Looking Back on “And Just Like That…”

With an affectionate revisit to the raunchy banter of “Sex and the City”

Yes. No.

“And Just Like That….” has just concluded its second season and been renewed for a third. It’s irritating that a show like “Perry Mason” has been cancelled, while a series that has so clearly run (and seemingly gone beyond) its creative course is being preserved.

I liked season one quite a lot. I didn’t mind its frantic pandering to “diversity” because the new Black and brown characters—particularly glam realtor Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) were gorgeous and appealing, and “Sex and the City” had gotten so much justified flack for its whiteness. (Funny, though,“Succession” didn’t get a similar thrashing.) Miranda’s first sexual encounter with Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) in Carrie’s kitchen was also the hottest thing I’d ever seen on the show.

That was a particularly good episode. Carrie behaved like a spoiled brat when Miranda didn’t come running to her when she needed to pee (“You’re married and just had sex in my kitchen!” Carrie should talk! And why didn’t she just shout louder?) But Miranda, melting down about how unhappy she is in her marriage, brings Carrie around. (She was high on pain-killers after hip surgery, too, so might be excused her little tantrum.) In the same episode Charlotte and Harry try to figure out whether Rock (birth name Rose) is “just going through a stage in their development” or not, and it’s done sympathetically to both parents and Rock. Thank you, Samantha Irby, who wrote the episode.

There’s also a lovely scene in another episode in which Carrie and Seema actually do what friends often do in real life and hardly ever do in the movies: talk things out. Staging her apartment in preparation for selling it, Seema accidentally breaks the glass on a cherished picture of Carrie and Big, and at first is casual about it, offering to replace the glass, not realizing that even the glass has John-meaning for Carrie. Carrie explodes, but rather than responding defensively. Seema listens and acknowledges that she’s been insensitive. She also points out that Carrie’s sensitivity hasn’t always been the greatest either. The details of Carrie’s insult to Seema aren’t important. What’s refreshing is that instead of a cinematic stomp out and door slam, they break through and become closer for it.

What I liked best about the first season, though, was how it honored the realities of growing older. Spouses can die, colonoscopies must be scheduled, going up the stairs can become harder (even though Carrie’s problem turned out to be a previously undiscovered genetic issue), and looking in the mirror can be traumatic. Carrie goes to the cosmetic surgeon just to provide support for Anthony (Mario Cantone) and winds up having numerous procedures recommended for her that will “take 15 years away.” We don’t know whether she decides to do anything or not—it’s not followed through—but I got a lift of a different sort when Sarah Jessica Parker looked at her reflection in the doctor’s office and—what do you know?—she actually looked 55. A stunning 55, but 55 nonetheless.

Season two went astray, though. I stopped watching it when it became clear to me (1) that Miranda has devolved from a cynical smart-ass into a clinging vine who didn’t even have a cutting wisecrack when she couldn’t figure out how to put herself into a strap-on, and (2) that Charlotte, without Samantha’s bracing counterpoint, had become completely insufferable.

I popped back now and then, when I’d seen a comment on Facebook that made me think something good was going on, and yes, there were a few excellent moments: Carrie lying about COVID to get out of recording her book (the one upside of COVID: it can get you out of everything), long-enduring Steve finally blasting into Miranda (“I built everything in here; this is my house!”) and Miranda discovering the less glamorous side of lesbian love (that would be kitty litter—and again thank you, Samanta Irby, who wrote this episode too.)

A major highlight among these occasional return trips was Seema’s honesty about not wanting to rent the house in the Hamptons she’d been planning to share with Carrie, now that she’d be an adjunct to Carrie and Aidan’s relationship. And she stood up for herself even when Carrie persisted in being clueless/selfish/unthinking. I do love Seema. And that was also a moment that reminded me of what was so fresh about the early days of “Sex and the City”: the speaking out-loud of experiences virtually all women have had, but kept to ourselves—and that popular culture had never released from the closet.

