent her. And who could forget the time Miranda left Carrie in bed, helpless and in pain after surgery, while she made out with Che in the kitchen? The women and their friendships were a shadow of their former selves, and without them, the show was never going to win us over. It had lost its superpower. The final episode of SATC still makes me cry every time I watch it, whereas AJLT’s finale just left me feeling… flat.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from stiletto-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw, it’s that flat is never the way to go.
Jane Atterbury-Leaf is a writer with more than 25 years of experience and has been a fan of Carrie Bradshaw since 1998.