Michael Patrick King announces the end of And Just Like That.
The Sex and the City spinoff is being cancelled by HBO following a two-part finale.
Sex and the city fans all over are relieved to see And Just Like That go.
Last Friday’s announcement by show-developer Michael Patrick King that the third series of And Just Like That, a spinoff on the iconic Sex and The City (1998-2004) would be its last came as a sigh of relief for many.
With the innumerable posts all over social media titled “Goodbye Carrie” and “Farewell Carrie” over the weekend, one wondered if these were obits and that Sarah Jessica Parker had, indeed died. But guess it was just a euphemistic way of saying that HBO had cancelled the show and allowed Parker and King some dignity in letting it go.
“SJP and I held off announcing the news until now because we didn’t want the word ‘final’ to overshadow the fun of watching the season,” King said in an official statement.
Following a two-part finale to be aired on August 7 and August 14, Carrie Bradshaw will finally hang up her Manolos and it’s about time.
Calling Sex and The City (based on Candace Bushnell’s 1996 book) ahead of its time would be an understatement. Four charismatic women in New York on the frontlines of love, sex and relationships at the turn of the millennium- what’s not to like? Sarah Jessica Parker dazzled as the shoe-obsessed, fiscally-challenged columnist Carrie Bradshaw. Cynthia Nixon had us nodding as the straight-talking lawyer Miranda Hobbs. Kristin Davis as art curator Charlotte York turned Park Avenue princess was lovable and of course Kim Cattrall was deliciously naughty as a publicist cum sex goddess.
Together they painted New York in a manner that we still romanticize. Nothing was off bounds - cheating, swinging, abortion, babies, marriage, divorce, STIs, anal sex—you name it, and they had it covered. These 30 (and one 40) somethings were so fleshed out, so real, you could almost taste their cosmopolitans. That version of Manhattan and the world they inhabited was all-encompassing: the parties they attended, the clothes they wore, the exes they bumped into, the stories they told each other. There was solace to be found in these women, even if they chartered into territories quite removed from our own. It also helped that we were going through our own messy relationships, careers, Aidans and Bigs at the time.
Clearly, creator Darren Starr and writer Michael Patrick King had hit TV gold. The show went on to win seven Emmys and eight Golden Globes and catapulted Parker, Nixon and Cattrall to television stardom. It was HBO’s most watched show, even beating The Sopranos (1999-2007)
When the Sex and The City movies came out (2008, 2010), I forgave them their missteps, because I was still basking in the afterglow of the show.
But then came the spinoff, And Just Like That (2021) and it was like watching some of the most iconic women in television history being reduced to caricatures of themselves, as though we were forced to unlearn everything we thought we knew and loved about Sex and The City: Miranda is now goofy, obnoxious and non-confrontational, and says things like, “Yay, pink balloons!”; Charlotte is reduced to a flustered housewife with dog problems, and Carrie is a heightened version of all her lesser traits: prudish, rude and with zero humility.
But we continued to hope-watch, because a part of us can’t look away from SATC. It’s our bond with the original that made us persevere through the over-the-top tackiness of the writing of AJLT. The storytelling no longer felt as urgent as it once did. Carrie used to be cute and fun—now she’s a woman who puts on a giant dress to get coffee in the morning. It looks like the actors are playing themselves and not the characters we knew from SATC anymore. They have just made it easier for us to not miss them.
After Parker and Kattrall’s huge fallout, there was no Samantha of course, but there were new entrants to compensate for her absence—Nicole Ari Parker as Lisa Todd is fantastic and so is Sarita Roy Chowdhury’s Seema, but Sam is Sam.
It’s alleged that the producers made one last call to Cattrall to return to the show to save it, but she refused. Good on you Kim!
Yet, we watched on, because we were fans of Sex and The City and were waiting to see our brilliantly written women unfold into brilliantly written older women. Thankfully we no longer have to, after the two episodes that mark the season finale. I am not expecting not to be disappointed again, but if I am, at least it will be the last time.
