For the final movie I watched for this project, it had to be When Harry Met Sally. It’s the romcom that many would point to as the best there is. To be honest, I’d never actually seen it before, and I knew very little about the actual plot except for the iconic scenes that have permeated pop culture. I almost streamed it through Amazon, which would have been a disaster — apparently the Amazon Prime video cuts the orgasm scene in Katz’s, which would have been a full-on tragedy. It feels monumental to watch this movie, and I had pretty high expectations. But, after watching it, I was left with a dilemma: this movie doesn’t really fit in with the lens through which I’m watching the romcoms. I counted, and there are a total of two scenes where Meg Ryan’s character seems to be doing any sort of work or job-related activity.

 

And honestly, calling them scenes is a stretch. They’re more like moments without any dialogue, nestled in between the film’s actual concerns. I was a little frustrated, wondering how the heck I was supposed to write about this movie. I was also confused as to why that didn’t seem to bother me? Every other romcom I’ve watched, I was left with pages and pages of notes on every little aspect related to her job, and how disappointed or thrilled I was with the way the movie portrayed the labor of women. So what was I to do when a movie seemed to have nothing for me to analyze? And, somehow, I wasn’t disappointed about that?

 

As strange as this initial feeling was/is, I think I’ve begun to figure out why I walked away from When Harry Met Sally pretty OK with how they portrayed work when it wasn’t anything that the movie prioritized, as either a help or a hindrance to the romance that eventually blooms between Harry and Sally. It’s because this film never feels like it’s missing something. Yes, there are only two scenes of Sally at work. But, there are zero of Harry. These characters feel lived-in, even without scenes or conversations about their jobs as a way of building their characters. This film has nothing to prove, in a sense. I might feel differently with a little more distance from the my viewing, but I don’t think this film needs a scene of Sally interacting with coworkers or pitching a story in order to believe that she’s a dedicated journalist.

 

Her job doesn’t affect the romance at all. Her work is almost a nonentity in the friendship and eventual relationship she builds with Harry, as is his. This movie makes a bet that we won’t be missing out on anything if we don’t know much about their jobs, and it actually pays off. I thought this would frustrate me, but strangely it didn’t. For many people out in the world, their chosen career path has little to do with their romantic life. I was operating from the assumption that in order to build a fully-fleshed out leading romcom heroine, a film needed to show her in a job that wasn’t a common stereotype and portray it in a way that allowed her to have a nuanced relationship with her work, whether she liked her job or not. So what does it mean when a film chooses not to portray her job really at all?

 

What we do get of Sally’s job (and Harry’s too, for that matter), like I mentioned before, is pretty minimal. In the opening scene, Harry and Sally meet at UChicago in 1977 when they, strangers at this point, road trip from Chicago to New York. We learn that Sally is driving to New York to go to grad school for journalism. Harry’s reasons are a mystery. The two of them get to know one another in their 18 hours in the car, and their initial dynamic is established. I say initial because this film does a great job of showing how, given time (12 years of it!), relationships can change and mature. In those first hours in the car, Sally thinks Harry is dark and a pessimist. Harry criticizes her for going into journalism to write about the things that happen to other people, insinuating that she’s happy and not all that deep. In his view, men and women can never be friends without the “sex part” getting in the way, so the two part ways once they reach the city, shaking hands and vowing to probably never see one another again. Even though, by Sally’s admission, he’s the only person she knows in the city.

 

The film jumps forward in time five years, and the two run into one another again. They’re both at the airport, and Harry seems to know Joe, someone who I was sure would be Sally’s token disposable fiancee, but turned out not to be. We learn that Harry is a political consultant (tbh no idea what that means), and the two end up on a plane together. She tells him that she did become a journalist working at “the News,” which I’m assuming is the NY Daily News? Who even knows. Despite his cynical views on romance the last time that they met, we learn he is engaged to Helen Hilson, who is a lawyer and keeping her last name. That is all we know about her. She’s identified by her work in a way these two never are.

 

Harry and Sally meet again, as single people, five years later. They both relay the news of their breakups to friends who are, amazingly, not just friends from work! Harry and Sally have social circles that are not just people they work with! The two run into one another at a bookstore, and get coffee together. This conversation between them represents the most vulnerable they have ever been with one another, and the two start to become friends. The first and only scene we get of Sally at her actual office is in a montage of the two of them going about their lives, on the phone and building a genuine friendship with each other as they are both grieving the loss of their relationships. No disposable fiancees here, friends.Like I mentioned before, I strangely don’t feel cheated that this is the only time we see Sally at work. There is just so much else going on that I almost start to forget that is what I’m supposed to be watching for — I’m just too freakin’ charmed.

 

This romcom starts a Nora Ephron trend that carries on through most romcoms of the next few decades: character-building by watching beautiful people walk through New York in the fall. But, here, it doesn’t feel like an overused trope. It feels authentic that these two weirdos would choose to have deep conversations at iconic New York landmarks. If they’re not spending time in their offices (because I’m assuming every meaningful interaction they have takes place on a weekend or after 5pm?), then why not have them stroll through Central Park or eat at Katz’s Deli? This movie seems unaware of tropes or just at the beginning stages of them, so it doesn’t have to kowtow to convention. Is it better for it? In some ways, yes. But, without the tropes as an easy way to establish character for the audience, the film has to build Harry and Sally as people in other ways, hence her neurotic food order and his disdain of a wagon-wheel coffee table.

 

When the two of them, oblivious to the fact that they belong together, try to set up their friends, we learn more about Sally’s job. Sometime in the last five years, she has begun writing for New York Magazine, but this is an aside as Sally and Harry watch their friends Marie and Jess fall in love almost at first sight. Jess is also a writer at New York Magazine, and they practically move in together 45 seconds after Marie quotes a bit of his writing back at them. As a secondary romcom couple, Marie and Jess are stellar. Big fan. I do wish we had seen Sally change jobs and develop her writing career rather than just have Harry tell us this, but I think I’m OK with it in the end.

 

Here’s where my relationship with this movie gets even more complicated, dear reader. I just kind of stopped taking notes about 75 percent of the way through watching this movie. I was so charmed by the two of them growing close, developing an intimate knowledge of each other as people, that I just didn’t have it in me to critique or analyze. I just wanted to let scene after scene wash over me because I was falling in love with this movie as these two idiots were realizing how they felt about each other. Their friendship to relationship feels so real, the same kind of boundary-crossing intimacy with a guy that I’ve experienced in my own life. When they inevitably sleep together, screw up their friendship, and then find their way back to each other in the final scene, I was genuinely moved. Giddy, honestly.

 

I mean, how can you not just *squee* at this line from Harry to Sally: “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible?” Despite its total disregard for Harry or Sally as people with careers, I can’t seem to make myself get mad at it. Maybe that’s because this is a romcom formula designed to charm me, or maybe it’s because the premise that romcom characters need to feel real by having jobs is flawed from the beginning. I’m inclined to think it’s a little of both. Long live Meg Ryan and her ’80s hair, and long live the romcom.