As promised, I took one for team and watched episode 1 of the new season of “And Just Like That.” I did not rewatch the first two seasons, which is something I often do when a show returns after a long hiatus and I want to make sure I remember the details or caught foreshadowing or needed something to do while folding laundry or trying to fall asleep.
First of all, from the real life widow angle, theres nothing activating about this episode. At least not from a real life widow 7.5 years into it herself. Maybe a few years ago I would have been like, “what the hell? She’s just moved on1 and living a life as if he never existed and it never happened and now she’s fine and well and living like its just all normal.” Actually, on reflection, I think I totally would have had that reaction. That alone is an indication of how time changes things and skin becomes thicker and its possible to exist without feeling like a walking open wound vulnerable to every shift of air.
This said, I am going to possibly give the writers more credit than they deserve and more credit than I might give them if I were in a different mood today. I am going to say “good on them” for depicting her living her daily life in such a “normal” way.2 At a certain point, this does happen. A day can feel untouched by grief or reminders of the dead person in an invasive, discombobulating way. You find yourself able to put on the most impractical designer outfits you own and go traipsing about town. You lick a postage stamp3 and drop it in a mailbox to your long distance, non-communicative lover, and go about your day.
The reason I think I am giving them more credit than they deserve is because I don’t think the writers are intentionally setting about to portray widowhood or give realistic insights or include any nuanced examination of the life of a widow a few years into it. I am guessing they are over it and getting rid of Big was a necessary plot point (that turned out to be convenient when Chris Noth got himself cancelled for bad behavior) and now they have the scenario they needed to move along with their ridiculous story about their increasingly ridiculous characters.
Another thing I am going to give them too much credit for is Carrie struggling to explain to people how she has been spending her time and why she hasn’t been writing. She’s just moved into a gigantic new home and is consumed with setting up her new dwelling, choosing new curtains, sorting her closet…but all of the interior shots show a home with no furniture other than in her bedroom and in a room that seems to be a replica of her old apartment and have all of that furniture set up inside it, coffee table, writing desk, and all. I am going to give this the widow perspective and say she is spending her time processing how she got there - figuratively and literally. She sold the home she shared with Big, she sold the home that had been a crux of hr identity, and she moved into a space expecting to have a fresh start with an old boyfriend and instead she finds herself living alone in a dream house. She had reconnected and reconciled with the one that got away, and then he jumped ship on her. She’s now actually alone with some thoughts and some feelings and the days stretch out ahead of her and…
The girl needs therapy.
But as we learned in SATC, she has an opposition to therapy and there’s no reason to believe that all she has since been through is going to change that.
However, no, I don’t think the writers did this on purpose in terms of portraying grief. I think it was designed to make us all question her decisions and the viability of her romantic relationship, and to be able to write in the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” joke.
At the end of the episode, after several encounters of friends questioning how she is spending her time and people asking her what she is working on and what she is writing, after she has aimlessly wandered through her house again, she sits at her desk in front of a window, and opens her laptop and begins to write.
Good for her.
A couple of other notes before I move on from this little exploration of reviewing a TV show…
Thank God we don’t have to watch them making an idiot of Steve (yet?)
Miranda needs to CTFO and get over herself and her status as a “real New Yorker” who’s too cool to hang out with Sister Mary. This whole story line rpoved why people hate “New York liberals” and that can be spun to discredit them. We KNEW you hated tourists and think you’re better than us.
Aiden getting tipsy in his truck and making a middle of the night phone call after weeks of no verbal communication so he can get some phone sex going…the spitting on the hand…no. Please, no. He’s not Big.
There is no such thing as “moving on.” From the outside, it might look like a person has “moved on” but they didn’t. As one of my kids has said, “We aren’t moving on, we’re moving forward.”
Accepting that there is nothing “normal” about the life if Carrie Bradshaw. It is utterly ridiculous and preposterous and hyper-fictionalized.
Do they even still make postage stamps that you have to LICK? Also, when you think about licking a stamp, do you also immediately TASTE the way stamps tasted back when we had to lick them. Also, if they don’t make that kind of stamp anymore, at what point will humans have lost the historical memory of the taste of postage stamps…Probably soon because my kids have never had to lick a stamp. They’ll never have to and probably never will. Whoa.