So the thing that really bugs me about the Sex and the City movies is that they totally a blow a hole through the conclusion of the series, which tied up every single loose end in quite a feat of writing: you've all read and watched those series that end in a black screen and leave the audience furiously hanging (namely, The Sopranos and the Wolves of Mercy Falls series) and don't pretend you weren't royally cheesed. I was, when we had no idea what the fuck happened to Gale or Katniss's mom, or how Trevor died. 
 There's also those series that you wish would end because they've gone too far, we're in way too deep, and the characters have already played through like seven arcs to the point where they're not even characters anymore, they're like fan fiction. You know those series. Like Supernatural or Nip/Tuck. (I loved Nip/Tuck but please don't tell me that you thought the LA seasons were anywhere near as satisfying at those set in Miami. I was mildly interested in the storyline with the girl who tried to poison Joely Richardson, and when Kimber did meth, but that's pretty much it.) 
 I think the only thing I actually liked about the SATC movies was that Charlotte got pregnant. That was it. I hated that Stanford and Anthony got together because the whole point of their hatred for one another was to subvert the trope where two characters who are gay ALWAYS end up together just because they're gay (also I LOVED Marcus). I hate that Samantha and Smith break up because their relationship defied the idea that having a high libido and an age gap means that fidelity is impossible: Samantha found the person who understood her and who she wanted to spend her life with without even trying. What does that say? Stop breaking your back to find love. Stop letting your life revolve around it. It'll come to you because you deserve it. There's also the fact that I'm in love with Smith and I think he's the absolute best male SATC character. He's better than Aidan, and I loved Aidan. 
 I also hate that Steve cheats on Miranda, and basically, why? Why did the writers even do that? Steve would never cheat on Miranda. Steve and Miranda, even when they were dating other people or arguing about that damn puppy or running away from each other on the street, always had eyes for no one but each other. Miranda walked away from Dr. Robert (god, what a hunk) to be with Steve even after Robert confessed his love. Steve had a serious relationship with Debbie that he immediately gave up to be with Miranda. I know that things change down the line and people's feelings change but Steve and Miranda's relationship went on for years. They were together and apart almost as many times as Carrie and Big were. And yet they always came back to one another. Over the course of all those years, feelings changed, but they still only wanted each other, and Steve was the making of Miranda in terms of her emotional story arc - while Charlotte's arc was about how perfection is unattainable and sometimes it's the imperfect people who are truly perfect for you, Miranda's was about being strong enough to let other people into your life and to separate being independent from being selfish. It was an incredible piece of character development. But then suddenly Steve blasts out of character and sleeps with someone else? He was always the more committed of the two. Ugh, I could write an 800,000-word thesis on Steve and Miranda! 
 Carrie and Big are the worst part of the movies because, like I said before, all of the loose ends for them are completely undone. It's debatable whether or not Carrie learned anything over the course of the series, or, rather, anything as powerful as Charlotte and Miranda. I guess Carrie learns to come to terms with who she is - not the marrying kind, or the mothering kind, and that's okay, because being a woman doesn't mean that you are compelled to have a ring on your finger or a baby to breastfeed. That's okay. Big's development is far more powerful: Carrie spent years chasing after him because he was unavailable, when he finally realizes that he's wasting time that he could have spent being happy with Carrie because of his own selfishness, the tables flawlessly turn, and he goes after her. He's a selfish commitment-phobe and he realizes this when finally Carrie tells him to fuck off and leave her alone once and for all. For a guy who's been famously unavailable for years, running to Paris, making that effort, making the move and finally going out of his way for her, was huge. And then. AND THEN THERE WAS THE MOVIE. 
 What in the fresh hell were the writers thinking by having Big leave Carrie at the altar? Why are Carrie and Big even getting married? A pivotal point was when Carrie threw up over the idea of getting married and then Big understood her: "You're not the marrying kind". Carrie threw a wobbler but deep down she knew that he was right, and that he knew her better than anyone, because Carrie never wanted to be married or have a child and Big embraced that. Big was a fucking jerk for most of the series but you can't deny that he and Carrie were a match made in...not heaven, and not hell, but someplace in between where things fit nicely together. They were a match made in IKEA. 
