“And just like that… I got COVID.”
As much as it pains me to say it, this is not a nightmarish vision dreamed up in the grips of a fever dream: it is in fact a real sentence that emerges from Carrie Bradshaw’s mouth early on in the second season of Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That… shortly after she’s hit the town with a flock of highly-contagious Australian rugby lads.
Astonishingly this is not even her first brush with Ms Rona within the space of a single episode, either. Elsewhere the girls began rallying around with extravagant care packages, crowing on about symptom severity, and wheeling out pandemic platitudes like “awh, it finally got you!”. And just like that, my eyes fully rolled into the back of my own head, detached themselves from my face, caught a flight to New York and continued rolling all the way down the length of Fifth Avenue until they fell into a Manhattan steam stack and combusted, never to be seen again.
Watching the first three episodes of And Just Like That… felt much like hungrily ingesting spicy nuggets of unfortunate gossip about a lesser-hated ex; in my soul I knew it was deeply unethical, every other sentence made me wince with second-hand embarrassment, and yet I simply could not stop myself once I had begun. Though the reboot opens with an exceedingly jolly sex montage that feels more in keeping with the spirit of the original show than anything that unfolded in season one - a promising start - it almost immediately becomes bogged down by the same heavy-handed nonsense that derailed it previously. Colourism, the complexities of non-binary portrayals in the mainstream media, coming out later in life, and cancel culture are among the many weighty topics which are oh-so-briefly picked up before being immediately chucked off to one side again.
The beauty of Sex in the City originally was the balance at the brunch table; it’s safe to say that most viewers identified heavily with traits of all four women, and over the course of six seasons, it developed a kind of shorthand, which amplified the comedy of certain moments. When Charlotte suddenly lost her temper, or literal sex columnist Carrie was afflicted by a sudden surge of prudishness (doesn’t she write about obscure kinks for a living?!) it was genuinely funny because we knew their characters so very well; and while this same familiarity remains with the OG cast, its absence feels conspicuous with it comes to new additions to the gang Nya Wallace, Lisa Todd-Wexley, and Seema Patel. Though I forced myself to invest emotionally in their tribulations as best I could, they simply don’t get enough airtime for me to care.
While the first season was moving towards a clearer destination - Carrie’s journey through grief as she reckons with the death of Mr Big and her pain as she faces the prospect of starting over at fifty having previously found everything she was looking for - this feels rudderless and disjointed.
All of this is not to say that And Just Like That… is a miserable or pointless experience - both the best and worst viewing experience of my entire life, I had a giddy time drinking it all in and savouring its rubbishness like it was a cheap, cold Cosmopolitan on a boiling-hot day. Despite its numerous excruciating moments (including, but absolutely not limited to: Carrie trying to work Zoom and briefly referencing Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP, Miranda writhing around naked in a sensory deprivation tank like a low-budget The Grudge, an Emmy-nominated actor who makes a cameo in Che Diaz’s TV pilot fretting about getting cancelled, and Charlotte’s daughter Lily writing a categorically dreadful piano ballad about privilege) the quality markedly ramps up from episode four onwards.
From this point, the script seems to relax, and seems to call back more deliberately to SATC. Several nostalgic moments pointedly reference events and outfits that Mastermind-level fans will recall immediately from the original six series. Fashion is fully back in the fold; there are quips about Valentino, and a JW Anderson pigeon clutch bag for Carrie. Kristen Davis’ comic timing shines as she introduces Harry to pelvic floor exercises and wistfully compares male ejaculation to “fireworks on the 4th of July” before Miranda lovingly labels her a “cum slut”. A surprising romance that unfolds between Carrie and a New York stranger following a chance collision feels far closer to the spirit of the original show than anything that season one achieved. Once Miranda stops trying to put on a strap-on over her shoulders like a pair of dungarees (yes really, they’re spreading this kind of dangerous misinformation!! In Pride month!!!) and gets some hilarious one-liners instead, a large sigh of relief is breathed.
Though the opening trio of episodes are best forgotten, a little like the second Sex and the City movie, the remainder is thankfully enough to just about salvage things. It even made me screw up the Berger-esque post-it note I’d mentally scrawled on in my mind: I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.
Forget about nobly attempting to right the (admittedly numerous) wrongs of the original show and forcing audiences to bond with a string of one-dimensional new pals as it earnestly explores themes so large they each deserve their own TV show; the glimmers of silly and hilarious smut is the Sex and the City that I’ve been yearning for, for oh so long. And I couldn’t help but wonder about the fact that there’sstill a Samantha Jones cameo to come.
