Carrie Bradshaw goes to be simply positive.
Should you’ve watched the final-ever episode of HBO Max’s And Simply Like That…, you may know that too. If you have not, you need to most likely avert your eyes — spoilers forward.
The ending was, in my view, the right send-off for Carrie — a full circle second, ending almost three many years on our display screen, simply as she began: single.
The finale opens with Carrie eating solo in a futuristic Japanese restaurant that includes robots and menus on tablets. When she locations her order, a member of workers locations a cuddly toy tomato named Tommy as firm, the comfort prize, so she would not need to eat alone.
Carrie is rightfully affronted by this, and as a frequent solo diner, I occur to agree with this justified outrage. Consuming on our personal is definitely a luxurious that many individuals don’t have: dad and mom wrangling energetic children at dinnertime will attest to this, I am certain. Having the ability to sit in full silence and luxuriate in your meals in blissful silence? It is heaven-sent, frankly.
Within the earlier episode of AJLT, the primary half of the finale, Carrie handed in her manuscript to her editor, who declared it a “romantic tragedy” that the protagonist finally ends up alone. Once more, impolite. What’s tragic about selecting your self? What is that this chasmic void that all of a sudden wants filling?
After the solo dining-shaming incident, Carrie declares, “Apparently, not only is it tragic for women to be alone in the past, it’s also an issue in the future.”
It is an episode that wrestles with the endings we have been conditioned to crave. Seema questions whether or not she actually desires marriage, or if she’s simply spent her complete life being informed she ought to aspire to so-called matrimonial bliss. “Do I really want it, or am I just programmed for it?” she asks as she and Carrie watch a bridal trend present. In the meantime, Charlotte and Lisa grapple with the realities of marriage versus the fantasies they’d earlier than coming into it. The message appears to be: wedded “bliss” is not precisely all it is cracked as much as be.
Credit score: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
I, and lots of others, have been hoping for this ending. After years of centering males, Carrie is lastly placing her personal wants first. On this closing season of the present, we endured a number of episodes of Aidan being a very abysmal accomplice. And one way or the other, Carrie stored coming again for extra — till she lastly snapped (which was a very long time coming). Aidan requested for a hell of so much in that relationship, particularly ready for him for 5 years in a state of celibacy, in an empty furniture-less residence, ready till he was lastly obtainable. Carrie is not even certain how usually she ought to textual content Aidan, seemingly as a result of she would not wish to hassle him or be too needy. Lady, are we for actual with this cool lady behaviour? “DUMP HIM,” I screamed at my tv after each episode. And fortunately, the message appeared to get by way of when she acquired uninterested in his possessive, jealous bullshit.
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In fact, whereas all this Aidan nonsense was taking place, many people have been additionally urging her to sleep with the horny British downstairs neighbour. Positive, he is a curmudgeon who will not let her put on her signature heels round her flat (oppression!) — however he is charming. When Carrie says, “I’ve never experienced a man see me as smart first,” I really feel unhappy. How is it attainable {that a} lady with seven bestsellers and an illustrious writing profession spanning a number of many years remains to be having her mind diminished?
“Carrie Bradshaw, you’re a thing,” Duncan proclaims mid-epiphany as if he is one way or the other solely simply found this. Have you ever been hiding underneath a rock? Too busy writing about Margaret Thatcher to see the icon you have got in entrance of you? Anyway, regardless of his charms, it is also a no from me on this one.
By the penultimate episode, it was clear that there have been no worthy contenders within the race to win Carrie’s affection. It was excessive time to cease catering to males’s wants, bending and breaking your self to go well with their calls for, and never being seen for all that you’re. Do we actually need our lady to accept lower than she deserves?
What’s fascinating about Carrie’s perspective within the closing episode is her willingness to confess that she’s beforehand seemed to aloneness as an impermanent state, a method to an finish — the top being the man.
However we see Carrie start to query: What if she simply stands nonetheless for some time and would not attempt to “fix” her singleness by bringing a person into the image?
Carrie tells Charlotte, “I’ve never lived alone without the thought that I wouldn’t be alone for long.”
“I have to quit thinking ‘maybe a man,’ and start accepting ‘maybe just me.’ It’s not a tragedy, it’s just a fact,” she provides.
However, I might go so far as to say that “just me” is not only a reality, it is a triumph. And there is not any “just” about it. Carrie, on her personal, is Carrie at her greatest.
As Barry White’s “My Everything” performs on the closing scene of the episode, Carrie’s voice tells us, “She was not alone; she was on her own.”
If we distinction that line with Carrie’s parting phrases within the closing episode of Intercourse And The Metropolis, there is a very stark distinction:
“Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”
Carrie knew it then, again in 2004: The actual love story all alongside was the one she had with herself. The rest is simply an added additional.
The whole collection of And Simply Like That… is now streaming on HBO Max.