It is a fact universally acknowledged that And Just Like That… is hellacious. I't’s also bizarre. This morning, I was walking up my front steps after taking my youngest kid to the local farmers market, and I heard a clunk. I looked down, and a pair of sparrow wings, minus the rest of the sparrow, had landed on my second step. It was surreal and frightening, rather like every episode of And Just Like That… manages to be. Every Thursday at 9:00 EST, an inert pair of sparrow’s wings lands on my tv. And I can’t take it anymore.
No one can say exactly why the show is so terrible, because there is no single analysis that encapsulates the show’s horrors, but for the sake of kicking things off, I’ll try.
The first season was struck with what I call “the time-travel problem.” Carrie and the gang spoke like women who boarded a spaceship and entered into cryosleep after the second film debuted, in 2010, only to wake in 2022 and find that, yes, Black and transpeople do in fact live in New York City.
And then there are the tonal inconsistencies. The show moves from toothless, poorly-timed slapstick, with last week’s episode literally centered on a banana, to emotionless melodrama (never forget the wholly forgettable moment Carrie, wrapped in hazmat-couture, threw Big’s ashes into the Seine) to a fixation on bodily functions I can’t and don’t want to grasp (Carrie pees herself; Harry pees himself; Carrie and her date barf on one another on a Manhattan street).
[Photo caption: Carrie Bradshaw stares, pensive, supposedly grief-stricken, clutching an Eiffel Tower bag that looks like she bought it in a gift shop at Charles de Gaulle, full of Mr. Big’s ashes, wearing pink latex gloves and an orange gown. My husband, Vincent, has drawn a matching hazmat hat around her glamorous head.]
There is the “side character problem,” as noted on the ingenious podcast Every Outfit On Sex and The City. Each original main character has new side characters and there are new main characters with side characters and now the side characters have side characters and look, I don’t even care about the original main characters anymore so please don’t expect me to give a single one of my precious few remaining fucks about Diego, Lily’s polysexual main squeeze.
All of this has been exhaustively chronicled by much better film and television critics than myself. I’m neither, actually, just a writer who hates to see her favorite show of all time destroyed by this weekly travesty. I’ve been thinking about this for years, now, because I can’t stop watching, and if you’re reading this, you probably can’t stop watching either. I was thinking of writing a one-off essay about this for my long-running Substack about Sylvia Plath, in which I described how we’re not seeing Carrie and Miranda and Charlotte, we’re seeing their ghosts. But then I was like, that’s not what we’re seeing at all! Ghosts are fucking cool and weird and scary and laden with myth and symbolism. Ghosts are interesting! Ghosts haunt us! I write about Sylvia Plath, I know about ghosts.
The women on And Just Like That… are not ghosts. Carrie Bradshaw’s ghost would leave stiletto prints in the Manhattan snow and destroy some great love with the angst caused by her haunting. You can project your own terrors and dreams onto ghosts, who flash them back to you until you’re not sure what’s real and what’s spectral. But the women on And Just Like That… are what happens when imagination and desire just. fucking. DIE, because you’re in the 1% now, babe, so you can have whatever the flying fuck you want. What do we care for the comedy and tragedy that accompany ambition and yearning when Carrie can have a Gramercy Park apartment and wander the streets of New York City in a couture hat that looks like my 4-year old dropped his hamper from the balcony onto her head? Two weeks ago, I watched two of the richest straight women on television bitch, without irony, about how gay men never deliver, and thought, I can bear this no longer.
And yet, I knew I would tune in as long as the show continues, desperate for a return to form.
And so, I couldn’t help but wonder…
What if I killed Carrie off?
So, I started this newsletter, because I figured, with a summer course starting Tuesday, three kids, a book proposal, and two edited anthologies to finish, I need another project. No. That’s not it. The world needs this project, because this project will do an episode by episode rewatch of And Just Like That… . But instead of critiquing each one, in each installment, I will find in the existing show a new, creative way to kill off Carrie Bradshaw, in the hope that, if she dies, we can live. Carrie Bradshaw’s death is our life, the liberatory spirit that will carry us out of Gramercy Park and into the upper east side of the late 1990s, where Carrie dates hot weirdos, smokes Marlboro Lights, and pins massive fake flowers to her thrift-shop ware. Where she puns! Wears off-kilter Princess Leia buns! Has no funds! And in her Manolos she runs! Let’s kill off this Carrie and return Sex and the City where it belongs: in our memories, or on streaming services, where people my age can watch it when we’re hungover, or where new people can find it and enjoy for the very first time.
The tyranny of And Just Like That… must end.
Carrie’s dead. Long live Carrie.
Coming next week!: Season One, Episode One, “Hello, It’s Me.”
And just like that… Carrie dies.
Have you been reading British Vogue's weekly commentary? It's spot-on and hilarious and I think you might love. The latest episode seemed, to me, particularly nonsensical: Why does Carrie need to wear heels when she's at home, alone? Does anyone really do this? Why does Lisa dress like she's going to a rave in 1993 Prague rather than a PBS documentarian?? Why did the costume designer feel like Charlotte would wear a fanny pack with her dog's face on it? And what writer can afford to keep an apartment in Manhattan that they only use for six months out of the year?? I could go on and on...
smashed the subscribe so hard i broke my finger