FROM HOLLY: 'A love letter to my toxic friend'

And Just Like That… it's over.

Welcome to the MID view of the end of the Sex and the City universe — forever.

She's been our problematic friend for 27 years now, hasn't she? Carrie Bradshaw, with her impossible shoes and even more impossible romantic choices.

But the truth we always knew? Carrie was never meant to be aspirational. She was meant to be us. Messy, self-absorbed, making terrible decisions in great outfits. She mirrored our romantic disasters, our ambition, our fear of aging — and somehow made it all look glamorous.

But now? It’s time to put down the mirror and walk away.

This special drop is inspired by a story by Holly Wainwright on Mamamia

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CREDITS:

Host: Holly Wainwright

Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman

Audio Producer: Jacob Round

Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on. This is a love letter to my toxic friend.
She's selfish, shallow, unreliable, She's rich, barely works shops all day,

(00:31):
kind of vain, terrible taste in men. I've known her
now for twenty seven years. We've grown older together, and
I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes it hurts how good she
looks without sleeves, and how she still moves around in
that body, the teeny tiny one that looks just so
in clothes, the one that we were all supposed to have.

(00:53):
I'm talking, of course, about the fictional character I've spent
more time with than any other, Carrie Bradshaw. There is
no more and just like that, and the world is
collectively cheering and sneering. This show has become a watchable.
The critics say these women have become ridiculous. They write,

(01:14):
Carrie died a long time ago. Someone posts ratings have
been on a slow slide. Reporters report, of course, the
end of and just like that signals the end of
the Sex and the City universe. There will be no
more Carrie Bradshaw on Momma Mia Out Loud, My Whip Smart.
Co host Emelia Lester agrees that it's time she told

(01:39):
me that we have been in a toxic relationship with
Carrie Bradshaw for too long. She's right, We've already listed
her faults. And a show centered around a skinny white
lady who lives a one percent life feels like it's
from another time, like Carrie's Ladies book, And and just
like that is an expensive white elephant of a show

(02:00):
whose excesses are many, redecorating an entire apartment in a
high profile Manhattan building just to shoot a three minute
scene there, auditioning six poppet makers to get exactly the
right one for a ninety second joke about wanking, hiring,
and fitting out an entire bakery on a corner block
in New York City and letting it stand empty for

(02:21):
months until it was called up for its coffee shop scenes.
In two shows out of five, all of these things
definitely happened, and so much more, and you can hear
all about it on the end, just like that Writer's
Room podcast. If you would like your jaw to be
perpetually on the floor. Those excesses feel like they've been
applied to the characters too. In this iteration of the

(02:43):
once almost gritty Sex in the City, everything has turned
up to eleven. The jokes, the slapstick, the reactions. It's
like they've all been made bigger for older eyes to see,
like the text on your sister's smartphone. And yet, and yet,
my co host was also wrong because Carrie Bradshaw means

(03:04):
something that doesn't mean she should live forever. But I
can't celebrate her ending. She is one of the all
time great television characters, a woman who, along with Charlotte, Miranda,
Samantha and Latteralie, Lisa and Seema, influenced at least one generation,
maybe two or three, to see so many things differently. Sex,

(03:25):
of course, fashion definitely, friendship apps of fucking lutely, I can,
like many women, instantly call up a Sex in the
City episode to address most of life's conundrums. Maybe our
girlfriends are our true soulmates. He's just not that into you.
Why do the smug marrieds get all the gifts? If

(03:47):
I really wanted to settle down, wouldn't I have made
it happen by now? Were you made for each other,
or were your lights just on at the same time,
I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me? And more, oh
so many more. These women and their audience have been
through breakups and breakdowns together, losses of loved ones and
collagen hair colors, jobs for riendship, fights, dumb ideas, sexual discoveries.

(04:12):
We are nothing like these women, but they are shiny,
glamorous avatars, once kept close by brutal honesty and sharp
little truths. So I will mourn my toxic friend Carrie
Bradshaw even more so, perhaps because despite all the excesses,
and just like that, I love that I got to
watch her grow older. There's a subtle agesm buried in

(04:34):
some of the criticism of this show. Fifty something women
still behaving sometimes like besotded ongenouze, failing at relationships, wrestling
with their shit, being silly, playing for laughs, will tolerate,
somehow a pratfall from a young woman. In fact, they're
almost compulsory in any telling of a story about a
hot mess heroine, but not for anyone over the age

(04:56):
of forty. Grown up women are meant to have our
shit together in all ways. After all, who will hold
the flailing messes of the world together, if not us.
So for me, there is joy pun intended in seeing
old faces getting the big romantic storylines and the gags
and the sex scenes and the fuck ups, because stuff

(05:17):
just keeps on happening to you as long as you're alive,
and sometimes it's a mess. Carrie Bradshaw is flawed and
sometimes problematic. She's inconsistent and often wrong. She's funny and
sad and excellent company for a walk, a coffee, or
a cocktail on a good day. She'll keep your secrets
for you, and she'll turn up when you need her,

(05:39):
and in those ways the otherworldly carry. Bradshaw is a
lot like my real life friends, although not one of
them has her arms or her shoe collection.