Most people have a break-up story that will stay with them forever. It’s not necessarily the most painful split you’ve ever had, but when you look back on how it happened you can’t quite believe the ending of a serious relationship played out in such a bizarre way. Sometimes, you even use the story as an anecdote at dinner parties.
For viewers of Sex And The City, Carrie's most infamous break-up has long been her split with Jack Berger. After he left her a Post-it note that read ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me—’ while she was sleeping as a way to end their relationship, she carried it round the city with her, showing various friends and acquaintances the physical evidence of Berger’s audacity.
‘Boy, do I have news,’ she told Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte at lunch. ‘Berger broke up with me on a Post-it… Read it and weep my friends,’ she said, as she slammed it down in the middle of their brunch plates. ‘I thought breaking up over the phone was considered bad form.’
So, in the season finale of the SATC reboot And Just Like That. when Carrie was discussing her worst ever break-up on her podcast, viewers thought her answer was obvious. It was the Post-it note, right? Wrong.
‘What’s the worst break-up you’ve ever had,’ her co-host Che asked. To which Carrie replied: ‘My husband died.'
Fans on Twitter were immediately aghast. ‘As someone whose husband actually died, I for sure thought she was going to say the Post-it,’ wrote one user.
‘Carrie talking about the worst break-ups and doesn’t mention the Post-it note?’ questioned another. ‘What are the writers even doing?’ asked a third. ‘They really made her all Big, Big, Big one-dimensional in this show,’ complained another. ‘I understand she’s grieving but come on!’
Was the Post-it worse than death? It might have been. And we’re not even sure being widowed can classify as a break-up in the conventional sense. If Carrie wanted to bring things back to Big, surely being jilted at the alter was a pretty high contender for her worst break-up of all time?
Mourning is understandably an all-encompassing experience, but for the sake of the script it might have rung more true to have had Carrie reflect on Berger’s Post-it two decades later.
‘The whole point of Sex and the City in general was to try to find the humour in the heartbreak, in the funny sex, in the everything, to sort of be able to laugh about these horrifying moments,’ writer Liz Tuccillo told Elle of the Post-it note scene. ‘It was just an opportunity to show a break-up that's very typical, which is the non-break-up. Berger was always a problematic relationship, so it made sense to have a problematic ending.’
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