So ok to all that. But “yech” to the far more frequent cringe-worthy moments: Charlotte teaching Harry how to do kegel exercises (I didn’t need to see that, didn’t want to see that, didn’t know why we were subjected to that.) Charlotte and Miranda’s total obedience to their over-indulged children’s demands: Trekking through a snowstorm to buy condums for Princess Lilly. Miranda flying from LA back to New York to console Brady after a break-up with his girlfriend. (What, the ever-reliable Steve wasn’t around?) And the “Vivante” party, which had no narrative purpose other than to reassure Carrie that she wasn’t as over-the-hill as us truly old crones of 70-plus. What a shameful use of Candice Bergen and Gloria Steinem.

Maybe you’re wondering how I remember all that if I stopped watching? Well, I finally did go back and watch it all. And even checked back in on the season of “Sex and the City” in which Carrie first meets Aidan. The way this came about was that I knew from the Hamptons thing that Carrie was back with Aidan (John Corbett, still posing for the camera and making odd little jerks of his head and shoulders in the William Hurt—may he rest in peace—narcissism school of method acting.) And I wanted to see how that regression would end. Confession: Big was my favorite guy—I much prefer straightforward “trouble with commitment” to the seemingly “perfect” men who give you all the love you need at the beginning and then act like assholes later on. (When Miranda, in the finale of the last season of “Sex and the City,” tells Big to “go get our girl” I admit I got chills.)

So I watched the finale of the second season of “And Just Like That…”, in which Aidan, after Carrie has sold her old apartment and bought a huge new one in Grammercy Park to accomodate him and his three boys, tells her he has to go back to Virginia for 5 years because his ex-wife is apparently so awful a mom (though she seemed mega-parentally concerned when she lunched with Carrie and warned her not to hurt Aidan because of the boys) that his youngest son is in danger of becoming a drug addict without Aidan’s nurturing presence.

I have a 24 year daughter whose well-being when she was a teenager occupied my mind a lot, so let me accept the premise that Aidan is just doing what any good parent would do. But then, Carrie says she’ll visit, even stay in a B and B, and he says no, he’d be thinking too much about her to have her down there, and hey, five years will go by in the snap of a finger.

This is the guy, recall, whose emotions are so tender he can’t bear to even go through the doorway of Carrie’s old apartment without suffering such intense PTSD that they have to live in an over-priced hotel for a week, and then a seedy one in which she gets mistaken in the lobby for a prostitute (not, fans of Seinfield, that there’s anything wrong with that.) This same sensitive guy is feeling no shame about asking Carrie to suck up the zillions of dollars she’s laid out and settle in for five years alone in a palatial apartment, consoling herself with the view of the park. And she does it, uncomplainingly. “Maybe I’ll get time off for good behavior,” she tells Seema, as they sun themselves in Greece.

Why were the writers doing this to Carrie? Was the Carrie who used to sneak off to smoke and screw around with Mr. Big being punished for her past transgressions or what? The disturbing answer, it turns out, is YES. From an interview with the Kingpin himself, Michael Patrick King:

“King and the writers explained how this conversation revealed their ultimate plan for Carrie’s relationship in season two, which could be looked at as a make good of sorts for viewers of the original series who felt that Carrie broke Aidan’s heart (as he famously told her in the original series).

“We are now building the case for what becomes the plot of what we decided to do the entire second season which is: We’re bringing Aidan back, she’s not going to hurt him because she knows she can’t — and we also don’t want the fans to think we did that again — so he’s going to hurt her,” said King. “And the only way we knew that he would ever pull away from her is if the bigger love — and every parent would assume that this is a bigger love — is the responsibility and your love for your children.” (Emphasis mine)

But love for the “children” (two of whom are 17 and 20) doesn’t explain why Carrie can’t visit. It’s just nasty retribution on the part of the writers, who got the idea it’s what viewers wanted—on behalf of poor Aidan of course. “Love for your children” is just King’s excuse for something they wanted to do (For ratings? For some warped notion of “what goes around comes around?”): Have Aidan dump Carrie.

This got me thinking about the whole second season of “And Just Like That….”and how demeaning and punishing it was to all of the white women from the original series. (The Black and brown women come off better; I guess the cowardly writers were afraid of backlash if they dumped on them—or perhaps they felt they couldn’t pull it off with “strong” women.) But the white women—they were fair game (as they increasingly have become in other narratives as well.) Miranda is given a personality transplant. Charlotte becomes a parody of herself. Carrie gets left. And even Murphy Brown is degraded to the status of a money-grubbing bitch.

