Mia Freedman: 15 burning questions I have after watching And Just Like That...

I loved it. I hated it. I was obsessed with it. I couldn’t wait for the next episode. I hid behind my hands. I’m sad that it’s over.

But mostly, I have questions.

So now that the finale of And Just Like That has aired, it’s time to reflect.

Because I could help but wonder...

1. How much did tobacco companies pay for all that product placement?

I have no evidence of this except for the fact there was a lot of smoking in this show and this seems to be at odds with the world as I know it. And also pop culture. Do people still smoke? Do characters on shows still smoke? Didn't we agree that maybe it wasn't such a great thing to show smoking as aspirational? And yet, smoking was a weird feature in AJLT. Carrie smoked in a way that made it seem fun and cool. So did Seema. And I’m not even talking about Che’s weed. Did you know Che smokes a lot of weed? They do. A lot of it. Che smokes so much week that Che IS weed. Also? Weed. Smoked by Che. A lot.

2. Why doesn't anyone have a job anymore?

In SATC, work was a big part of our character's lives. Carrie was a journalist and author. Miranda was a lawyer. Samantha owned her own PR firm. And Charlotte used to manage an art gallery until she chose her choice and became a full-time wife and mother. 

But in AJLT, none of them have jobs. Oh wait, Carrie is a co-host on a weekly podcast. That would pay maybe a couple hundred bucks and take up an hour per week. I guess she no longer has to work for money because Big supported her when they were married and when he died she inherited all his money? 

Miranda chucked in her legal career to go back to college so she could help disadvantaged people. But with no evidence that Steve’s bar is still operating, how does a family of three live in New York City with no income?

And then Charlotte. She divorced Trey what, like 15 years ago?

Yes, she got the apartment in the settlement but she still lives there with her family so that money is all tied up in real estate. Harry is not a big-time lawyer so... how do they live their fancy life on one moderate income?

Reality-checking aside (yes, I know that you have to suspend disbelief on this show because how did Carrie ever afford all those shoes while writing a column), what I missed from AJLT was the role that work and money plays in women's lives because it’s considerable.

By the time you hit 50 you’re either loving your job or you want to re-enter the workforce after a break to raise kids or you want to start your own business or you want a big change. How many women can just quit at the peak of their earning capacity unless they’re very rich?

When Charlotte showed her deep knowledge about art at the dinner party while defending LTW from her snarky mother-in-law, it seemed possible that she would start thinking about her identity and perhaps resuming her career now that her kids were getting older.

Yeah nah.

In SATC, the women's jobs anchored their lives to something other than their relationships. It gave them more to talk about and provided for some iconic episodes like Samantha blowing the FedX guy and Carrie having to re-finance her apartment.

At least the new characters, Che, Nya, Seema and LTW are all employed because that provided our only mentions of paid work on the show.

3. Why is Miranda cancelled?

I’ve been baffled at how mad people are with Miranda. The main criticism seems to be that AJLT Miranda is too different to SATC Miranda.

Here is an example of that argument from a think piece in The Atlantic called, We Need To Talk About Miranda which chided the writers for this lack of consistency: 

“Miranda suffered the most, because she’d always been the person most proximate to real life. Once so devastated by Steve’s infidelity that she left him, she cheated on him without batting an eye. Once so enraged at Carrie for failing to help her after Miranda threw out her neck, Miranda neglected her bedbound friend after hip surgery in favour of drinking tequila and having sex in the next room. Each arc for Miranda on And Just Like That contradicted the person she’d once been and the things we watched her do. More than her cringiest assertions of woke bona fides, more than even her treatment of Steve, this is the thing that’s hardest to swallow.”

Is it though? As Miranda herself says in the final episode, are people not allowed to change? And then change back if they want to? The difference between being in your 30s and 50s is huge.

Think about what you were doing/thinking/wearing 20 years ago.

Exactly.

4. What is a comedy concert and please can I never go to one?

The phrase 'comedy concert' is something invented by the writers because before AJLT, I had never heard it. This is because musicians give concerts and comedians do stand-up. And then there are motivational speakers like Brene Brown who do Netflix specials and TED Talks.

But a comedy concert? That’s like when your gran refers to the Interweb or FaceChat.

Possibly this is why when watching the show, every time Che gets on a stage and picks up a microphone, you want to die. What are they DOING and please can someone find an actual standup to write some material for them? I nominate Ali Wong.

5. What happened to COVID?

The New York in AJLT bears no relation to the actual city at any time since March 2020 and I'm not unhappy about this. No masks. No vax passes. No QR codes. No talk of symptoms or variants.

Thank you to whomever made the call to let us all escape from COVID for the duration of this show other than a cursory mention of it twice - once at the start when the women joke about social distancing and again when Miranda tries to shrug off her drinking problem as being just a pandemic thing because everyone drank more.

6. Speaking of which, what happened to Miranda’s drinking problem?

No idea. A plotline that featured heavily in the first few episodes, came to a head when Miranda realised she’d drunk-ordered a book about quitting drinking and then just... quit drinking.

Never mentioned again. From what I’ve heard, it’s not quite that easy but okay.

