‘And Just Like That’ Season Finale Recap: Stiletto on the Other Foot

Season 1, Episode 10

“I can stay here and write about my life, or I can go with him and live my life!”

“You mean his life.”

Remember that fight from Season 6 of “Sex and the City”? Did some of the conversation between Carrie and Miranda in this week’s episode of “And Just Like That …” feel familiar?

In the finale of this season — or, perhaps, of the revival series altogether (a renewal has not yet been announced) — we discover that things are getting serious between Miranda and Che. Che, who is nonbinary and uses they/them singular pronouns, invites Miranda to meet their family, but instead of the sit-down dinner Miranda is expecting, she finds herself at a hip little nightclub with Che’s two grandmas. Che takes the stage and breaks into a cover of “California Girls” just before announcing to the crowd, and to Miranda, that they are headed to Los Angeles to film a pilot.

The news stuns Miranda, but it’s even more stunning to her that Che wants her to come along. And what’s maybe even more stunning, at least to Miranda’s inner circle, is that she wants to go. This is absolutely un-Miranda-like. She is in the middle of grad school with a killer internship at Human Rights Watch on the horizon, and she certainly isn’t known for taking time off. To go with Che is spontaneous and maybe even irresponsible, but ever since meeting Che, Miranda’s pragmatism has let go of the wheel. She wants to be with Che — whatever that takes — so she is going.

This irks Carrie, maybe because she is going to have to learn to live without her BFF for a time, or because this means Miranda won’t be able to come with her to Paris to help scatter Big’s ashes. Or maybe because she’s not sure whether Miranda is aware of her own hypocrisy.

“What are you going to do in L.A. all day? Sit in an audience and laugh?” Carrie asks her with a hint of contempt.

Suddenly we’re transported back to that snowy New York street in the scene after the funeral of Lexi Featherston (Kristen Johnston) in “Sex and the City” Season 6. “What are you going to do over there without your job?” Miranda asked Carrie at the time, condescendingly. “Eat croissants?”

She was sore over Carrie’s decision to follow the Russian to Paris, judging her for what she perceived as Carrie’s giving up her life in favor of his. And now, in a head-spinning 180, the roles have reversed.

Back then, however, there was no transgender rabbi eavesdropping from a bathroom stall, ready to emerge and remind Carrie and Miranda that their friendship is irreplaceable.

This whole thing went down in the ladies room at Rock’s gender-neutral “they-mitzvah,” or at least, that’s what the event was supposed to be. But at the last minute, Rock, who had apparently been slacking in Hebrew School this whole time, decided not to go through with the ceremony at all. Invoking all the principles of Gen Z-ism (or perhaps just tweening super hard), Rock, who also uses they/them pronouns, tells their parents they don’t believe in any of the religious stuff and doesn’t want to be “labeled as anything: not as a girl, or boy, nonbinary, a Jew … or even a New Yorker.”

But as Charlotte told us in Season 3 in a decidedly un-woke conversation about bisexuality, “I’m very into labels,” and she wasn’t talking about Gucci and Versace. Charlotte has worked incredibly hard to obtain all of hers: wife, mother and especially Jew. “Someone is going out there and getting they-mitzvahed today,” she says, glowering. In a fitting twist, that someone turns out to be Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Carrie spends much of this episode haunted by Big. An old lamp flickers off and on inexplicably, even after she has it rewired, and she can’t help but wonder if Big is trying to tell her something from beyond the grave. Is he mad at her for the lukewarm kiss she shared with Peter at her doorstep? Is he just sick of being stowed in the closet next to her old shoes?

Perhaps Big would have told her more explicitly if he had appeared to her more plainly, and originally, he did — he was cut from Carrie’s dream sequence after allegations of sexual assault surfaced against the actor who plays him, Chris Noth. Instead, Carrie has to rely on her interpretation the dream, in which she finds herself in Paris, standing in the street as a line from their love theme, “Hello It’s Me,” rings out, partly in Big’s voice: “It’s important to me that you know you are free.”

This is the permission Carrie needs to finally move on.

She also takes it as a sign that Big wants his ashes scattered in Paris, from “their bridge,” the Pont des Arts. (Which is basically every couple’s bridge, right? But Carrie is mourning so we’ll let her have it.) That’s the one on which he finally told Carrie that she was the love of his life, at the end of the original series.

So, in the Carrie-est of Carrie ways, she shows up to their old spot in an over-the-top gown, looking like a walking orange sherbet sundae, opens her totally impractical Eiffel Tower purse that is serving as a travel urn, and lets go of Mr. Big: his remains, and his ghost.

The scene is emotional, a little ridiculous, and somehow poignant, which is the haphazard combination this show thrives on.

And just like that, it’s the end, and for our O.G. trio, it’s pretty darn happy. Miranda is an entirely changed and entirely happy person now that love is calling the shots. Charlotte has let go of the all-consuming need to cultivate perfection and has learned to meet her family exactly where they are. And Carrie, no longer a wallowing widow, is back in her element, waxing poetic about all the stuff that baffles her about relationships in “Sex in the City,” which has morphed from print column to podcast.

As a caller weeps into her phone begging Carrie to tell her why her relationship fell to pieces, Carrie says she simply doesn’t know. Older, wiser and more squarely in her comfort zone, Carrie seems to feel no more pressure to make sense of anything. In fact, she says, “The more I live, the more I find myself mystified.”

And maybe it’s not a bad thing to admit you don’t have life figured out. If any of us did, what would be the point, really? Nothing would surprise us anymore. We would stop opening our minds and hearts to the unexpected. We might not let ourselves take chances, discover new paths, or find new joys.

We might not let our baser instincts take over and kiss the sexy producer out of nowhere in the elevator.

Most important, we might go on believing that all of the exciting, messy, fun, surprising stuff has to happen when we’re young. It doesn’t. Your story isn’t over just because your youth is.

And maybe that’s what this show, in its own fumbling, imperfect way, was here to remind us.

Things I Can’t Stop Thinking About:

• Why was there so much fake news around this reboot? First we had John Corbett quoted as saying he would be back for several episodes reprising the role of Aidan Shaw, which didn’t happen. Then, just before the premiere, Michael Patrick King told The New York Times that “nobody’s dead” in this series, which certainly didn’t turn out to be true. I get wanting to squash spoilers, but I feel deceived.

• In case anyone is worried that there is no trace of the old Miranda left, refer simply to the diner scene in this episode in which she is insanely insensitive to Carrie’s need to believe in an afterlife. There’s the cynical Miranda we know!

• If we do get a Season 2, I hope the writers dive as deeply into Nya and Seema as they did into Che this time around. Each of them is on the precipice of a big shift — Nya poised to rethink her life without a baby, and without a husband, and Seema at the beginning of an intense new relationship — so their story lines are ripe for exploration. This is especially true considering that Samantha appears to be never coming back, despite that heartwarming text exchange.

• After watching Jackie Nee (Bobby Lee) and Smoke (Bethlehem Million) tie the knot, I suddenly realized that surprise weddings are very practical in the age of Covid-19. Who can plan anything tied to a future date anymore? You may be better off gathering your friends when the case numbers are low and the weather is good and then just springing it on them.