I watched the final episode of And Just Like That (AJLT) tonight (it aired last night), and can honestly say that I liked it. I've read some negative reviews and some positive reviews. Many people hated the finale, which simply confirms for me that you either liked the series or you didn't. The negative reviews meant that the series generally was too woke and that the finale didn't do the characters justice. I don't agree and I don't care what the negative reviewers thought. The finale provided fitting endings for Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and their new friends Seema and Lisa. It implied that Carrie's new novel will be a success, but that she doesn't end up with a man after having ended things with Aidan. She accepts that. Miranda finds happiness with her girlfriend Joy but her son's life is a chaotic mess (a one-night stand ended up with the young woman becoming pregnant), and Charlotte and Harry are weathering his bout with prostate cancer. In other words, they are all dealing with the problems of middle age and approaching old age. Life is unpredictable and messy. There are no guarantees of a happy ending for anyone. That is real life, as much as we'd like to run away from that reality. Some of the negative reviews wanted a happy (happier) ending for Carrie. But why? Many middle-aged women end up alone, or remain alone after years of dating. Many choose to live alone. They are often smart and successful women. Carrie at least experienced a happy, albeit short, marriage with Big. All of the characters, including Seema and Lisa (the new friends), are dealing with relationship issues. Those who are married admit that it involves a lot of self-sacrifice and compromise. What grounds all these women are the friendships they have with each other. They know that their friends are always there for them. That is what I love and have loved about the new series and the Sex And The City series. That, and the love affair they have with Manhattan. Having gone to school and worked in Manhattan, I share their feelings about the city. But, these women are wealthy and I was not. You need to be wealthy in order to have the lives these women have. If you're not, you can't remain in Manhattan for very long. But that feeling--that the world was my oyster when I was young and in Manhattan--is a wonderful memory. And after I left it, my life changed in ways that I could never have imagined.
AJLT ended abruptly. It made me wonder why. Perhaps there's more to the story than meets the eye. Perhaps we'll learn more down the line. Or perhaps there really was nothing more to say, no more new stories to tell. Michael Patrick King has said that he felt it was a good time to stop, and Sarah Jessica Parker seconded that statement. It might have been just more of the same--trying to find a good man, dealing with spouses, dealing with children, dealing with work. Dating is difficult at any age; even more so when one is older. Marriages have their ups and downs, and can become routinized at times. Children grow up and leave the nest--choosing their lives for themselves. Work problems can occur at any age. When we're older, we've heard the same stories over and over from spouses and friends. We try to reinvent ourselves. But it gets harder as we age. And we eventually end up asking ourselves--why? Why do we need to reinvent ourselves when we're older? At some point, it's got to be about patting ourselves on the back for getting as far as we've gotten, for achieving the small successes that life has given us. It's about accepting where we are now--the good and the bad. Life is never, and will never be, perfect or as we imagined it. As we age, we should be living in the present and trying not to focus on the past. The future is uncertain at best, so the present is all we have. That's where the series ended. In the middle of real life. There isn't, and there won't be, a fairytale ending, however much we may have wanted one.
If you'd like to read my post from 2022 about AJLT, here is the link: A New Yorker in Oslo: And just like that, Big died
