Finally, something to live for: And Just Like That…, the Sex and the City sequel most accurately described as a series produced under the influence of a gas leak, has returned to our screens for the summer. I love this show and wait for it all year long, ringing people’s doorbells while muttering “Hey, it’s Che Diaz” to myself and having fever dreams about its Lynchian sex scenes (a term that is often misused, but not in this case!). If AJLT ever ends, I will have no choice but to take my own life atop a Peloton in protest; as a friend said to me way back when the pilot aired, this show must go on until we watch them lower Carrie Bradshaw into her actual grave. In the first episode of the third season, Miranda deflowers a Canadian nun played by Rosie O’Donnell! I didn’t know art could reach such towering heights—almost as tall as the doors in Carrie’s colossal new Gramercy Park townhouse.
For yes, Carrie has left her famous alcove studio behind, settling in an enormous mansion at 8 Gramercy Park West, just across the street from New York’s prettiest and most exclusive little park (in real life, this is the address of an apartment building, and in a vaguely egalitarian twist, one of only two rental buildings that grant residents keys to the gated park itself). She bought the place in the hopes that longtime on-again, off-again love Aidan Shaw would live there with her and his three terrifying sons, only for him to put the relationship on ice to focus on caring for his 14-year-old down on the family farm in Virginia. Actor John Corbett is six feet and five inches tall, but he is still dwarfed by the Gramercy place’s impressive doors, at least when he manages to get there. As far as life decisions go, this was not one of Carrie’s finest.
There are a few problems with the beautiful, sun-soaked, 1840s-era house, both in the world of AJLT and in the world I inhabit in my mind. Carrie’s expensive alarm system keeps misfiring, and its passcode is set as “Carrie and Aidan”—a deeply unhinged choice. During the second episode, Carrie finds that her “beautiful, bucolic backyard” is infested with rats, so many that they could form not just a rat king, but a rat emperor. She calls herself “a big girl in a big city with a big house to furnish,” but over the course of the six episodes HBO sent me, the house is furnished very little. Aidan breaks some irreplaceable antique glass, and a neighbor complains about Carrie’s Manolos clacking on the parquet floor. In what I initially took for an ominous sign, the groaning wisteria outside looks brighter and faker than the dusty plastic blooms drowning the walls of the TikTok-favorite restaurants of the West Village or West Hollywood.
I think because of the aesthetic crimes of the Sex and the City movies, I was prepared to hate the entire Gramercy endeavor. In the films—which are great to watch airplanes and for quoting to make your gynecologist uncomfortable—the always well-off characters shoot into the financial stratosphere, and the money washes away all previously established tastes and personalities. Carrie lives in apartments that read as just “rich,” not as Carrie Bradshaw. I thought the same fate would befall the new house. But, while I have yet to see the finished product, I think that I will simply have to eat my enormous hat, because the house, in addition to being one of those dreamy New York homes with wrought iron and divine moldings all over the place, actually feels like Carrie.
Some of the Carrie-specific choices are a bit corny, if welcome to longtime fans. Her closet is a more opulent version of the galley style seen in the original series, and the AJLT production design team recreated the precise angle of her desk and window for those “I couldn’t help but wonder” shots. But in addition to the nostalgia plays, there are little Bradshaw touches everywhere. Cords dangle uncovered from teensy lamps, pens live in a vintage-looking tomato can, and there’s a random magic 8 ball next to the huge hatbox for the huge hat. The little furniture that there is all looks like Carrie’s style: a mirrored art nouveau hall tree trimmed with wooden dragonflies, gold folding chairs with velvet cushions, diamond-patterned patchwork fabric ruffling below the farmhouse sink, a Tiffany blue fridge. It’s all prettily disheveled—the art leaning against the walls may be expressionist paintings where it used to be simple prints, but it’s still leaning.
The most complete part of the house is Carrie’s bed, with a polka dot duvet, linen sheets, and striped pillow shams that all look fancy enough to have been purchased at ABC Carpet Home, but clash enough that the store wouldn’t have paired them together for display. It is in this bed that we witness the most upsetting scene of AJLT to date, an aborted phone sex mission during which Aidan spits in his hand to jerk off in the front end of his pick-up truck. My fellow viewers and I may never recover. But I will keep watching, and I can’t help but wonder if Aidan’s wooden furniture will ever manage to fit in the Gramercy manse, which is light where his wood is dark (now, on multiple levels). I hope they keep it Carrie, heels on the inlaid floor and all.
