‘What’s going to happen to the woman?’ asked Carrie’s neighbour Duncan Reeves - one of those slightly disquieting, cerebral, 50-something British men with a Margaret Thatcher thing - and Carrie Bradshaw’s latest (and *sobs* last) love interest. ‘The woman’ being the subject of Carrie’s recent, unexpected move from sex guru to awks podcaster to author of historical fiction. Just one of the bizarre, if insanely watchable plot twists in And Just Like That season three. ‘Do you have the ending yet?’ Well, does she?
Last weekend, prior to the tenth episode of the current season of AJLT, showrunner Michael Patrick King announced some good news for fans. There would be two more episodes than expected. ‘Fans’, in the case of And Just Like That, is a broad church. It takes in everyone from those who genuinely love the tales of Carrie and co., to those who watch despite shivering at key storyline signifiers, like ‘LTW’, ‘ghost sperm’ or ‘karaoke’. Then MPK announced some bad news: after episode 12, season three airs, Carrie Bradshaw’s story will come to an end. Gulp.
Mostly, we have watched And Just Like That through clenched fists, brows furrowed. But the key word here is ‘watched’. And Just Like That is one of those televisual anomalies. The more incredulous the storylines get, the more it seems to settle in viewers’ hearts. As a female friend texted at the climax of what can only be referred to as ‘the silver catsuit episode’ (IYKYK) – ‘just because your best friend goes stark raving bonkers doesn’t mean she isn’t still your best friend.’
Really, the end of And Just Like That is only the end of Carrie Bradshaw. Miranda ended long ago, when she was mysteriously transposed from the zenith of Manhattan power-broker womanhood, into a homeless intern. Charlotte is now Martha Stewart - not just on steroids but told through a psychedelic prism that intimates a writers’ room on hard drugs. Samantha, some say prudently, was gone before the first season. And episode one killed off the love of Carrie’s life, Mr Big, bringing on an unexpected PR crisis at the consumer home gym giant, Peloton. As we write, And Just Like That still has zero Emmy nominations, not even in the technical categories.
Since her 1998 debut, soundtracked by a jaunty theme-tune, pasted onto the side of a bus careening down Broadway, ‘knowing good sex’, Carrie Bradshaw established herself as Manhattan’s first lady of letters. She was the inverse of Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ era, also released that summer. As Madonna discovered her spiritual side, Kabbalah bracelets and the redemptive power of motherhood, Ms Bradshaw rejected the lot, glorying in tasteful consumerism and the power of a good cocktail, inventing an irresistible buy-your-way-to-the-perfect-you identity, conjured by a few bon mots scripted on her vintage Olivetti typewriter. Madonna might’ve harboured the darker secrets of life, but Carrie reminded you that, isn’t it fab, also, to have great hair just in case the next hookup is sitting round the corner, on a tattered banquette in Pastis?
Since then, Carrie Bradshaw has been, arguably, the most memorable fictional heroine of her age. Virginia Woolf, if the Bloomsbury Group met in the accessories department of Saks Fifth Avenue, perhaps. Carrie Bradshaw was shoes, sex and soliloquies. She had a kind of life we all desired, mistakes and all. I always thought it was absolutely brilliant that they gave her no family members. So clever. Imagine all that stress and anxiety, just – poof! – gone. I once asked the actress Sarah Jessica Parker if she was proud of the number of women who became writers because of her Writers! she laughed. If she had a penny for the amount of New Yorkers who told her daily they’d moved to the city because of her...
Even at her most divisive – sauntering through Union Square in an outsized tam’ o shanter, ‘making it work’ with a contemptible man who wants to commit only to relationship by postcard, pronouncing the word ‘lover’ – Carrie has been someone we can safely lean on in times of trouble. She magicked from nowhere the plausibility and success of lifestyle. When chaos was everywhere, there was always Carrie Bradshaw, nailing the little stuff that affects our lives largest.
For now, farewell old friend. Of course, unless they kill off Carrie Bradshaw – and at this stage, one wouldn’t quite put anything past the people writing this stuff – any permanent ending to Carrie Bradshaw should be taken with a pinch of salt. In 20 years’ time, surely the three pals could return as a kind of Golden Girls du nos jours. In the meantime, we must wish our definitive 21st century heroine adieu, in the recent manner to which she is familiar:
How wonderful. How wonderful. How wonderful.