Once upon a time, I liked Sex and the City. Openheartedly and unironically, I was deeply attached to this series. I cared so much about Miranda and Steve. I was fascinated by the brazen and pleasure-driven approach to feminine sexuality. This show had flaws, but its peaks hit hard. Maybe it hit me at the right time, or perhaps binge-watching all six seasons over a feverish summer with my younger sister provided the perfect experience for my adolescent brain. Whatever the case, I did not necessarily come to And Just Like That… as a hardened sceptic. Sure, I didn’t come to it as a blind fan anymore. The films had bummed me out too much for that. Yet I held out some cockeyed optimism that this show could evolve and do for its middle-aged protagonists what it had done for them in their 20s and 30s: show an honest but glamorous portrait of unvarnished love, ambition, and horniness.
What we have instead is something that pleases nobody and inspires bafflement more than enthusiasm. Now in its third season, And Just Like That… is one of the most confounding viewing experiences in modern TV history. These once appealing and relatable women are now parodies of their former selves, halfway between bad drag and an alien trying to pass as human. Seemingly solid narrative decisions, like letting Miranda explore her sexuality in her 50s, land with a thud. The new characters are thinly drawn and held together only by consummate actors. The reintroduction of Aidan to Carrie’s life feels like bad fanfiction. They forget key details like Lisa’s dad already being dead before he was killed off in a recent episode. All that and the clothes are awful too. So, why am I still watching it?
My friends, welcome to the hate watch. We’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced that movie or TV show so astonishingly awful and aggravating that we cannot turn away from its chaos. They’re the projects where every choice made is the wrong one. The stars were aligned for a hit, but it all went sideways, or the writing was on the wall for a total flop from day one, and we just have to see the chaos with our own eyes. There are many great examples out there: The Room, Battlefield Earth, Manimal, Cats, and now, And Just Like That…
Bless Carrie Bradshaw and company, for it wasn’t supposed to be like this. For many people, especially women, Sex and the City was a generational cultural benchmark. As the Golden Age of TV kicked off with the ‘difficult men’ of The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, this comedy about four women in New York City navigating the swampland of modern dating proved to be equally game changing. It was stark in its candour about women loving sex and no-strings-attached fun as much as men, letting its female leads be as abrasive as the ‘heroes’ of screens big and small. Rewatching some of those classic episodes, I still feel their vitality and humour. There’s a part of me that still deeply wants to impress these messy women who love one another and make big mistakes, but power through regardless.
I just don’t feel like the women of And Just Like That… are those same heroines who delighted us so. Then again, this is also a strange show made with a startling lack of care. Thus comes the hate watching. Keeping up with AJLT now often feels like being a bureaucrat on the lookout for workplace errors. I’m torn between genuine astonishment at the sloppiness of some writing and being delightfully amused by the baffling turns taken. Carrie, now dressed like the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons if she had a budget, has devolved into a cycle of cliches and cluelessness that reminds me of the lesser Bridget Jones movies. You’re fascinated that someone so inept and detached from reality is able to get anything done.
In her excellent video essay on the series’ evolution, Broey Deschanel pinpoints when Sex and the City became less realistic and more of a hyper-romantic fairy-tale. As Sarah Jessica Parker gained more creative control and the show tilted in favour of her whims, the hardened, sardonic gaze of Carrie became far more flowery. She became more puritanical, an issue for a sex columnist, and modelled more as an aspirational figure of limitless income searching for a handsome prince. By the sixth season, everything felt two steps off the ground, floating towards a dreamy fantasy where Mr. Big would save Carrie. If the showrunners had been nervy enough to commit to their original thesis, the series should have ended with Carrie leaving Paris with her friends, returning to her true loves: Miranda, Samantha, Charlotte, and New York City.
The movies made everything far worse, descending into such unbearable smarm that the entire thing felt like bad fanfiction of itself. Why did Steve cheat? What was with Big kinda leaving Carrie at the altar but not really? Why was the second movie so effing racist?! Pairing together the two gay male characters who spent the series disliking one another was especially lazy. It’s not hard to see why Kim Cattrall decided to jump ship after these. And Just Like That… feels more related to the movies than the show, both are so far away from realism and real problems that they might as well be taking place on Mars.
I’m baffled anew every week by this show’s failure to do anything even remotely relatable or intriguing with its starry cast. Sarita Choudhury, an actress of immense magnetism and grace, was clearly drafted in to be the new Samantha but has been given none of the brazen freedom that Cattrall had. Mostly, she seems to stand around like an especially gorgeous piece of furniture. Kristin Davis has decided to become a full-on rich lady parody just to give Charlotte something worth watching. Surely there should be plenty of intriguing stories to delve into with a group of 50-something women dealing with future shock and generational change who still want to be independent, sexy, and powerful in a world never designed for them?
I think there’s a difference between a so-bad-it’s-good viewing of well-intentioned chaos and the honest fury that a show like And Just Like That… elicits in so many. The Room eventually became quaint in its ineptitude (although a lot of that charm faded as the midnight viewings became overdone and Tommy Wiseau’s attitude towards women overshadowed some of the most memed scenes.) Sci-fi fans root for Ed Wood because he seemed to have a real gosh-darn love of the medium despite his lack of talent. The most potent hate watches are created in the space where great opportunities are lost, and where money burns to cinders. And Just Like That… is an HBO joint where the budget is clear in the couture and apartment porn.
Perhaps that’s what’s really gotten to me: the realization that And Just Like That… is everything that Sex and the City haters wrongly claimed that show was for so many years. All of that sneering about it being vapid, selfish, disconnected from the real world… they’re not exactly wrong now. Now, we have a show with a strange contempt for itself. Miranda and Steve’s split was particularly galling for me, as the writers seemed unable to delve into the nuances of a marriage break-up and exploration of sexual fluidity without making the guy a clueless drag and the woman a callous loser (and we do not speak of Che, a character so staggeringly poor on a basic writing level that I still feel like Sara Ramirez should sue. Comedy concert?!) Old-school SATC wouldn’t have been so cheap.
So, why am I still watching this nightmare? Why are we all tuning in week after week, even as we admit that the experience has gotten ridiculous and we know it’s never going to get any better? And it’s not like this is always a joyous experience. Frankly, a lot of it is a total bummer, so retrograde in its social politics that it might as well be from the late ’90s. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what has kept me hooked, but I know that I am. It’s not often that we get to see this kind of mess, so manicured and pricey, on this scale. The whole thing is a shambling zombie of the original, prat-falling apart at the seams and with vague memories of what it once was. I have a low cringe tolerance, but I’m now too deep into this experiment. I have to see how it ends.
There is comfort in knowing that I’m not alone. I don’t know anyone who is watching this thing earnestly. We’re all in the same sinking ship, mourning what this show could have been, but gripped by the slow-motion spectacle. We’re still hoping that Carrie and company will jump onto a lifeboat. For now, she’s listlessly stumbling around a mansion in the ugliest hat you’ve ever seen. I hate it. I’ll watch a hundred episodes of it.