It didn’t help, of course, that there was no Samantha, who may have been a more essential ingredient of the series than any one realized. When she was there, she could always be counted on to roll her eyes at Charlotte’s prissiness and to slap Carrie up side the head when she was being too much of a dishrag for the men in her life. Miranda’s wry deadpan humor was also an antidote of sorts. And their very different personalities played off each other like ping-pong.

And verbally ping and pong off each other they did, and with the exception of Charlotte, not overly concerned with any species—Right or Left, Black or white— of political correctness. Women sharing together was the agenda and nothing was off bounds. But the content of the conversation, although it often had me in stitches, wasn’t the charm of the series. It was the women’s affection for each other and the freedom they felt with each other. Talking about men’s penises and tongues was just the lubricant of their friendship.

In the beginning of the episode (Season 3, episode 5) in which Carrie meets Aiden, they are discussing Charlotte’s latest dating ordeal: Brad, the mouth, teeth, and chin licker.

Charlotte: All around my mouth. How do you think I felt? His tongue actually licked my teeth. [All: ewww!]
Samantha: I don’t get it. Did he wanna fuck you or floss you?
Miranda: Bad kissers are the worst.
Carrie: The worst. When it comes to the worst, they are the top. The top of the worst.
Charlotte: He has sweet lips. I thought he’d be a good kisser.
Carrie: That’s the scary thing you can never tell. They look totally normal.
Miranda: Until their pointy tongue darts in and out of your mouth.
Carrie: Stabby little Pointy tongue. That’s the Worst of the Worst.
Samantha: No, no, no. What’s the worst is when they expect you to do all the work. Their tongue just lays in your mouth like a clam.
Carrie: Clam-mouth. That’s the worst. [All: ewww!]
Samantha: At that point I’d say, Get the thing out my mouth, put it in a cab and take its lazy ass home,
Charlotte: You dumped a guy because it was a bad kiss?
Samantha: Honey, you have to. If their tongue just lays there, what is their dick gonna do?
Carrie: Point taken.

I was really taken aback when I watched this episode again after these many decades. I had forgotten how raunchy—and how funny—Sex and the City” was. And by contrast, how polite and decorous “And Just Like That….”is. The three that are left don’t talk about sex like that any more. Nor do they talk like that with any of the new characters. No, they’re all basically working their lives out with their partners in bed, not entertaining each other—and us—with their rapport. The only raunchy humor to be gotten is from Che’s stand-up routines. (Miranda struggling with a strap-on and Harry learning to do Kegel exercises just didn’t qualify as high comedy for me.)

At one point later in the conversation I just quoted Charlotte describes Brad as “raping” her chin. I doubt the series would get away with that kind of loose talk about intrusive sexual behavior nowadays. Or that they would dare to present smoking (which Carrie does all the time, except for a minute when she’s trying to quit so Aidan won’t dump her) as an illicit—but delicious—activity. (She should have run the other way the moment he told her he couldn’t date a smoker. And it wasn’t even because of second-hand smoke or having quit himself, or a relative having died of lung cancer—any of which would have been understandable. It was just a “thing” he had.)

In 2000 when that season ran we knew just as much as we do today how unhealthy smoking is. But breaking other rules was more important to the series—and in breaking those rules, establishing the depth of the bonds between four women who were so different from each other, but enjoyed each other so much.

Am I saying I wanted to see smoking celebrated and conversations about penises dominating in “And Just Like That…”? The characters are now in their fifties and have experienced such a wide variety of sexual partners that there’s no way to recapture the sexual silliness (or obliviousness to danger) of the early seasons. I don’t want any of them to die of lung cancer (I quit myself when I was 36 and knew I was approaching the outer banks of reversing any damage.) Plus, we’ve gone through massive national trauma that has left us feeling less than giddy. The humor that works best nowadays—I’m thinking of the funny parts of “Bad Sisters”, “The Good Fight”, “Succession” and “The Bear”(to name my own favorites)— has a dark edge that better reflects the mood of our disoriented, battered (and perhaps broken) country.

But do we really need to take it out on Carrie Bradshaw? Having Big die was one thing—it was tragic, and life is often tragic. Becoming Aidan Shaw’s patiently waiting Penelope is punishing of everything “Sex and the City” once was. That’s depressing. And not funny.