Carrie, Mouse, Maggie, Donna, and Walt graduate from high school and excitedly chat afterward about Mouse being named co-valedictorian and the plans they all have for that coming fall. While Mouse is going to Harvard, Maggie will be at the CCSU campus, 20 minutes from Pete’s base; Walt was accepted into the Pratt Institute, a move his father was surprisingly supportive of; and Carrie is set to start her job at Interview the following week. Maggie is jealous of Carrie having a steady paycheck and being able to stay in a Manhattan loft with her boyfriend, but not all is good for Bradshaw, since her father is still giving her the silent treatment.
Mouse then gets called over to take photos with the faculty and Princeton-bound fellow valedictorian West. It goes about as awkwardly as you’d expect and the two manage to say some stilted goodbyes before West departs the auditorium stage. Carrie returns home to pack her things and has Tom in her ear about the book scholarship that she won, which will go unclaimed due to her decision to skip college. He reminds her that it’s still June and that she could still change her mind, but Carrie has her mind made up and Dorrit sticks up for her sister, albeit due to wanting her room when she moves in with Sebastian. Soon enough, Carrie officially moves into the loft and it’s time for her first day as an Interview employee. She’s understandably chipper and walks into work to discover…
…that she’s fired.
Larissa had an article written about her in the New York Times where she failed to mention Andy once and since he’s not exactly known for sharing the spotlight, he sacked her, indirectly firing Carrie, as well. Elsewhere, Samantha shows up to OTB, a place where she likes to relax and bet on horses, and finds Elliott waiting for her. He confesses to being in between classes right now and being so infatuated with her following their time together, and so surprised that the physical aspect of their relationship was something other than biologically-motivated, that he stalked her up until this moment. Flattered, Samantha offers to take him in to bet with her, just as Carrie goes to the NYU registrar’s office and learns that she’s three days late on claiming her spot for the fall. They just started delving into the wait list and there’s no way that she would be able to get in for the fall; he tells her that she could conceivably talk to the Head of Admissions, but in all likelihood, the spring semester would be the earliest she’d be able to start. Samantha ends up hooking up with Elliott and immediately regretting it, even though she admits to thinking about him a lot. The great Samantha Jones just doesn’t do commitment, especially commitment with someone who is already committed in another relationship, so she chooses to leave and tells Elliott that she doesn’t want to see him again.
Over at the diner, Maggie and Pete are spending their remaining hours together and she wonders whether he could stay in her dorm some while going on about the time they’re going to spend together come fall. He leaves to go to the bathroom and she gets in his coat looking for some chapstick. What she finds, though, is a napkin with a phone number and a name – Jess. Carrie returns home at 3:00 that afternoon and informs Sebastian about getting fired; she tried to call him after she got out of the registrar’s office, only to miss him when he was out walking Ollie, and now she just wants to drink the rest of her day away. He chooses this moment to bring up Malibu and how, since she doesn’t have anything tying her to the city anymore, she could come with him, go for walks on the beach, learn to surf, and find inspiration for her writing. Talking the situation over with Samantha and Chinese food, Carrie admits that she tends to hold on to too much and Samantha encourages her to get out of the city, citing the value of running and how it landed her in better situations each time she did it.
Tom runs into Harlan and Larissa on the street and they make sure to tell him that they’re pushing the wedding up to two Fridays from then. Since Larissa is no longer working for the magazine, she would be able to focus her attention squarely on planning the wedding and she mentions how she would be able to help Carrie land on her feet after the firing once the business with the wedding is over. Elsewhere, Maggie talks to Donna, Mouse, and Walt bout finding the number in Pete’s jacket pocket. Mouse suggests that maybe Jess is a guy and Walt chimes in with Pete not pinging his gaydar, but it all becomes clear when Maggie admits to talking about what their life would be like in the fall, a move that leans into just how desperate and needy she can come off around guys. They conclude that she likely pushed him away, though Mouse tries to get Maggie to talk to Pete, while Tom shows up at Carrie’s door to talk about her getting fired from the magazine. She brings up the trip to Malibu and he throws his hands up in defeat, acknowledging that he can’t stop her from making the decisions that she’s been making, even if he thinks that she’s doing everything she can to screw up her future.
While Maggie calls Jess and has Walt talk to her, only for her to hang up when he asks how well she knows Pete, Carrie heads over to Weaver’s place to talk about the impending move to California, which he seems to support. She compares herself to Joan Didion and wonders about his honest opinion of her going to Malibu with Sebastian, since she’s too dissimilar to Samantha to seriously talk to her about it and 
she can’t talk to Sebastian due to not wanting him to know that she’s having doubts. Specifically, she’s doubting whether she can find her inspiration in California and what kind of impact a trip like this would have on her writing, to which Weaver replies that she’s talented no matter the zip code. She tells him that she’ll always think fondly of him due to him being her first and him having such an influence on her writing, while he assures her that if she doesn’t leave or if she comes back, she can always contact him. That evening, Dorrit takes Carrie advice to be nice to her father to heart and freaks Tom out in the process. However, there was a method to her madness, as Dorrit tells her father that he shouldn’t punish Carrie for not making the decisions that he would make for himself and that she always used to be jealous of how close the two of them were. Now, though, she realizes that she got off easy, that she never had to deal with the type of expectations that Carrie does.
Carrie and Sebastian finish packing up the loft and head out to the wedding at JFK Airport, where they’ll be flying out of following the ceremony. Carrie gets called to Larissa’s to take away her muscle relaxers, while Bennet, who’ll be acting in Larissa’s father’s stead, goes to take care of wedding duties, leaving Sebastian and Walt to mingle. Tom soon joins them, causing Walt to leave, and he assures Sebastian that the conflict with Carrie has nothing to do with him. While Sebastian is running toward his dream, Tom argues, Carrie is running away from her mistakes, her past, and the possibility of failure. Elliott shows up at OTB again and Samantha reminds him that she doesn’t want to see him again, calling this type of stalking creepy, especially since he has a wife. However, Elliott just left Sally to be with Samantha and tells the latter that he loves her. He doesn’t want to be in an open relationship anymore, either; he only started up that arrangement with his wife due to being unhappy in his marriage and looking for something that was missing. That something turned out to be Samantha and the two kiss.
Harlan and Larissa deliver their vows, with Harlan recalling a time they had sex on a plane and Larissa explaining why she felt that she had to have her wedding at an airport. The reasoning (Harlan is someone she wants to see the world with and she associates planes with coming home, meaning that she considers him to be her family) hits home with Carrie, particularly the part about Manhattan and needing a place to come home to, while Mouse and West attempt to divvy up the Castlebury High graduation gift – a set of encyclopedias. Since no one was anticipating co-valedictorians, there’s only one set for the both of them and when the janitor comes by to give them a reality check about how petty they were acting over the books, the two make out on the floor of the school.
Carrie decides to stay in Manhattan rather than go to California with Sebastian. She simply cannot leave the city right now, even with no job, no school, no friends, and no family. Carrie wants to fight for her life, the life that she knows she deserves, and she can’t do that from California. He agrees that it’s best for her to stay in Manhattan and tells her that he’s always going to love her, that one day, he’s going to see her byline and know that he was a lucky man to be able to love her. She begins to cry, he embraces her, the two touch heads, and he gives her a forehead kiss before having to go to his plane. Harlan and Tom share a drink and the former comes down on his friend for treating his daughter, by all accounts a very good kid, the way he has been. He argues that Carrie being lost is simply a symptom of growing up and that as her father, he needs to let her know that he’s going to be there when she needs him.
Tom goes out on the dance floor and cuts in on Carrie dancing with Larissa. He relates that he can’t believe that she’s grown and leaving, while she confesses to not being able to leave the city. She plans on getting a job and support herself on her own, made a little easier by being able to sublet Larissa’s apartment. While Mouse and West share breakfast at the diner and agree to donate their encyclopedias to the high school, Maggie confronts Pete about Jess while at the Laundromat. He comes clean that Jess is the wife of a guy he bunked with; she also works at a jewelry store and helped pick out the engagement ring that he bought for Maggie. He wanted to do this at a nice restaurant or something romantic, but in the middle of the spin cycle, he gets down on one knee and asks Maggie to marry him. She says yes, just as Carrie calls Samantha and asks her to move in since she won’t be able to make rent by herself. Samantha agrees and Carrie ends up taking a job as a waitress, where she serves her friends.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“I don’t know where you live.” “Very few people do.”
