Sex and the City fans have bravely endured the far lesser follow-up for three seasons, but after an official announcement it’s time for a sigh of relief
A
nd just like that, it was over. Friday’s announcement by the showrunner Michael Patrick King that the third series of And Just Like That would be its last was met with little surprise and I suspect some relief. Following a forthcoming two-part finale, Carrie Bradshaw will hang up her Manolos for good – and not a moment too soon.
If a theme could be pulled from the scrambled threads of the third season of the Sex and the City reboot, it is, I think, the question of appearance versus reality. Early on in the series, rattled by the discovery of a rat infestation in her meadowy garden, Carrie seeks comfort from Aidan, the man she’s technically in a relationship with but due to a muddled and implausible arrangement, can’t actually be with for five years. Carrie thought her garden was perfect, she says, “but I just wasn’t looking underneath”.
After three seasons of And Just Like That the answer to what lies beneath is, I fear, nothing. Take the shoes – in a frankly criminal throwback to one of the best plotlines of the original show, Carrie namechecks a superior earlier episode as she complains about her curmudgeonly downstairs neighbour asking her to remove her stilettos in the house. In A Woman’s Right to Shoes, Carrie’s stolen Manolo Blahniks stood for, in no particular order, the gulf that can open between friends at different life stages, the way marriage and motherhood are celebrated when the milestones of an independent life are not, attention inequity in friendships, and a woman’s right to spend her money however the hell she chooses. In Under the Table, Carrie’s shoes signify … that she has a crush.
