And Just Like That… gave menopause a big pass

Opinion

Watching the third and final season of And Just Like That…, I couldn’t help but wonder: why isn’t Carrie Bradshaw writing about menopause?

Despite a strong (and, as it turns out, anomalous) second season, And Just Like That…, the sequel series to HBO’s cultural juggernaut Sex and the City, all but abandoned the quality that made its predecessor so groundbreaking: its willingness to “go there.”

Sex and the City was, fundamentally, a show for people who love gossip. We wanted to hear our core four 30-somethings — Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) — dish about their sex lives in New York City, talking about things — famously, nay canonically, over brunch — that you never, ever heard about on TV in the late 1990s.

The endurance of this franchise, which now includes two movies and a second three-season series, can be chalked up to the simple fact that we love these zany women.

They are flawed and annoying and frustrating and we loved them because they were our friends. Many of us spent our entire adulthoods with these women.

Which is why it’s so disappointing that And Just Like That… didn’t do anything meaningful with menopause.

Sure, there were a few passing glances at it, a few winks via one-liners that suggested most of our gals were firmly on the other side of all that. But what a giant missed opportunity.

Take Carrie’s career pivot to being a (bad) novelist.

I get that romance novels are very hot right now, but imagine if the show’s writers let Carrie Bradshaw be a sex and menopause columnist? Imagine if she could have continued being a voice for her generation (and for us), shepherding women through a massive, confusing and little talked-about life change and what it all means for their sex lives? Complete with episode-length, Carrie Bradshaw-couldn’t-help-but-wonder voice-overs, thank you very much.

A major issue with And Just Like That… is that it, quite literally, took away Carrie’s voice. In Sex and the City, we got to hear Carrie write her weekly column via her narration.

Was it punny and cringe? Of course — that’s what made it her. But it also gave us access to her interior life. Her voice was the heart of Sex and the City.

Not for nothing, Carrie Bradshaw is what the kids might call cringecore. She loves what she loves earnestly. She is whimsical. She is the kind of woman who squeals and claps when she sees the Eiffel Tower and refuses to accept anything less than butterflies.

Carrie was also strangely, incongruously prudish as a sex columnist — remember that storyline in the original series in which she was just baffled by the idea of bisexuality? But maybe And Just Like That… could have provided her a growth moment. Here is a widowed, menopause-age woman getting back out there. What does that look like?

Instead, we got Aiden.

A menopause journey also could have been a perfect arc for Charlotte, for whom fertility and motherhood have been inextricably linked to her identity.

They are flawed and annoying and frustrating and we loved them because they were our friends. Many of us spent our entire adulthoods with these women.

Charlotte, you might recall, struggled mightily to get pregnant with her first husband Trey (Kyle MacLachlan) in the original series. She ended up divorcing him owing to their sexual struggles, finding love with Harry (Evan Handler), adopting their first daughter Lily, before getting pregnant with Rose.

Charlotte’s tandem grief and acceptance of Rose, who came out as nonbinary, was a compelling motherhood storyline, but it is a bit stunning that Charlotte never grappled with feelings associated with the end of her fertility, save for a scene in the first season of AJLT where she experiences some breakthrough bleeding.

“Actually, it’s funny,” Charlotte says when Miranda simply tells her to prepare to be sweaty. “I haven’t gotten any hot flashes or breast tenderness or brain fog or any of those awful symptoms you guys had.”

OK, cool talk.

No storylines about white-hot rage or navigating a new body or getting dismissed by doctors or dealing with hormones.

Hell, I would have even accepted a hacky trope or two, like Carrie waking up at 2 a.m. to blast an open freezer at her nightsweat-soaked body.

A menopause journey also could have been a perfect arc for Charlotte, for whom fertility and motherhood have been inextricably linked to her identity.

For 30- and 40-somethings, Sex and the City was a mirror — if an impossibly glamorous one — of their own lives. But teenagers and 20-somethings were drawn to it too because, for them, it was a window. It was an intoxicating glimpse into adulthood, into possible futures to come.

It’s a shame And Just Like That… chose to be neither mirror nor window, but a closed door instead.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca