'SATC' Bids Adieu To Stanford Blatch
Our dear Stanny has been a talent agent, Rick9Plus, and now a Shinto monk?
“I wanted to somehow pay tribute to Willie [Garson] and put Stanford someplace golden and filled with light, because I hope Willie is someplace golden and filled with light.”
- Michael Patrick King
I’m going to, out of grace, pass over the “Anthony doesn’t want to bottom” plotline from the most recent episode of And Just Like That… (his reason why being “because I’m not the woman” will haunt me) and get to the episode’s most affecting and perplexing moment. “To Stanny,” our girl Carrie says, holding up a sensible mid-morning Cosmopolitan and gulping it down with the alacrity of Will & Grace’s Karen downing a bottle of vodka.
Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s “other man,” as she’d refer to him on the original series, was an essential ingredient throughout Sex and the City’s run. When actor Willie Garson died of complications related to pancreatic cancer mid-way through shooting Season 1 (you can read my “Ode to Willie Garson, a Man I Never Met Who Profoundly Changed My Life,” that I wrote for GQ days after his passing), it was unclear how the show would deal with such a seismic loss. He was, after all, the obvious fourth chair in Samantha’s absence. He last appears in Episode 3 of the first season. His last line was simply “ow” after a kitchen door hits him in the back during lunch with the Core Three. “Ow” indeed.
The next episode, Carrie returns home to find a yellow envelope next to the rotary phone by her bed. “Dearest Carrie, by the time you read this I’ll be in Tokyo,” it starts. “You’re smoking?” Anthony, Stanford’s nemsis-turned-husband asks when he arrives moments later. “Stanford’s in Japan?” she asks with the same degree of confusion as the audience. Stanford, as we learn, has gone to Japan to manage Ashley, the — wait for it — 17-year-old Long Island-born TikToker. “She’s huge in Asia,” Anthony explains, where apparently she’s on tour. (I didn’t know TikTok stars go on tour, but apparently Carrie had no trouble processing this litany of information.) Showrunner Michael Patrick King called sending Stanford to Japan “a Band-Aid” to adjust the original plan for Stanford’s character, which he revealed was originally supposed to involve a mid-life crisis. “It was a fast fix. It was like thin ice. We skated over it because we had to… because he wasn't in the show suddenly.”
“Well, fine, good, sayonara… but why the dramatic note?” Carrie asks, hung up less on the fact that he left and more that he didn’t tell her to her face. Anthony lets her know that he, too, received a letter, only his was asking for a divorce. This, it seemed, was the conclusion of his storyline on the show. It was an odd departure for such a beloved character, but made a shred of sense considering the writers likely didn’t want to have the character killed off seeing as Carrie was already grappling with the loss of Big. “We wanted Willie to be alive as Stanford somewhere in the world,” King confirmed on the show’s companion podcast this week. “So we put him in Japan. Talk about extravagant!”
We got a fleeting reference in the Season 2 premiere. "That is a stunning kimono!" Smoke (Carrie’s former podcast co-host’s partner) tells Carrie. "Oh, thank you,” she replies. “My friend Stanford sent it to me from Japan.” I had assumed, like the Samantha reference earlier in the same episode, that this was a nugget of fan service intended to signal that though Stanford is not a part of the And Just Like That… universe, he still exists.
Then came the penultimate episode of Season 2. Anthony arrives at Carrie’s apartment. “I am not in a good mood,” he warns. She diverts his attempt to wax on about his bottoming hang-ups and tells him to sit. Before them sit two Cosmopolitans. “Stanford asked me to speak to you,” Carrie tells him. “Where’s Baldo now?” Anthony sasses back in response, hung up on the fact that he hasn’t heard from Stanford in over a year. “He’s, um, he’s back in Japan, in Kyoto,” Carrie responds, the light on her hair unable to be more perfect.
“He went to see the Geishas,” she tells Anthony. In a particularly hard-to-stomach response, Anthony fires back: “Oh, yeah? More ‘gay’ than ‘sha.’” Carrie offers a slight chuckle before telling him that Stanford is staying. “So, what, he’s Japanese now?” Anthony quips. “Kind of,” Carrie says before reaching for an envelope.
“He’s a Shinto monk,” she tells him. “Get the fuck outta here!” he responds. Carrie then shows him a photo for which the art department should be imprisoned.
“Good Photoshop. What’s the bit?” Anthony asks. “There’s no bit,” she replies, explaining that he had a big fight with Ashley the TikToker. In true Ashley fashion, she fired him and ran off to Berlin. He wandered around Kyoto for days crying and eventually found his way to a temple where he remains. She picks up the note, which reads: “Carrie, for the first time in my life I felt peace. Real peace… I’d tell Anthony myself, but I know he’d make fun of it. My lawyers have enclosed all the legal work needed. The apartment and all of my belongings are now his. I want no attachments. I have let go of all things that no longer serve me. And I let it all go with love.”
And just like that… we get a second Stanford send-off.
A Shinto monk? Stanford? Huh? As it turns out, unsurprisingly if you’re a regular listener of the companion podcast, the plotpoint comes from King’s real-life experience. “I went to Kyoto with Sarah Jessica after the second movie and I was in some sort of emotional shockwave. I was going from temple to temple with Sarah Jessica, sitting there trying to release these complicated feelings, and I kind of felt peace. There wasn’t tears, but there wasn’t laughs. It was just feeling this space and these beautiful temples… So when I started thinking, ‘Where is Stanford and what do we do?’ I somehow tapped into that feeling that Sarah Jessica and I had because I know Carrie and Stanford had a deep bond and I’m happy to say Sarah Jessica and I have a deep, personal bond, so I thought, ‘What if he just stayed there in that beautiful, blissful temple and became a Shinto monk?’”
“It is 500% more insane knowing Stanford is a Shinto monk because Michael Patrick King wept in a temple over the Sex and the City 2 reviews,” my friend Bradley joked to me via text.
Despite a truly unprecedented decision regarding Stanford’s fate, the scene did offer up a genuinely powerful moment in watching SJP not just drink, but fully down a Cosmo in his honor. That moment, as it turns out, was not scripted, but rather a decision by Executive Producer Sarah Jessica Parker. She — Carrie, SJ; who’s to see the dillenations? — looks over at Anthony/Mario mid-gulp and winks. “I want Carrie to feel like she’s in heaven,” MPK revealed about the framing of Carrie in this scene, whose hair is almost turned golden by the sunlight it’s drenched in.
It’s a beautiful send-off to an otherwise perplexing plotpoint. I hope Ashley the TikToker realizes what a mistake she made in firing our dear Stanny.
The most beautiful scene. That whole what’s scripted/ what’s not was just mesmerising