“Anyone who benefits from patriarchy is going to have a problem with Che Diaz,” actor Sara Ramírez insisted earlier this month, in the kind of interview that put automobile accidents to shame. Speaking to The Cut, Ramírez seemed to misunderstand that And Just Like That fans disliked Che because the character is morally questionable, chronically unfunny and exhausting to be around – yet gets spoken of with such reverence in the universe of the show that they seem like a psy-op experiment gone terribly awry. “It’s exciting to have Che be a disruption to the mainstream,” Ramírez said, before inexplicably comparing Che’s arrival on the show to “the mass mobilisation for anti-racism for George Floyd”, and saying how important it is to “wake people up from the sleep of their own comfort and privilege”.
I kept thinking about Ramírez’s stance while watching episode three of And Just Like That’s second season, which paints Che as such a broadly miserable, sociopathic monster that I had to double check the credits to see if I’d written it. Has this chronically erratic series done the unthinkable? Has it decided Che Diaz is evil?
‘If I cry, then it sends a signal that being non-binary is a tragedy!’
Che is unhappy. Their sitcom pilot continues to be a disaster, and Che is enraged by recent script changes. “I’m not allowed to call you my little cannoli anymore?” their on-screen dad asks. “Who am I offending now – pastry or cream?” It’s somehow funnier than Che’s stand-up material, which might be the problem. At a live taping of the pilot later on, and during filming of a scene in which Che is expected to cry, Miranda’s phone goes off – it’s Brady, who’s broken up with his girlfriend, is stranded in Amsterdam and feeling suicidal. Production is paused. Che is furious. Miranda flees the set.
When Miranda later explains to Che in detail what’s happened, Che enters peak narcissism: “You ruined the family scene!” they shout. Miranda breaks down in tears and says she’s headed back to New York to meet Brady, but Che is ambivalent. They sort of make up, but in a way that is just as tonally confused as the rest of their storyline. I’m unsure how we’re meant to feel about Che, how we’re meant to feel about Miranda’s feelings for them, and how we’re meant to feel about Miranda as a whole. This isn’t helped by Cynthia Nixon’s increasingly madcap performance – why is every one of her lines being yelled? – or the decision to cut Miranda off from the rest of the show’s cast. We last see her back in Brooklyn with Brady, her future just as uncertain as ever. But at least she’s home.
Che, meanwhile, is last seen skulking back to the set of their pilot. Not mentioned is the revelation that they’re still married; ignored, too, is the fight they had with Miranda at the end of the last episode. And Just Like That’s relationship to the character is a nightmare by this point – if we’re now meant to despise them, has just no one informed Ramírez?
‘Why do I feel like Blanche Dubois?’
Nya has long been the least-developed and least interesting new regular. We know she’s smart, we know she’s inexplicably best friends with Miranda now, and we know that she’s newly separated from her husband. That’s pretty much it. This week, though, she’s finally folded into the wider narrative. First, she participates in Lisa’s documentary – this moment marks the first in Sex and the City history with two women of colour speaking to one another sans absolutely any white people, right? – and then joins the girls for brunch.
There’s something really fascinating about this scene, which starts off just as awkwardly paced as other recent group scenes – Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis seem to be filming in different rooms, their performances lethargic, Carrie and Charlotte’s interaction devoid of fizz or energy. But then Lisa and Nya join them, the twosome becoming a quartet, and the scene comes alive. Does Sex and the City only really find its comic rhythm when it has four women bouncing off one another?
Nicole Ari Parker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Karen Pittman in ‘And Just Like That’— (Sky)
Distracted by all the sex chat, Nya asks: “Maybe we should switch gears and talk about abortion rights or how our democracy is hanging by a thread or how our planet is dying?” She then gets a text message from a potential new boyfriend, and becomes just as frivolous as the rest of them. I like this Nya characterisation, I should say. If Carrie’s our hero, Charlotte’s our prude and Lisa our rich lady, Nya is… sort of a comic scold? Lisa Simpson if she were a Black professor? I dig it.
Anyway, Charlotte and Lisa are caught up in a brouhaha involving a viral “MILF list” compiled by a mystery student at their childrens’ school. Lisa ranks second, Charlotte third. There’s a bit of giddy, guilty excitement at being seen as desirable by much younger boys, and the story as a whole is a nice slice of throwaway silliness.
‘I’ll pass along a saying I heard in my Kabbalah class’
Considering the horror-show that was the two-part opener to this season, And Just Like That finds an oddly entertaining register this week. That Carrie has a lot to do here doesn’t feel like a coincidence. She’s recording the audio version of her recent memoir about Big’s death, and struggles to read aloud the chapter in which she finds him slumped in the shower after his heart attack. Think of it as Sarah Jessica Parker’s version of Leonardo DiCaprio freaking out about his lines in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Carrie stutters her way through the same two sentences over and over again, spots grammatical inaccuracies in her own writing, and feels like the walls of the recording booth are closing in on her. Determined not to read it herself (“Don’t you want to hire an actress? A Julianne Moore? A Julianna Margulies?”), she fakes a Covid diagnosis and locks herself in her apartment for a few days – eating takeout, trying on new shoes and wearing facemasks.
Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘And Just Like That’— (Sky)
A little earlier, there is a brilliant scene in which Carrie runs into socialite Bitsy von Muffling, who famously married a not-gay man played by Nathan Lane in the original series, and who talks to her about losing a husband. Bitsy is a widow, too, and lets Carrie in on a secret about grief: “The second year is worse than the first,” Bitsy tells her. (“She must have seen last week’s season opener,” Che would probably joke). “The hole never fills, but new life will grow around it,” she continues. “Your job is to do whatever you need to plant some seeds.”
The show does a great job this week of exploring death and grief with a light touch, something that proved a struggle in And Just Like That’s moribund first season. Seema characteristically compares Carrie losing Big to losing her prized Birkin bag in a sidewalk snatch-and-grab, while Carrie exploiting the pandemic to get out of an annoying work commitment is exactly the kind of thing she would do during Covid. It’s just sort of effortlessly breezy, with Parker delightful and the story’s ending immaculate: Carrie gets through a perfect reading of the chapter, goes out for drinks with Seema to celebrate, flirts with a pack of hunky Australians, and does actually get Covid.
This was imperfect television, but I wasn’t enraged once. Progress!
‘And Just Like That’ is available on Sky and Now from 8am on Thursdays
