“And Just Like That . . . ,” Carrie Bradshaw Bids an Unsatisfying Farewell

On Thursday, the third and last season of “And Simply Like That . . . ,” the sequel sequence to “Intercourse and the Metropolis,” got here to an unceremonious finish. The episode takes place over Thanksgiving, however the central quintet doesn’t have a good time the vacation collectively, with solely Carrie becoming a member of Miranda on a minor-milestone day: the primary time that Miranda’s grown son Brady, now anticipating his personal youngster with a girl he barely is aware of, assumes turkey-dinner duties for his makeshift tribe. On the unique present, the core foursome—Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha—continuously gathered as a selected household. Within the finale, the absence of Charlotte, Lisa, and Seema from the festivities lends a wistful air to Carrie’s ostensibly defiant embrace of her single standing after Large’s loss of life and several other failed romances. Her open destiny is a dramatic flip from the bow-tied pleased ending of “Intercourse and the Metropolis,” wherein Large flies to Paris to whisk an sad Carrie again to New York. And but this theoretically extra daring conclusion is accompanied by one last disappointment to be endured by the viewers—it’s laborious to think about that the present has precise “followers”—a sequence of vignettes with rushed, unsatisfying resolutions that give brief shrift to virtually each character.No extension of the “Intercourse and the Metropolis” franchise—the 2 films, the prequel sequence “The Carrie Diaries,” “And Simply Like That”—has managed to seize the magic of the unique iteration: a real cultural phenomenon and probably the most influential TV exhibits ever made. Loads of subsequent applications have been in contrast with it, however, even in imitation-prone Hollywood, “S.A.T.C.” has generated surprisingly few copycats. The sequence stands alone, particularly in a single regard, which is essential to its enchantment: its unabashed and unreflective aspiration. “Intercourse and the Metropolis,” which started in 1998 and concluded in 2004, represented the zenith of New York as an upscale playground—and the collapse of that dream. The TV panorama and the tradition at massive modified so considerably after its run that, maybe, “And Simply Like That” was virtually doomed to fail.“Intercourse and the Metropolis” was hardly the primary TV present to foreground feminine friendship, and even the primary for instance how girls can function each other’s security nets. (On “Pals,” a determined Rachel strikes into Monica’s rent-controlled condominium after fleeing her wedding ceremony, and, on “The Golden Ladies,” Blanche’s Miami residence was a sanctuary for her usually financially strapped housemates.) Carrie and firm paved the best way for a lot of extra comedies about gal friends, however, particularly within the years after the Nice Recession, newer characters had been content material with modest trappings or needed to cope with class variations throughout friendships. “Ladies” (2012) famously put its protagonist in ill-fitting garments; Hannah Horvath’s awkward outfits mirrored her unfocussed existence. On “Broad Metropolis” (2014), one half of the slacker pair doesn’t even reside in Brooklyn, however Queens. On “Insecure” (2016), Molly, a lawyer, shows frustration at her greatest buddy Issa’s seeming lack of ambition, which comes with the scant paycheck to match. A part of this downscaling was that the characters tended to be youthful and dealer than those on “Intercourse and the Metropolis.” However a part of it, too, is that TV’s then burgeoning curiosity in better authenticity needed to embrace financial realities.In the meantime, the exhibits that strived to perpetuate a imaginative and prescient of media-industry-based glossiness—channelling the fantasy of Carrie’s fee of $4.50 a phrase at Vogue—rapidly developed reputations as hate-watches. “The Daring Kind” (2017), which centered on three twentysomethings employed at a Cosmopolitan-esque month-to-month, grew to become a popular punching bag amongst real-life media workers, for the dramedy’s out-of-date depictions of the inside workings of {a magazine}. “Emily in Paris” (2020), which shares a creator, Darren Star, with “Intercourse and the Metropolis,” is extra in tune with digital content material creation right this moment, displaying Emily’s growth of a private expat account, one Instagram put up at a time, alongside her nine-to-five advertising and marketing job. The sequence has by no means strived to be something greater than opulent fluff, however it nonetheless will get persistently pilloried for its lack of realism. Maybe the sweet coating is not really easy to swallow as a result of it’s turn into so painless to lookup condominium listings, wage figures, and retail costs and do the maths ourselves—a Google-centric mode of watching that was far much less frequent throughout “S.A.T.C.” ’s heyday. And maybe it’s additionally as a result of, in our extremely