About Last Night…SUPERMARKET SWEEP, THE ROOKIE, AND JUST LIKE THAT, and More

Let’s talk about Sunday night’s TV!

CELEBRITY WHEEL OF FORTUNE: The episode was fun, but it’s always a bit of a bummer when no one wins the final game, but both were a bit hard. The second full game was a lot more enjoyable than the first, because it’s rare when a runaway game feels enjoyable.

 A CHRISTMAS PROPOSAL: I’m really, really hard to win over with holiday movies, but I was absolutely charmed by this one. Jessica Camacho and Adam Rodriguez were charming, and I appreciated how it was clearly Christmas, but still felt accessible/not only for people who celebrate.

[Here’s what Camacho had to say about the film.]

SUPERMARKET SWEEP: A SINGLE SECOND to spare for the $100k in game 2?! Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Normally, I get frustrated when the clues are too hard, but the team who guess Pringles and then left the chip section…respectfully, yeah, that was on them.

THE ROOKIE: After spending this entire season worried Wesley was going to die, I’m really glad he has survived this hurdle. I’m sure his career is going to be absolutely upended, but…at least he’ll be able to go home to his family.

Nolan thinking about proposing to Bailey feels so, so, so quick. Like, it’s crazy he hadn’t even told her he was in love with her and already thinking marriage? I’m curious to get more insight into why she didn’t reveal the marriage and what comes next with Nolan.

The Tim scenes broke my heart and I’m so glad the show didn’t force him to just reconcile with his abusive father. Eric Winter’s performance was just absolutely gutting as Tim reconciled with the fact that his dad protected his mistress, but also treated his own kids so terribly—and Tim’s insistence to Lucy that his Tim Tests were not like his father. My heart.

[For more on the fall finale and what comes next, here’s what creator Alexi Hawley shared.]

AND JUST LIKE THAT: As someone who generally likes to imagine the series ended when the HBO show did (I can tolerate the first movie; I…like to pretend the second never existed), I was wary about the revival. Through the first two episodes, none of those fears/concerns have gone away.

Here’s the thing: You could have this show without Samantha or without Big. You can’t tell it, authentically, without both.

I don’t care how mad Samantha was at Carrie (more on that in a second), there is not a chance in hell she wouldn’t have been on the first flight back the second Big died. There is no world in which it’s plausible she would have stayed away when Carrie was at her absolutely lowest—and it wasn’t even something Carrie was prepared for, the death was a shock. And the show made it canon Samantha knew, thanks to the flowers at the funeral.

The decision to kill off Big was also disappointing, because 1) it instantly sucked all joy out of the show and 2) it’s repeating a beat we’ve seen repeatedly, including the majority of the first movie (Carrie trying to adjust to life post-Big). Sad things happen, there’s absolutely no denying that, but this is also a show that was made in the midst of a global pandemic (that is still ongoing)…it’s just incredibly frustrating that rather than this be a reprieve from the world, it’s watching characters we care about battle through unspeakable grief.

The more I think about it, if they wanted to tackle the grieving process, I wish they had actually tackled the loss of Samantha. (And to be clear, not that I wanted Samantha to die, but what losing Samantha from their friend group did to the women.) As Big noted near the end of the series, the women were the loves of Carrie’s life and a guy was lucky to come in fourth; he was right. We’ve seen these women lose romantic loves, but this loss would have been fundamentally different to explore. (Also, Samantha was a big publicist. Even if she was a little annoyed Carrie dropped her, she would not have cut her out of her life, nor would she have frozen out Charlotte and Miranda?!)

Through two episodes, the show feels tonally inconsistent. The first was…a lot. It was messy at best, “have to stop this right now because I’m so uncomfortable” at its worst. (Good lord, everything Miranda made my soul leave my body, and not in a good way. And, I’m sorry, Charlotte would be the Karen of the group.) The second episode was deeply upsetting, but at least good. (Minus the inexplicable and unnecessary Brady sex scene. And the Willie Garson element is just…unspeakably sad, but that is something that is in no way the show’s fault.)

I don’t know what to expect from the rest of the episodes. I don’t want to live in this (needed) grief, but I also don’t want them to zip past it, either. It would have been a lot more daring and interesting to actually show them dealing with their lives now versus going back to the beat the franchise played the most.

Which shows did you watch last night?

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