Last week, I received some disturbing news. There were whispers in journalistic circles—and by that, I specifically mean circles that had been lucky enough to receive early episodes from the hotly anticipated new season of Michael Patrick King’s And Just Like That—that the upcoming third installment of the divisive Sex and the City reboot was… actually good. Not bonkers, watch-it-through-your-fingers, so bad it’s good, but genuinely good, and a real departure from its previous, wonderfully unhinged outings.
Could it be? Surely not. To find out, I dove head first into the six episodes shared with critics. And now, I’m delighted to confirm that reports of its superior quality have been exaggerated. And Just Like That remains as thrillingly batshit as ever—and I, for one, could not be more grateful.
We pick things up with Carrie (the ever-luminous Sarah Jessica Parker) and co. not long after the (highly surreal) events of Season 2: namely, our gal about town’s decision to pause her relationship with John Corbett’s beleaguered Aidan Shaw for five years while he raises his teenage sons. The pair are still in touch, though, sending each other mostly blank postcards and occasionally having very awkward phone sex.
Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), meanwhile, is cruising “lady bars,” which only seem to yield eccentrics or former acquaintances, and living in a noisy Airbnb next door to a crazed naked man wielding a meat cleaver, even though her best friend, Carrie, literally has a giant, mostly empty Gramercy Park townhouse and garden. As for Charlotte (Kristin Davis), she has, as usual, got her hands full with her life as a high-powered, late-night-partying gallerina, as well as her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), and kids, Rock (Alexa Swinton) and Lily (Cathy Ang), the latter of whom has a new, polyamorous, ballet dancer boyfriend.
Elsewhere, there’s no Che (Sara Ramirez) or Nya (Karen Pittman) anymore—both actors departed the show following the previous season—but Sarita Choudhury’s fabulous Seema is still very much around, smoking up a storm, steamrolling her Hollywood director boyfriend, and making plans to launch her own business. As Lisa Todd Wexley, fellow fan favorite Nicole Ari Parker is, thankfully, also present and correct, in the midst of a new creative project whilst also supporting her husband, Herbert (Christopher Jackson), in his campaign to become city comptroller.
The new season’s opening episode has some standout, laugh-out-loud moments, two of them courtesy of Rosie O’Donnell in a perfectly judged appearance that really shouldn’t be spoiled, and leaves you wanting so much more. But, the general jankiness of And Just Like That also remains: the very swift pacing is frequently baffling—if you look too closely at the shots, you’ll find that characters’ lip movements sometimes don’t sync with the dialogue—and there’s some intentionally bad CGI, which I think is supposed to be comedic but, again, just ends up feeling pointless.
And, as is always the case with this show, it leaves you with many, many more questions than answers. For instance, why is everyone suddenly in a tizzy about an Ivy League college advisor called Lois Fingerhood? (Wait, was that a school-shooter joke?) Why is Carrie writing kinda terrible fiction? Did we just watch Harry piss his pants? Why is there so little sex? Why is Aidan still so boring? Why is there this random subplot about an Adderall shortage? Why are we watching Miranda become a meme? Why are Anthony (Mario Cantone) and Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi) still trying to make the Hotfellas bakery happen? It’s never gonna happen. And why is Christopher Jackson singing? (Actually, that last one is for us Hamilton heads, and I, personally, didn’t mind at all.)
The same is, of course, true of the fashion. Carrie wearing the Simone Rocha rose dress and matching coat to float around her mansion? Sure. A hat that resembles a picnic blanket blowing in the wind for a walk around Central Park? Of course. Eye-popping, clashing prints for sipping coffee in the kitchen? Why not? An elaborately fringed jacket, white lace dress, and jaunty Ascot hat for breakfast at Tiffany’s? Okay, that one kind of makes sense.
Honestly, though, all of this is really the reason to watch And Just Like That. It has its moments, sure—one random instance of Miranda nudity is hilarious; Dolly Wells as her love interest, Joy, is a highlight; and Jonathan Cake is fun as a grouchy Mr. Darcy type—but it is mostly just a kind of spectacular train wreck that I’ve never been able to get enough of.
Yes, Sex and the City was, totally unironically, phenomenal TV, but that’s not what And Just Like That has ever aspired to be, and nor should it. The latter has its instances of hearkening back to the former—Carrie’s trip to Virginia with Aidan recalls a previous countryside sojourn, and a Charlotte night out nods to a frequently used “drunk Charlotte” meme—but it is also, to its credit, its own deranged thing, designed to be watched with friends and a bottle of rosé as a cringey guilty pleasure, or, as I did, while folding laundry and cleaning my flat. There’s something strangely comforting about it, like half-listening to old friends chattering as you do other things—so much so, that by episode six, I found myself oddly moved by what was playing out onscreen. Was this purely Sex and the City nostalgia? Perhaps, but it doesn’t really matter. And Just Like That just works, even though it really shouldn’t.
So, bring on the rest of the season, and the inevitable discourse, think pieces, and outrage. I will be glued to my seat until the finale airs on August 14.