unequal occasions, wealth porn is usually inextricably tied to class resentment.Today, the TV equal of a Manolo Blahnik—fancy, fairly, painful—is the status cleaning soap about depressing one-per-centers. “Large Little Lies” (2017), “Succession” (2018), and “The Gilded Age” (2022) drum again and again that cash can’t purchase a life nicely lived. The precise wealthy preserve discovering new locations to stash themselves away—on superyachts, in underground bunkers, off the planet altogether—and but spectacles of wealth at the moment are accessible 24/7 via our gadgets. With just some faucets on a telephone, anybody can study what it’s wish to look wealthy, or no less than carry out wealthy, which is why, within the late twenty-tens and early twenty-twenties, the tradition went wild for scammers, who grew to become the folks heroes of a micro-generation. Conwoman narratives helped popularize the fantasy that, if society not provided the opportunity of upward mobility, probably the most brazen amongst us may trick or cajole some deep-pocketed fool into sharing the perks that such inequality may yield. As soon as TV had its fill of millennial grubbiness, it pivoted towards adjacency to wealth à la the Anna Delvey bio-series “Inventing Anna” (2022) and the personal-assistant drama “Sirens” (2025).Carrie Bradshaw reëntered the scene in 2021. The choice in all probability made sense on paper. Like “Pals,” “Intercourse and the Metropolis” gave the impression to be on repeat eternally, discovering new followers in each era. (Given right this moment’s nostalgia for the relative affluence and financial stability of the nineties, these exhibits’ monetary improbabilities don’t appear to rankle Gen Z viewers a lot.) However regardless of the preliminary buzziness round “And Simply Like That,” the percentages had been towards it. “Intercourse and the Metropolis” had brilliantly captured an period, the final days when tastemakers nonetheless dominated over a monoculture and aspiration seemed the identical to folks throughout the nation. (Solely two years after “Intercourse and the Metropolis” went off the air, “The Satan Wears Prada” cemented the mythos of an omnipotent editrix—simply earlier than the web would completely erode her affect.) In Carrie and her buddies’ reliance on anecdotes, archetypes, and recommendation, their adventures usually really feel like a girls’s journal in dramatized type—a voicey compendium of subjects each critical and foolish, delivered in simply digestible morsels. However most magazines at the moment are mere shadows of themselves. The gloss that readers had been meant to achieve for was uncovered as élitist, out-of-touch, and exclusionary. Carrie and her buddies’ authority over Manhattan cool initially evoked a big-sister confidence that might be troublesome to duplicate now, at a time when suspicion canines anybody claiming data or experience. However “And Simply Like That” barely appeared to hassle, so afraid of offending that it scarcely appeared to have a perspective.Admittedly, by the top of the third season, the present was on a slight upswing, having shed its clumsiest story strains (Carrie stopped podcasting, the controversial nonbinary character Che was lengthy gone, Aidan misplaced his mantle because the one which bought away, and many others.) However the sequence nonetheless appeared unsalvageable. Carrie’s financial state of affairs by no means made a lot sense on “Intercourse and the Metropolis,” however, by shackling her with the golden handcuffs of Large’s seemingly infinite fortune, the franchise robbed her of her everywoman foibles. It’s one factor for thirtysomething Carrie to be outlined by a one-bedroom condominium, a closet stuffed with designer garments, and a stage of financial precarity that should be studiously ignored in order to not go insane; a fun-chasing spendthrift who fritters her freelance checks on cocktails and sneakers speaks on to the id. However the older Carrie goes via 4 residences in three seasons—at a time when housing-affordability anxieties are at a fever pitch—a transfer seemingly designed to make Gwyneth Paltrow look comparatively relatable.However is “And Simply Like That” dangerous sufficient to retroactively diminish its predecessor? I’d argue sure. “Intercourse and the Metropolis” was intoxicating for its imaginative and prescient of freedom: to create a life as one noticed match, away from the constraints of conventional feminine roles; to discover one’s sexuality past the specter of male violence; to be as pleasure-seeking or as frivolous as one cared to be, which explains all of the deluxe frippery. Marrying wealthy, as Carrie and Charlotte did, was speculated to be the last word consolidation of that energy. However the characters’ most up-to-date chapters unintentionally illustrated the other: their wealth trapped them in a numbingly weightless world the place nothing actually occurred and valuable little mattered. Carrie may have had something, and he or she traded away chance for extra garments. ♦