I was watching the latest episode of And Just Like That Season 3 when I found myself laughing. Not just a twitch of the mouth but, like, actually laughing out loud. I laughed when Carrie inexplicably lied to Miranda that Charlotte’s dog had a tumor and was going to die (did she have to go that far?). And when Joy snatched the gift she just gave to Charlotte out of her hands because it was “the wrong present.” And when Miranda casually told Harry that when the “unthinkable happens,” they’ll all be sad but basically fine? And when Carrie said “I don’t have fun” in a haunted, vacant voice. Wait, I found myself thinking. Is And Just Like That a comedy now? Not just a drama with comedic elements, but an actual comedy series?
Sex and the City was always funny—lest we forget Samantha crying in a bathroom stall because a guy she’s dating has a small dick, or Lexi’s immortal line, “New York used to be the most exciting city in the world, and now it’s nothing but smoking near an open window!” But And Just Like That isn’t funny in that tightly written, intentional, full-of-whip-smart-characterization sort of way—no, it’s much more absurd than that. The episodes are neither episodic nor fully running on from each other, giving the series a strange, fever dream-like quality. You often have no idea where the plot points might fall next.
People regularly describe the show as being objectively bad, but oddly irresistible, which creates a viewing experience not unlike surrendering yourself to a tide. I’ll just allow myself to be pulled along, you think, and see where I get washed up. (And, in this instance, where I got washed up was with Miranda in a silvery Christmas-style body suit, desperately pleading with everyone to sing Cyndi Lauper with her for way longer than was comfortable.)
Part of the appeal, of course, is that we love these characters. We’re invested in their lives, even when those lives involve a series of nonsensical happenings, such as Lisa’s dad dying twice, or Carrie writing a novel about a 19th-century woman who’s having some sort of existential crisis (the latter is actually a very Carrie thing to do, to be fair). Had we not seen Sex and the City, we likely wouldn’t collectively be watching And Just Like That, which means that we’ve found ourselves in a never-ending bind: beholden to these characters while also watching something that resembles a choose-your-own-adventure game generated by AI.
You might assume that the aforementioned would stir up some kind of resentment—and maybe it did, at first. But as time’s gone on, I’ve found myself going full-circle and actually enjoying the weirdness of it all. Charlotte staying out until daylight hours, as if any club in Manhattan actually stays open until daylight hours. Carrie refusing to furnish her home. Aidan making Carrie sleep in an out-house in her clothes, like she’s been banished to a kennel, and her accepting that. There’s a reason that my colleague Rad and I have endless questions to unpack at the end of every episode, because the joy of And Just Like That is precisely in of all the questions (and the fact that they remain unanswered), rather than in spite of them.
I don’t know, maybe I’ve developed Stockholm syndrome, or maybe the internet has curdled my synapses, but now that I’ve finally let go of any expectations regarding And Just Like That as a SATC sequel, and instead begun to understand it as a surrealist comedy, of sorts, I’m kind of loving it? Bring on the next episode of absolute unbridled insanity—I can hardly wait.