A Team Aidan Girlie Speaks Out

I must address the Big Mistake.

I’ve been over here the last few weeks, quietly enjoying my bizarro Sex and the City, And Just Like That, having decided to give up on coherence. Yes, the writers of this show have given me a lot I don’t want, but with one thing I did: Carrie and Aidan back together.

We’ve now had three episodes with the reunited pair, who have zoomed right past a decade plus of life/spouses/family and gone straight into a Very Serious Relationship. We’ve also zoomed past the mic-drop from Carrie in the episode after she and Aidan reunited: “Was Big a Mistake?”

The answer is Yes, Bitch! And you knew this after you had an affair with him in season three!! I bring this up now because it’s such a foundation-shaking allegation, and one that keeps being revisited on the Every Outfit podcast, which I keep yelling while listening to AND YET they don’t hear me.

There have been multiple theories posited, like Michael Patrick King was potentially trying to erase Big’s legacy after the allegations about Chris Noth surfaced last year, or that SJP had always shipped Carrie and Aidan.

If you’re here to know what I think, and you are, I think what Carrie says is one of the most true-to-life, realistic epiphanies someone has had looking in the rearview at their love life. I can’t give credit to the writers for this, since they also choose to erase much of Carrie and Aidan’s sometimes-toxic dynamic when they got back together the first time in season four.

I’m not saying I think Big was a mistake because I hated Big. But before I make my point about Carrie’s epiphany, we first have to examine Carrie and Big’s dynamic.

Most of us have had a Big—a person in our love lives who was unavailable and ultimately not that into you, a combination that makes for a very strong aphrodisiac. I say had and not dated, because your situationship with a Big is rarely a clean, one-off period of dating. It’s non-linear and messy, punctuated by nirvana—but it’s mostly messiness. It’s the person who never lets you get close enough to a serious relationship, which drives you crazy. And by crazy I mean both mentally ill and horny.

I have always thought that the most magical thinking of Sex and the City is that Carrie and Big ended up together. No one ends up with their Big! They are a lesson, a learning device which propels you to hopefully healthier relationships and a repaired sense of self worth.

It was the most Hollywood of endings that he tells Carrie she’s the One in Paris¹. She was in because there’s nothing more intoxicating than someone who rejected you coming back to say they made a mistake². It’s not the basis of a healthy partnership, but at the time, I was so happy she got her happy ending that I didn’t have this beef because it was over. Now, two movies and two seasons into the spinoff, we are re-examining this, because, finally, so is Carrie.

It doesn’t matter if Aidan is the “right” guy for Carrie or if she did make a mistake choosing Big. The realism comes from someone in her age and situation (single after being in a committed relationship for years) finally being ready to date, seeing what the landscape is like (always scary, no matter your age), and instead of engaging in it, seeing what an old flame is up to. You have a history and a foundation. As I and everyone who took the J. Lo/Affleck reunion news like it was a drug can attest, it’s also super romantic.

This is not to tell anyone who got back together with someone after years, possibly decades, that they were being lazy about dating, but I do think it was kind of lazy for Carrie (read = the writers). And I do think this would be worth exploring on this show. She and Seema kind of get into it when Carrie goes full speed ahead into her relationship; it’s like she’s saying, ‘UGH, your experience has reminded me how terrible dating is. Lemme first see if this guy will take me back.’

He did, and they’re happy, but the Big of it all still bugs her because she knows she wasted time and energy. Looking back and realizing she made a mistake in choosing Big time and again is her validating her decision to get back together with Aidan. He can’t just be her new old boyfriend—he must be the one, true great love of her life. It’s very Convenient Theories For You Monthly. She could go with the two great loves headline, but she’s in the honeymoon phase and trying to justify making big changes for Aidan³. She wants her friends to look at her and not think, she took the first runner-up because she was out of options. She wants them to think, wow, she really got her happy ending this time.

I’m not crapping on Carrie, I’m just saying it’s a very revisionist history perspective, which is real. I’m also saying Aidan is great for her, and she deserves to be happy again. I think she was always trying to win life by being with Big⁴ and always liked how it looked to be with him. Aidan brought out the real her, the one who didn’t have to do all the posing.

Was Big a mistake? Yeah, Miranda should have said. She doesn’t because she’s shocked that Carrie finally has her eyes open about him. He just had to die for her to realize it.

And like a psycho because I think about these people like they’re real, I want this to be the end for her. I want this to be the end of this show and its chronicles of Carrie’s life—not just because this series hasn’t delivered for me what the original did, but because I finally want her to get her real happy ending. As magical as that thinking is, too.

1. I will consider the explanation that Big was old and tired and finally said “sure” to being in a relationship with Carrie. His light was on, someone might say.

2. Does that sound familiar, Aidan?!

3. Selling the apartment is fine, but Aidan being stubborn about setting one foot in the apartment is dumb. Still Team Aidan forever though.

4. Arguably she did with a key to Gramercy Park.