Several tragedies have at this point torn through And Just Like That. (The absense of Samantha, the presence of Che, Charlotte scheduling a dinner via OpenTable for 5:30 p.m., Carrie too prudish to say the word “vagina” on a podcast despite having once outed a politican for his piss kink in a broadsheet column.) But few developments have been quite as egregious as the disappearance of Miranda Hobbes: the Jil Sander-wearing Harvard grad turned rucksack of neuroses.
How could someone who once sported Miuccia Prada’s spring/summer 1996 skirt suits to the office and Christian Lacroix blazers to brunch even consider getting a tattoo of a cartoon robot? How could someone who once placed her trust exclusively in a PalmPilot decide to abandon a prestigious career move in pursuit of a stand-up comic who had “done a ton of weed”? The Miranda Hobbes of SATC and the Miranda Hobbes of AJLT have so far been very different people, and the (several) thinkpieces have all but written themselves.
But Season 3 seems set to change all that. By the end of the last episode, the newly single human rights lobbyist was giving a rousing interview to BBC News on behalf of her firm, and having flirtatious drinks with a woman she met at the UN who has greyhounds instead of children. (Fab.) And just this morning, photographs emerged from the set of AJLT wherein a blow-dried Miranda commands a camera crew with another BBC-branded microphone, flannel shirts mercifully sidelined for a linen pantsuit. Could it be that she has at last returned to herself and ditched the lumberjack look for good? Because as Miranda 1.0 said: “I don’t have enough time to tell you what’s wrong with corduroy.”