And Just Like That, the worst show on TV is finally over

Showrunners are putting the show and fans out of our misery. Warning: some spoilers ahead for season 3.

It’s a Watchlist special and I hope you don’t mind that I am focusing in on one TV show for this article. If you follow me on Instagram you will know I have been raging about this series for quite some time. So, here are some thoughts on the end of And Just Like That and what went wrong.

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I wanted to love And Just Like That, I really did. I have been loving Sex and the City since the early 2000s. I have watched every single episode of it at least half a dozen times. I rushed to the cinema to see both movies.

I am a ride-or-die fan. It’s a show that made me laugh and cry. I grew up seeing the relationship struggles of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte as my own guide to finding love in the modern age - after the “end of love” in Manhattan as Carrie once said.

It’s for that reason I feel so let down by the spin-off show because as much as I think it is one of the worst things ever made, I have not been able to quit it because of my decades-long devotion to these characters.

But now, this week, at last, good news. This season will be the last. There are only two episodes for me to limp through. Then this glitter, painful-to-watch, inexplicably greenlit mess will be over.

Showrunner Michael Patrick King announced yesterday: “And just like that... the ongoing storytelling of the Sex And The City universe is coming to an end. While I was writing the last episode of And Just Like Thal... season 3, it became clear to me that this might be a wonderful place to stop. Along with Sarah Jessica Parker, Casey Bloys and Sarah Aubrey, we decided to end the popular series this year with a two part finale and extended the original series order from 10 episodes to 12. 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. It's with great gratitude we thank all the viewers who have let these characters into their homes and their hearts over these many years."

It’s hard to know what’s been the worst thing about the third series of AJLT so far:

• Aidan.

• A whole storyline about Carrie wearing shoes indoors.

• The awkward karaoke, made worse by the fact they had legendary Hamilton star Christopher Jackson right there. Yes, he sung in a previous episode, but, wow, why would you waste him in a karaoke episode and have him chuckling along to someone else belting out Bette Davis Eyes?

• Aidan.

• Seema’s new boyfriend, Adam the gardener, getting testy because she wears deodorant. It was meant to be comic relief, but it just felt controlling and weird.

• That bizarre gingham hat Carrie wore. It’s not edgy. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s just odd.

• Charlotte and the row over her dog being cancelled, which was just an unimportant way to bring back a one-off background actor who was in the Sex and the City movie throwing paint at Samantha’s fur coat.

• Charlotte’s apparently vacuous now. Charlotte could always be a little ditzy, however she was a talented gallery manager and she’s been through a lot - that life experience should have contributed to her character development. In AJLT she constantly has this wide-eyed expression as if she’s trying to figure out what’s happening. To be fair, aren’t we all? Her only glimmer of greatness in this show was in season two during her tirade at Harry about him “doing the bare minimum” after she returned to work.

• Carrie’s reaction to Aidan cheating. When Aidan revealed he had slept with his ex-wife, Carrie reacted as if Aidan had told her he got her takeout order wrong. There is no way this character reacts in that way to the person she claimed to be the love her life cheating on her. Not just cheating on her, but cheating with his ex-wife. Someone who will forever be in his life due to their three sons - making the chances of him cheating again very real. There is no way the real Carrie isn’t rushing to tell her friends about this and ask them how she can ever get to trust him again. Instead, they’re in bed together minutes later. And the fact Carrie seems to think their arrangement was to have this half-in, half-out situation where Aidan just drops by to say “I love you” and they sleep with other people if they want to just doesn’t ring true. It wasn’t true to their relationship or the importance they both placed on trust. I was excited for this relationship to come back. However then the writers decided to have Carrie say “Big was a mistake” - this was the moment it jumped the shark for me. This just was not authentic to the character. She wouldn’t erase the years with her husband as if they didn’t matter - you can find happiness after grief without erasing happy years.

• Aidan. He was one of my absolute favourite love interests of the original series - although I fully support that she ended up with Big. Aidan was a kind, calm, romantic, thoughtful, slightly goofy and practical person. They turned him into this unreasonable weirdo who betrayed Carrie with his ex-wife. He forced her to give up her apartment, then told her he couldn’t be with her for five years while he helped his son, then called her out of the blue to have awkward phone sex and just showed up in New York without letting Carrie know. The way his possessive jealously unfolded over Carrie’s neighbour, Duncan, was the final nail in the coffin. I have to concede he was right to be paranoid, Carrie was too defensive about her friendship with Duncan when talking to Miranda for there to have been nothing there at all. And now they’ve consummated their relationship. But Aidan’s been selfish since returning to the show, and also an absolute bore. When they finally decide to break-up (for the third time), Aidan uttered the line “I really thought we were gonna make it this time,” and I felt absolutely nothing, which is one of AJLT’s biggest problems. I just don’t care. It is the show’s best decision so far to end their relationship, however this shouldn’t be taken as any form of praise.

  

• Carrie’s book being lauded as a great literary work by a veteran author. I know Carrie is an experienced writer, but she wrote columns and then funny books about relationships. She is not a novelist, and the show writers’ attempts at making her seem like a credible one have fallen utterly flat. She’s writing a historical fiction novel - so why has she never appeared to conduct any research? British novelist Duncan reads Carrie’s book’s opening line: “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into.” He then gushes as if it’s this grand revelation for the book world, which was actually the best acting I have seen so far this season.

  

• Miranda used to be the smart, sensible one, who celebrated being independent, but she still delivered when it came to storylines. Now it feels like she’s drifting chaotically - a far cry from her former self. Her new girlfriend Joy seems nice, but I cannot muster any enthusiasm for anything that has happened to her this season. Having Brady get a casual fling pregnant felt like a desperate attempt to give her, and Steve, who’s been largely absent this season, something to do. Miranda does however have a moment in season three that we can all relate to where she talks about binging a reality TV show and reveals she’s “discovered the joy in hate-watching”. I am hate-watching AJLT, but finding no joy.

• It’s not funny, and making serious and provocative situations funny used to be Sex and the City’s speciality, as well as making us cry. The low point this series was a school shooting joke where the principal at Charlotte’s children’s school hurriedly puts on a bullet proof vest after she bursts into his office with urgent news. It just felt totally out of place in the show. The only joke that came close to being funny was the “Little House on the Carrie” reference when Carrie spends time in Virginia with Aidan’s family at the farm. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, more quiet snort funny.

• The continuing efforts to shoehorn every single inclusivity and diversity issue into the show. I don’t have a problem with there being diversity in the show, but it feels like they have a checklist - bisexual, check, polyamorous, check, nonbinary, check. It’s great for the show to move along with the times - the original was not diverse - however it feels so forced. Trying to put this group of characters into every single diversity scenario out there just isn’t realistic.

• Is this really it? If Carrie is ultimately going to end up with Duncan, a love interest brought in part-way through the final ever episodes featuring these beloved characters, that is such a let down to the fans. The reason the season finale of Sex and the City was so huge was it was a crescendo for the central relationship - Big and Carrie. Who cares about Carrie and Duncan by comparison? Had the show writers properly planned out the show arc, they would have built the Carrie and Aidan relationship arc towards this conclusion. As it is, we are left building towards an ending for Carrie that we have zero emotional investment in. Will she ride off into the sunset to London with Duncan? Or stride off into the city as a single woman in a fabulous outfit? I do not care either way. There’s no tension, unlike when Carrie moved to Paris while her friends and she had second-thoughts about whether this was the right thing to do. There are no big questions as we head into these final episodes - none of the characters are facing significant enough existential drama to keep us engaged. But die-hard fans will watch it, because we are in a committed relationship with this show.

All of the signs were there that the Sex and the City spin-off would be dreadful thanks to the second movie, which featured jokes that fell flat and bizarre moments like the girls doing a Scooby-Doo-style escape from an angry mob. Gone were the witty one-liners.

I get that change and evolution of characters and format can be a good thing. The sixth season of Sex and the City was very different to the first - they ditched the vox pops of random people on the street, the characters felt more familiar by then, it was no longer about being single in New York. But in order to reinvent itself, AJLT has not just ripped apart satisfying storylines, but fundamentally changed who the characters were. Yes, I have missed Samantha, but AJLT’s problems run much deeper than changes to the cast.

There’s something so much less compelling about seeing wealthy society women of New York complain about their lives. The original Sex and the City worked because you felt you could identify with these women, they felt relatable. Plus there was tension as these women searched for love and that tension has not been there in the spin-off.

And even more than that, it’s simply not a good show. And it’s not even that it’s so bad it’s good.

This show would never have made it to a third season were it not for the fact it piggy-backed off the success of Sex and the City and its army of loyal fans. Had this simply been Sarah Jessica Parker’s latest venture, a different character doing these inane things, it would have been cancelled after the pilot.

And Just Like That was billed as a love letter to fans. But it was actually a huge disservice to fans, having been built on nostalgia but absent the heart and wit that made Sex and the City so iconic. Sometimes it’s OK to allow a show to end, even if it was truly epic and loved, and even if you can see a gravy train rattling down the tracks.

I’m relieved it’s ending, but I’m also gutted that something I once adored has become something I had to endure.