-“Does your wife know you stalked me?”
-So, I’m not a shipper or anything, but Carrie and Sebastian breaking up might have made me cry. For a show as light and fluffy as The Carrie Diaries can be, that was one of the realest moments of the season, two people who still have feelings for each other knowing that things are over and not being able to do anything about it. It helped that the visuals of the scene were gorgeous (Carrie’s silver and black dress, Sebastian’s suit, the sleekly decorated JFK terminal) and the jazz music from the wedding band in the background was a subtle touch to a scene that would have been cheapened had a pop tune been used. In ambiance and content, it felt like early Sex and the City in the best way possible.
-Also reminding me of vintage Sex and the City: Carrie and Samantha eating Chinese and talking about boys. I could almost hear Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker in that scene, it was so good.
-I’m relieved that CCSU is only 20 minutes away from the army base. I was a little worried that they would marry Maggie off and have her forget all about school, but at least she’s still planning on going. Hopefully she doesn’t get pregnant before she can really sink her teeth into college life and figure out what she wants to do with her life and if she wants to be something in addition to a mother.
-George shout out! Apparently, he’s in rehab. Not totally unexpected.
-Although I like that Walt got his happy ending, a career path that he wants and a boyfriend whom he loves, has he ever expressed any interest in art/design? Because the choice to send him to Pratt seems a bit random, although I guess you could say that Walt never had a chance to embrace/show what he loved and that this is the first time in his life he’s free to (academically) be himself. We wouldn’t have known the extent of his interest in the topic due to him having to suppress it and worry about getting into Dartmouth like his father wanted, so now that he doesn’t have to be what he thinks his father considers the perfect son, he can let loose his love of art.
-Carrie sure had to move out of her house quickly, no? I understand why Tom was as angry as he was, even though he’s not been that type of dad thus far in the show, but man, it’s kind of harsh to hover over your kid as soon as they get back from graduation and all but shove them out the door. It was worth it, though, for the scene of him cutting in to dance with Carrie and the scene of Dorrit telling him like it is. Dorrit’s been the most problematic character for me this season and yet, she was arguably the MVP of the finale, someone who is more perceptive and cares more than she lets on and the voice of reason that Carrie needed in order to begin rebuilding her relationship with Tom.
-I read the Mouse/West diner scene as a final goodbye rather than the two getting back together, which made me like their entire relationship more than I had before. While they are going to rival colleges and could one day find each other again, this was a nod to their competitiveness and a way of closing things out for this chapter in their lives that carried the poignancy that this show has been able to execute pretty consistently.
-Oh, Samantha. You and your Zach Braff-ian stalker. I think the reason she likes him so much, aside from the chemistry, is that he goes above and beyond to make his feelings for her known. Samantha is the type of girl who puts more weight on action than word and Elliott showing up at OTB and breaking things off with Sally show that he’s serious about starting something up with her in a way that him begging her to stay doesn’t. She learned long ago not to believe in the things that people say, as she’s been hurt a lot by both family and friends, and having someone make the effort to prove that he’s not going anywhere probably means quite a bit to her, no matter how above commitment and romance she seems to consider herself.
-Good on the show for doing a lot to turn around Weaver following how horrible he showed himself to be earlier this season. The conversation on the steps of his place was sweet, putting a period on Carrie’s first leap into the world of adult relationships and pointing out that while things didn’t work out with Weaver, he ultimately left a positive mark on Carrie’s love life. You really never forget your first.
-Well, you guys, this is a wrap on season two of The Carrie Diaries. I had fun, I hope you had fun; let’s all cross our fingers and toes that the show returns for a third season. Goodbye for now, Hair God. I think I’ll miss you most of all.