 But all of that gets flushed down the crapper with the movies. Big was an interesting character because he was written so that he teetered juuuust on the edge of being hatable, but didn't quite take the plunge. You kinda have to like him because Carrie's so obviously in love with him for the entire show, just like Rachel was in love with Ross from the moment he touched her butt and she laughed at him, even after the beach thing, even after the break thing, even after Emily and the baby and Dermot Mulroney on the balcony. Alas, the movies ham-fistedly tear apart Big's strange, guilty likability and make him the villain of this story. There's even this dumbass attempt to make it Carrie's fault for planning a lavish wedding, even though he didn't object to it, even though she looked beautiful and happy, even though it was just one fucking day and even if he didn't like that the wedding was a "circus" he should have just gritted his teeth and let it be as retribution for all the ways in which he'd stabbed Carrie through her heart in the last ten years. I cry every single time I watch the first movie because it's just so fucking horrible how it goes down. It's not even nostalgic tears or tears like, "oh, this is bad, but it's going to be okay!". It's the kind of tears I cried when I watched Up. Tears of abominable sadness. 
 This book gives me similar feelings - not that it's sad so I cried until I was licking mascara off my lips, but that it takes the charm and the beauty and the wholesomeness of the last two books and makes something that just barely works. It's not that I hated Isla and the Happily Ever After but did I think it was necessary? No. Did I need to watch as the sweet, intelligent beauty of the last two books was crowned with a volume that's little more than two people crying and fucking and then crying again and then sabotaging their own relationship? No. This is the movie to Lola and Anna's TV series. The only good part was Anna and St. Clair getting engaged, which made me cry because it was sweet, just after Isla and Josh made me cry because they're a pair of idiots who need their noggins knocked together. 
 I kinda liked Josh in Anna's book, but only in a superficial way. We got a glimpse into Isla, and how she protected Anna when Anna was scrapping with that girl in the dorms. But was there a glimpse of that brave, reserved girl in this book? Nada. Isla, like most of Perkins' heroines, cries constantly. She cries when she eats and when she sleeps and when she goes on dates and when she sits on the roof. If you make a character cry enough, it stops having any kind of impact. I feel like critics would write this about me if my life were a reality TV show. 
 'This Kiki character is okay, but does she have to keep fucking crying? Make it stop.' 
 Like the movies butchered SATC's essence of four women going their own ways, finding people they could love but still adoring each other above anyone else, Isla butchered Perkins' prior charming innocence and subtlety and gave us this great bulldozer of running and chasing and snot running down people's faces. It was a clunky melodrama where Anna and Lola's stories were sweet and tentative. I enjoyed the sex positivity and the frankness of the way sex was portrayed but nothing else about Josh and Isla's relationship screamed HEALTHY to me. The whole thing consisted of Isla begrudging Josh's upbringing and Josh sabotaging this fabulous education he's been offered and both of them being so immature that their "love" is doomed to fail. 
 What I love about Perkins is that she captures the dramatics and the theatrics of young love - at least, she does for Anna and Lola. Their stories were filled with just the right level of melodrama, the writing just deft enough to keep them likeable even as they flopped around doing the stupidest shit imaginable. But Isla's story is like a pantomime and even with all of this sparkle and flair and running around and crying like the world is ending, I was left feeling sort of empty. 
 My mother says that what she hates about Ross and Emily's relationship in Friends is that they're always running. Always breathless and whirling around and rushing off and being so impulsive that it's not even cute, it's grating. Granted, she would probably rather have root canal than watch a car chase or a fantasy movie, but I get where she's coming from. Isla and Josh are like Ross and Emily. They're like Carrie and Big in the SATC movies. They go a step too far and it fucks up the magical atmosphere and the romance of the stories they were built on. 
 This is the problem with series finales, I guess. You hear more complaints about middle books, but it's always the finales I dread the most. They either get it or they don't; you either leave the series inspired or disappointed. 
 I suppose this one's the latter.