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The Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That … ended on Friday, capping off a three-season run that divided critics and fans alike. The show, which started with a bang when it killed off Carrie’s husband while he rode his exercise bike, ended with Carrie writing the epilogue to her novel about a woman who finally learnt to love being on her own. But was AJLT really, really, as bad as countless critics seemed to think, or was it unfairly judged? Culture Editor-at-Large Michael Idato takes up the case against, while National TV Editor Louise Rugendyke is here for the defence.
The case against And Just Like That…
It is said that television dramas survive by changing, and sitcoms survive by staying the same, a kind of forced reset that sends their characters back to square one of the story sequence just in time for next week’s episode. The result: an unchanging universe where the same jokes, riffs and punchlines work, week in, week out.
When Sex and the City began in 1998, it was like nothing else on television. It was wholly fictional and – based on where they lived, what they wore, and how they spent money – laughably unreal. And yet, somewhere in the midst of the Manolo Blahniks, the secret trysts with Big and the self-examinational narration, it was also deeply authentic.
Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Sarah Jessica Parker.
For 96 almost-perfect half-hour episodes, the unreal world of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) felt very real. Creator Darren Star and lead writer Michael Patrick King mined humour and drama deeply.
And Just Like That …, which came some 2½ decades later, was a grand thought experiment, an answer to television’s age-old question: can you really ever go back and recapture the magic? (The answer is no, we have since discovered.)
What is easily forgotten is that the original line-up – Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha – never quite carried equal weight. The younger three women were on a journey, full of questions and able to make mistakes. The last of the four, Samantha, was already there. She was the destination: equal parts wisdom and sass.
Which means Samantha’s absence from AJLT makes it less the Beatles without Ringo, and more ABBA without either Agnetha or Frida. AJLT is trying to recapture Sex and the City’s best harmonies, and it’s missing the lead singer.
Samantha (Kim Cattrall) in her season-two AJLT cameo.
The result is half a show, still asking questions, and leaning on a rotating patchwork of supporting players shoehorned into Samantha’s gold strappy stilettos. Seema (Sarita Choudhury) was the best of a loose group.
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Sequels are tough, to be fair. Three women in their 20s, full of self-doubt, is fair. The same women in their 50s still struggling to find the answers was less convincing. These girls were once the apex predators of our generation. They were turned into the narcissistic, overbearing girlfriend(s) who get jettisoned for the sake of everyone else’s sanity.
When living art is pushed into the world and left to grow for decades, ownership becomes a thorny issue. Its creators would lay claim, but just as every Star Wars movie ticket (or action figure) buyer eventually became a shareholder, the audience often doesn’t just have an opinion; they sometimes have bought a seat at the table.
What cuts deepest about AJLT is that it is, ultimately, the betrayal of a promise made 27 years ago.
Instead of holding these women up, AJLT held them down, turning beautiful imperfection into undiagnosed neurosis. Instead of razor-sharp social commentary, AJLT offered sermons on social issues clumsily thumb-tacked to the narrative.
The Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote that there is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. It should come as no surprise that he was Greece’s master of stage tragedies. He would also have made a great television critic. Michael Idato
Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) with Shoe the cat.
The case for And Just Like That…
Three months ago, when I gave AJLT a four-star review, I turned to William Shakespeare (kind of): “I come not to bury AJLT, I come to praise it.” Now, as its well-dressed corpse cools, I turn to the Bard again: “The evil that [wo]men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Or to quote another, more modern, bard, the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, and I’m just going to shake it off.
For I come to defend AJLT from the braying hordes, the smirkers and the cynical. I am here to remember the good and not pile on like so many before (I’m looking at you, Michael Idato!). I am the silent majority. Just ask all the other mums on the soccer sideline.
Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) find their own happy ever after.
I’m not going to lie, there were times during this third – and apparently final – season that I have had reviewer regret (I felt the same way about this season of The Bear, another regrettable four-star review I deliriously wrote after a late-night viewing marathon.) At times, AJLT was ridiculous, with fluctuating plots, some truly terrible characters and, at its end, an overflowing toilet. It continued to struggle without Samantha.
But it was familiar and fun and never took itself too seriously. It was memories. It was my 20s. It was our 20s. It was Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, Harry, Antony, Steve and Brady and some great new friends in Seema, LTW, Herbert, Joy, Adam and Duncan. It finally kicked Aidan to the curb and sent Che packing.
Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon in And Just Like That.
It kept us talking, sharing and engaged. Love it or hate it, AJLT kept us watching in an era of choice overload. When every second option on streaming services seems to involve a true-crime documentary about the murder of a woman, some romance scam or a truly foul holiday disaster, AJLT was pure comfort television. It was relief.
I couldn’t help but wonder if part of the reason it received such a kicking was because it was a show about women in their 50s who dared to live big, fabulous lives. They shone brighter than the army of lookalike Gen Zs who have, in real life, infected Carrie’s old stomping ground of the West Village, drawn by the lure of Sex and the City.
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For better or worse, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte have all changed since we first met them 27 years ago. But who is the same person they once were in their 20s and 30s? All three of them have undergone significant life changes over those years (death, divorce, infertility, babies, affairs, sexual reorientation), who wouldn’t be a little wobbly occasionally? They weren’t perfect, but they weren’t victims, either. Carrie finally found the courage to dump Aidan and be alone. Quietly radical for a show that for so long saw marriage as the end goal for its heroine.
To ask the four women to stand still for 20 years would have been ridiculous. To complain about who they have turned into is sillier still. If you don’t like it, move on.
I completely admit nostalgia is a big factor here, but I’m also nostalgic for the days when we were just able to enjoy television. Sex and the City was criticised for many things – for being too racy, too feminist, not feminist enough – but it was also never dissected at the level of AJLT. It was allowed to breathe, to flourish, to grow – things AJLT won’t be able to do.
Farewell, Carrie… Sarah Jessica Parker in the final episode of And Just Like That…
I am mad that HBO Max cut them off without a proper finale. They deserved more than that hurried Thanksgiving farewell. Just one season to see what life for Carrie looked like now she had embraced being “on her own”, to see Miranda as a grandmother, to give Charlotte her power at work and allow LTW the opportunity to meet the damn Obamas.
So farewell, ladies, it’s been fabulous (except for Carrie’s book, ain’t no one got time for that).
And Just Like That… is now streaming on HBO Max.
What did you think of And Just Like That? Please tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
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