And Just Like That series finale offers bittersweet ending for Carrie Bradshaw
And Just Like That’s final episode just aired, ending Carrie Bradshaw’s 27-year story on a bittersweet note. WARNING: Spoilers.
WARNING: And Just Like That spoilers below.
It was around two or three episodes into the current and final season of And Just Like That when I closed my laptop, took a deep breath and thought to myself:
I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.
After six wonderful seasons of Sex and the City, two films of diminishing quality and now heading into a third season of a bizarrely bad reboot, I thought it was finally time I broke up with Carrie, Charlotte Miranda and their ever-growing bunch of supporting characters (so numerous even the show’s writers can’t keep up: Pour one out for Lisa Todd Wexley, who had to endure her father dying twice in three seasons).
So, did I continue watching when the next episode dropped the following Friday?
Of course I did.
Such is our enduring love for these characters, many of us just can’t look away from the slow motion car crash that has been And Just Like That (sidenote – it’s forever known as … And Then What Happened? in my household, after a friend misremembered that as the title. For my money it better captures the exhausting, exasperating experience that has been tuning in each week: “*Heavy sigh*... And then what happened?”).
But in these past few episodes, something unusual happened – something unprecedented in the world of And Just Like That: The show got good.
Not for every character, mind you – Seema had a multi-episode story arc involving crystal deodorant – but they certainly arrived somewhere real with Carrie and her on-again, off-again boyfriend of decades, Aidan.
All season, Carrie had been trapped in a humiliation ritual with Aidan, who was seemingly still intent on passive-aggressively punishing her for cheating on him with Mr Big all those years ago.
But episode nine, Present Tense, made for genuinely thrilling viewing as Carrie finally realised she’d had enough of Aidan’s bulls**t, the relationship disintegrating over one emotional morning on the streets of New York.
Sure, the other characters were as under-served as ever (“Charlotte has vertigo” was legitimately one B-plot for the episode, Kristin Davis does not deserve this), but the Carrie and Aidan break-up could sit along the best dramatic relationship moments from Sex and the City.
That final shot in the episode, showing a newly-single, glammed-up Carrie stepping into a bar to greet the girls for a cocktail-fuelled Aidan bitch-sesh? We’re back, baby!
And then came the news that actually, we only had a couple more episodes before the end of the Sex and the City universe – forever.
SJP and MPK (that’s Carrie herself, Sarah Jessica Parker, and series developer Michael Patrick King) both insisted the decision to end the show had been theirs, but reports contradicted this, suggesting a planned season finale would now have to serve as an end not just to the series but to Carrie’s entire story.
So who does Carrie end up with? Aidan, Duncan … Che Diaz?
Herself. The series finale sees Carrie, having finally slept with and then said goodbye to British writer Duncan (Jonathan Cake – surely the hottest love interest the show’s seen in a while), grappling with the notion that she may never end up in another long-term relationship.
“Who will I be, alone?” she asks Charlotte during a walk-and-talk.
“Yes, I know, I’ve lived alone, but I’ve never lived alone without the thought that I wouldn’t be alone for long. Even when Big died, after the shock and the total devastation, in the back of my mind I thought … Aidan, maybe Aidan?”
(Oh, spoiler alert, AJLT virgins: Big’s dead).
The final act of the episode takes place at a rather sad Thanksgiving party at Miranda’s place, with Carrie batting away Charlotte’s attempts to set her up with gallery owner Mark (Victor Garber).
There is one bizarrely graphic moment in which Mark flees the soireee after fighting a losing battle with a blocked toilet. Minutes from the end of Carrie Bradshaw’s story, and forced to watch half a dozen turds floating around on screen – sort of a metaphor for the whole And Just Like That experience, don’t you think?
But after that gross moment, the series ends on a surprisingly lovely, bittersweet note. We say goodbye to these characters, 27 years after we first met them, with an at-home montage set to the Barry White disco-soul classic You’re My First, My Last, My Everything.
Charlotte is glowing with maternal love, sat with her family around the dinner table, while Miranda sits doe-eyed in her apartment with new girlfriend Joy. Other characters Seema, Anthony and Lisa are all shown looking loved-up with their respective partners too.
Then it’s Carrie’s turn. She arrives home from the party, and dances to the music in her giant Gramercy Park townhouse, alone but clearly content.
She twirls in her tutu-esque dress, then disappears off-screen forever, happy without a man. It feels like genuine growth for a serial monogamist whose past thirstiness is so legendary it’s become a meme.
It also feels like a continuation of Carrie’s closing line from the show’s original series finale back in 2004: “The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all … is the one you have with yourself.”
Near-perfect as that finale was, it chickened out of showing Carrie thriving alone, giving her a happy ending with Mr Big for good measure.
20-odd years later, this new happy ending for a happily single Carrie Bradshaw makes the bewildering past three seasons of And Just Like That feel almost worth it.
Almost.
And Just Like That streams locally on HBO Max.
Originally published as And Just Like That series finale offers bittersweet ending for Carrie Bradshaw
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