As many a Sex and the City fan before me has observed, And Just Like That… was an abomination that never should have seen the light of day. And now that it has mercifully come to an end after four years and three seasons of bewildering programming that occasionally made you question whether you’d completely lost touch with reality, I look forward to allowing it to fade into the repressed recesses of my subconscious like the chaotic fever dream it was. But first, allow me to say this: I actually expected far worse. No, really—I mean that as a compliment. In the eleventh hour, this deeply cursed show finally managed to do something right: simply let Carrie be single.
Truly, I never thought I’d see the day. As soon as rumors started circulating that Aidan would be making a return in season 2 of the reboot, I was positive we were in for a happily ever Aidan ending—one that, in typical AJLT fashion, would carelessly depart from the spirit of the original series and rewrite Aidan as the leading man he never was (sorry to my Aidan girlies, but he was literally only ever meant to function as a foil to Big). And while we certainly seemed to be heading in that direction for a while, I was relieved when season 3 took a turn for the rational, revealing Aidan to be the insecure, fundamentally poor match he always was.
Their breakup was a relief, but seeing as the show had already been rather heavy-handedly setting us up for a rebound romance between Carrie and her hot writer neighbor downstairs, I never so much as entertained the possibility that the deranged minds behind this work of nonsense would even consider returning Carrie to her original “single and fabulous” state. And yet, miracles do happen!
In the series finale, Carrie confronts her own tendency to pursue male companionship as an end goal and ultimately embraces her singlehood. “I have to quit thinking, Maybe a man, and start accepting maybe just me,” Carrie admits to Charlotte in what may be one of the only remotely vulnerable moments in the entire show. “And it’s not a tragedy—it’s a fact. And I have to start accepting it, full-stop.”
While surprising to hear in this most recent iteration of the SATC universe, this closing sentiment is one that would’ve been right at home in the original series. Because at one time, Sex and the City was, first and foremost, about being single. More specifically, it was about valuing female friendship over romantic partnership with men. Yes, each episode always featured the four main characters navigating various romantic entanglements with male suitors, from one-night stands to full-fledged relationships. But the men were the sideshow, not the main point. At the end of every bad first date or breakup or sexless marriage, the real relationships that remained were the friendships between the four women. As Charlotte put it in one of the show’s most iconic lines, “Maybe we can be each other’s soulmates, and then we can let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.” What made the original run of the show so revolutionary wasn’t just its frank depictions of single women having casual sex with men; it was its unapologetic depiction of women prioritizing themselves and each other over those men.
Over the years, the arc of the extended SATC universe strayed further and further from this ethos, eventually placing all four of the show’s core four in long-term relationships with men. By the second movie (which is arguably an even more cursed creation than the reboot that followed a decade later), Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are all married—with Samantha remaining the lone, cartoonishly single outlier.
Maybe this was the only natural evolution for the show. Everyone wants a happily ever after, and for better or worse, we’re still culturally conditioned to expect that happy ending to come in the form of a romantic relationship. But at one time, Sex and the City was a show that actively resisted that expectation and celebrated singlehood. It was nice, at what is hopefully the end of it all (so help me god if they try to resurrect this Frankenstein of a franchise one more time), to catch a glimpse of what Sex and the City once was: a show for the single and fabulous.
So thank you, And Just Like That. I will accept this parting gift…and immediately go back to scrubbing any and all knowledge that this show existed from my brain.
