The Winners and Losers of And Just Like That...

After holding Sex and the City fans hostage for nearly two months, the reboot series And Just Like That… has finally spluttered to an end. It was fine. It was stupid. It was tragic. It was camp. It was can’t-look-away television. It was high art. It was torture. I’m going to miss its weekly releases, and also I hope it never gets renewed for a second season, and if it does I will host a screening where everyone invited has to show up in tutus and stupid hats.

For now, it is time to look at the rubble of season one and take stock of the damage. In this particular iteration of our delusional heroine’s pursuit of labels and love, who came out on top? Here are the winners and losers after having watched the entire thing:

(Warning: Spoilers for the season finale.)

Winner: Carrie

This entire arc was an emotional rollercoaster for our main girl. She became a widow, inherited a huge amount of money, bought and sold a multimillion-dollar spaceship overlooking the Hudson River, made her first new friend in decades, got hip surgery, laid in her own piss, wrote another bestselling book, puked during a date, and felt the relentless march of time transform her into someone she no longer recognized. But she ended the season on a high note, complete with a lavish trip to Paris and a spontaneous makeout session with her boss who suddenly got hot in the last episode. Nothing — not even workplace misconduct rules — can keep her down.

Loser: Big

This mfer died from going on an exercise bike? Loser.

Loser: Peloton

Remember when the former pandemic darling swiftly released a wink-nudge-nudge ad starring actor Chris Noth after Big’s on-screen death and then almost immediately had to pull it after Noth was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, only to then see their product result in yet another prestige television heart attack?

Winner: Animism

Animism is the belief that objects, among other things, possess souls. I’m sure this worldview got a huge PR boost from Carrie deciding that her faulty lamp is, in fact, Big.

Loser: Miranda

Oh, the indignity of being the AJLT version of Miranda! She became a mockery of herself, a caricature of what it’s like to be a white woman in her mid-50s having a later-in-life crisis (that’s the show being ageist, not me). She quit being a lawyer, being rational, being witty, being loyal, having a family, and knowing how to behave without an excessive amount of cringe. The show ultimately rewards her Jungian ego death as she abandons her prestigious adult internship at Human Rights Watch to attend a taping of a standup comedian’s television pilot. While she’s technically an in-story hero, the reality is that Miranda may be AJLT’s biggest loser.

Winner: Steve

Honestly, he looked really good.

Loser: Standup comedy

Standup comedy has been through a lot over the last few years — Nanette, Joe Rogan, Jeremy Piven, Olivia Munn — but Che Diaz triumphantly dealt the final blow with those eight magic words: “DM me if you wanna chill again soon.”

Winner: Sara Ramirez

My colleague Olivia Craighead already wrote at length about the key to the essence of Che Diaz: namely, that comedians are universally annoying, which means that Che Diaz is portrayed perfectly by Tony Award winner Sara Ramirez.

Winner: The city of Los Angeles

That said, I think LA is in for a real treat with the impending arrival of everyone’s favorite “comedy concert” host. Che is going to paint the town red while filming their TV pilot, and dozens of people will accidentally stream it on Peacock when it auto-plays after This Is Us.

Loser: Brady

Who even is this horny carrot-top and why must he insist on having sex with his girlfriend so loudly and in such close vicinity to his parents? He deserves to be bullied.

Loser: Fun

Broadly speaking, AJLT was a bit light on actual fun, as Melissa Rich wrote for Gawker recently. “Where are the parties? Where are the cocktails?” Rich couldn’t help but wonder, highlighting the curious lack of New York spark and life that had driven so much of Sex and the City. Fun was methodically beaten out of this reboot with a moralizing steel cane, leaving behind a plodding meditation on life’s humiliations that couldn’t even pull off its attempts at profundity.

Winner: Samantha/Kim Cattrall

Good for both of them for staying far away from the events of this endeavor. Viewers may have missed Samantha, but she is just fine without us. As for Cattrall, she is set to play a “martini-soaked, high-society Southern debutante with trailer park roots” in the upcoming Queer as Folk reboot, where she belongs.

Winners: Darren Starr and Patricia Field

The creator and longtime costume designer of the original series opted to continue working on the Netflix megahit Emily in Paris in lieu of joining the Sex and the City gang for one more go-around — toutes nos félicitations to them on making the right call.

Correction: This article originally stated that a Peloton product resulted in another prestige television death. We have corrected the text to reflect that on the show Billions, it was just a Peloton-caused heart attack, not a death.