7. Will I ever get California Girls out of my head?

No. Fuck.

8. Why doesn’t anyone wear sneakers?

This is the only style criticism I have of this show which is otherwise fashion nirvana. I get that Carrie is not going to be a sneakers girl. Fine. I buy that. But sneakers have become so ubiquitous in the past decade and particularly the past few years and having every character in high heels or wedges was a lost opportunity for some sneaker styling inspo.

9. Why do so many people loathe Che Diaz and am I one of them?

Unclear. Che and the actor who plays them, Sara Ramirez, was very much at the whim of the writers who did not do them a great service in the way the character was written.

Apart from comedy concerts, they actually had a lot in common with Mr Big. Sexy, charismatic, unwilling to commit, good at sex. So much big dick energy. A fuckboi.

Both Big and Che were people with whom our girls (Carrie and Miranda respectively) cheated on their very likeable partners. But just like Big was never really a well-drawn character - his main traits were that Carrie was in love with him and that he was rich and unavailable - Che suffered the same problem. In contrast, we got to see Nya, Seema and LTW in some context  - with parents, partners, at home. But with Che, every time we saw her, she was performing. At the comedy concert, at the school benefit, at the club where she sang that awful song and on the podcast.

And performing Che was the most irritating Che. And that's a shame for the actor Sara Ramirez (they were superb as Callie in Grey's Anatomy) is excellent and has been unfairly tarnished by association.

In scenes one-on-one with Miranda, Che made sense. They had nuance, and you GOT what Miranda saw in them. There just weren’t enough of those scenes to make up for comedy Che - who isn’t funny.

10. Why is nobody happy without a partner?

The last line in the final season of SATC was about how the most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves. And yet. The only character in AJLT whose main storyline didn’t revolve around a romantic partner or the search for one was Charlotte. In the group chats and IRL conversations I have with my friends - both single and married - talking about partners is maybe 5 per cent.

Maybe if Carrie, Miranda or Charlotte had jobs they would have more to talk about.

11. Why did I stop dressing like Carrie?

I have no idea but my god am I re-inspired to channel her batshit crazy fabulousness back into my wardrobe. 

I had forgotten how influential Carrie was in the way I began to dress in my 30s. Clashing prints and textures, weird layering, hats for no reason, a belt worn as a turban, tutus and sequins.. never was there ever a woman who derived so much joy from putting together an outfit.

What Would Carrie Wear is once again my new getting dressed filter. You’ve been warned.

Listen: Deni and Tam chat to the costume designer of And Just Like That.

12. Why is everyone so obsessed with defending Steve?

This is weird to me. Hasn’t Steve always been just a daggy, sweet, insignificant sub-character whose role it was to smooth some of the more brittle edges off Miranda? Why in AJLT has he suddenly inspired an army of furious women defending his honour and calling him sexy while also bitching about how the writers gave his character hearing aids which was 'totally unrealisitc and unfair' ?  Did I miss a meeting?

The writers have a rule whereby nothing can go in the show that hasn’t happened in someone’s real life and they didn’t have to look far with Steve because the actor who plays him wears hearing aids. Also, some men do get old quickly - physically and emotionally. Quicker than their female partners. And sometimes women leave perfectly nice men because they want something else. Something more. Something different. 

Also, if every character stays the same, that’s not a TV show, that’s a photo. 

13. What’s the difference between inclusion and tokenism?

This is a genuine question. The writers have accepted the criticism that the show was too white and have attempted to address it with the introduction of four new non-white characters and the inclusion of three women of colour into the writers' room. Executive Producer, Michael Patrick King has insisted they always wanted these new characters to be multi-dimensional with stories and back stories of their own. Not just 'the Black friend'. 

That’s why there were scenes with Seema and her parents, pretending she had a boyfriend so they’d stop asking when she’d get married. And Nya out to dinner with her husband and another couple talking about their fertility struggles. 

With seven characters - plus all the other sub-plots like Anthony, Harry, Lily, Rock etc - it’s a lot to cram into 10 episodes. Did our new characters get as much time as Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda? No. But they were never going to. Hopefully, we will get to know them better if there is a season two.

14. Are we layering our necklaces now?

Yes. Yes we are. The mis-matched necklace party was to AJLT what the black bra was to SATC. In almost every scene I became obsessed with the way Carrie was wearing random necklaces that shouldn’t have looked good together but always did.

Image: HBO/Binge

Image: HBO/Binge

Imag: HBO/Binge

15. I hope there’s a season 2.

That’s not a question, it’s just a comment. I loved spending time with characters I’ve missed and meeting new ones. I loved the clothes and the friendship and looking at the faces of women in their 50s. It made me nostalgic and inspired and reassured all at once. And it’s been so nice to have something to talk about each week with so many of us watching at the same time instead of binging alone and then having someone shout at you about spoilers if you try to bring it up.

Props to the writers and the actors for giving this to us at a bit of a bleak time globally. It was imperfect and there are grumbles but it’s made me feel good in a way that’s hard to put words around. Something about watching women my age at the centre of a pop culture moment. And just like that, we’re a bit less invisible.

Feature image: Mamamia