It took until the Season 2 finale, but finally, ‘AJLT’ delivered some relatable content: Charlotte’s instantly iconic rant about women’s invisible labor
Anyone who’s still watching the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…, knows it’s a pretty mixed bag. Episodes go by without anything really happening (remember when we spent 45 minutes watching Carrie try to learn to poach an egg?). The new characters (with the obvious exception of LTW) are pretty obnoxious (do not get us started on Che). But there has been one bright spot in Season 2: Charlotte, whose character arc has seen her struggling to reclaim her own identity after raising two children into their teenage years and finding herself feeling like nothing more than their maid/chef/chauffeur. We know other moms out there can relate.
After a hilarious episode in which she struggled through a historic snowstorm on foot to deliver condoms to her daughter, Lily, and another arc where she tried out being a stage mom for her other child, Rock, Charlotte decides to re-enter the working world. She returns to her roots with a sweet gig at an art gallery (even selling a multi-million dollar piece to none other than Sam Smith). But of course, the transition from SAHM to working woman hasn’t been all smooth.
In last week’s episode, we saw Charlotte ditch family dinner to go out with her colleagues and celebrate her first big art sale. When she kept getting calls and texts from Harry and the kids, she dropped her iPhone into a pitcher of margaritas before throwing back another shot. When she got home—blackout drunk—she slurred to her family, “Hey! I was a person before you. I was a person before all of you! I am more than just your wife and your moms! You need to get it together!”
She then retreated to the bedroom alone. Well, alone other than Richard Burton the bulldog, of course.
That brings us to the Season 2 finale, where Charlotte, with a raging hangover, is confronted by an exasperated Harry, who screams at her that he can’t do it all.
As if he’s doing it all. AS IF.
“I can’t talk loud, so please just listen,” Charlotte answers, before launching into this show’s one relatable scene to happen so far. “You are not doing it all. I know because you made a few breakfasts and you ran a few errands that it feels like you are, but in fact, you are doing the bare minimum of what I, and other women, have been asked—no, expected—to do around the house for years and years and years. And now I’m asking—no, I’m expecting you—to help me with part of it. Not all of it, because I love my work and I’m good at it. I want to keep doing what I’m doing—minus the blackout drinking—so I need your help and your support, not your words of help and support.”
And with that, any woman who’s ever had a partner who thought he was pulling his weight just because he put a load of laundry in the washer once a week is cheering at her TV. Because every word of that speech rings so true. Study after study after study shows that women do so much more than men in household and childcare labor—even in households where both partners have full-time jobs. It’s about time we start recognizing that fact—and calling for men to pick up their own slack.
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