I didn’t think my level of loathing for the Max sequel to HBO’s “Sex and the City” could get any higher, and just like that, along came Season 3.
You see what I did there? Like every single person who has written about “And Just Like That…,” I have used the title in a naked and half-assed attempt to be clever.
Which honestly could also be the title of the series.
We’re midway through the third — and one can only hope final — season, and I am hoarse from screaming at watching these beloved characters behave as if they had done some sort of “Freaky Friday” switch with 13-year-olds.
Which is actually an insult to most 13-year-olds.
In the course of the barely-recognizable-as-human events that make up this latest episode, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) prolonged her inexplicable bout of homelessness by acting shocked — shocked! — that Seema (Sarita Choudhury), having found her a dream house, would expect her to make a bid over asking price; Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) dealt with the grief over her father’s death by whining about the amazing send-off orchestrated by his friend Lucille (Jenifer Lewis) despite it including a performance by … Jenifer Lewis; and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) continued to behave as if it were perfectly normal for her husband Harry (Evan Handler) to keep his prostate cancer diagnosis secret from everyone including their children, who would no doubt handle it better than Charlotte.
All of which paled in comparison to the latest installment in the emotional horror show that is the second-time-around courtship of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Aidan (John Corbett), which has been under threat since it was revealed in Season 2 that Aidan’s 15-year-old son Wyatt (Logan Souza) has some issues, including a recent ADHD diagnosis. Events lead Aidan to impulsively announce that he and Carrie will have to put their relationship on hold until Wyatt turns 20 (when, as everyone knows, parental responsibilities officially end).
Not surprisingly, this plan does not work out, and in this episode, Aidan celebrates the fact that Wyatt is attending a week-long wilderness camp (um, what?) by showing up at Carrie’s apartment, where he immediately breaks a window by throwing a pebble at it. You know, like he used to in the old days before Carrie had a jillion-dollar apartment with 19th century windows that, as she says, “survived the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Draft Riots of ‘63” (memo to Carrie — New York saw no action in the Mexican War).
After going to obsessive lengths to replace the glass, Aidan then confesses that he and his ex Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt) had to force Wyatt onto the plane (how they managed to be at the gate as unticketed passengers to do this remains a mystery), an event so upsetting that Aidan and Kathy were forced to comfort each other with sex.
For one brief and shining moment, I waited for Carrie to call time of death on one of the unhealthiest relationships this particular universe has seen (and that’s saying something). Instead, and impossibly, she said she understood.
Apparently love means ignoring every sign God could think to send you. Not only did Aidan have sex with his ex, he forced his unmedicated, unsupervised 15-year-old with ADHD onto a plane headed to the Grand Tetons. (Whether the poor kid made it to camp or is currently having a meltdown in the Jackson Hole airport is never mentioned.)
But then Carrie, and the series, has continued to treat Wyatt’s condition, and his father’s obvious irritated denial of its realities, as simply a logistical obstacle in her fairy tale love story. This would barely make sense if Carrie were still in her 30s, and it makes absolutely none for a woman of her age.
I begrudge no one the desire to reboot a groundbreaking series, and two years ago, the prospect of seeing these iconic 30-somethings as mid-to-late 50-somethings was certainly appealing to one who shares their mature demographic. If only Michael Patrick King, the force behind “And Just Like That…,” allowed any of them to have matured. I don’t mean physically — stars Parker, Nixon, Davis and Kim Cattrall (briefly glimpsed at the end of Season 2) — are fit and lovely and obviously older. I mean emotionally, spiritually and psychologically.
“And Just Like That…” has had two and a half seasons to make these women seem like actual people who might exist, if not in real life, then at least the “Sex and the City” universe (remember the opening credits, when Carrie gets splashed by a bus? Hyperrealism compared to the eat-off-the-sidewalks vision of “And Just Like That…’s” New York.)
Instead, the series seems determined to prove that age is just a number by forcing its leads, now including Choudhury and Parker, to act as if 50 is the new (and very stupid) 30.
I get that Miranda is coming to grips with her newly discovered queerness, but surely a successful, Harvard-educated lawyer who has survived a divorce and raised a teenage son would have a bit more confidence and self-awareness in love, real estate and basic guest etiquette — after moving in briefly with Carrie, she eats the last yogurt!
Charlotte has always been an original Disney princess, all wide eyes and faith in the restorative nature of small animals and florals, but at 55, her high-strung reaction to her husband’s prostate cancer (caught early, easily treatable) is helpful to no one. And don’t get me about her little foot-stamping approach to motherhood or how she speaks about her dog.
As for Carrie, well, it’s one thing to be a relentlessly hopeful romantic addicted to tulle, stilettos and problematic men in your 30s, but Carrie’s pushing 60 now, so when she agreed, with no demur, to Aidan’s absurd five-year plan, I wondered if she had simply gone mad.
Watching as she subsequently rattled around her huge, empty (if incredibly luxe) apartment wearing a see-through, Ophelia-like dress stuffed with roses or traipsed through Central Park wearing a hat the size of a hot-air balloon only exacerbated my fears. Dressing like Marie Antoinette to attend a luncheon at Tiffany’s isn’t sassy fashion sense — it’s a cry for help.
She most certainly needs help. The reunion with Aidan seemed too good to be true, and thus it is proving to be. Even a 30-something Carrie would have known that being in a relationship with a father means being in a relationship with his children. But the notion that she must be kept separate from Wyatt is not just unsustainable — it’s insulting.
What, she’s never experienced, met or even read about children with ADHD or post-divorce trauma? Or is she such a delicate flower that she can’t handle being around a teenager with anger management issues? She lives in New York, for heaven’s sake, the city that invented anger management issues.
Frankly, Aidan’s behavior is far more concerning than Wyatt’s, a flag so big and red that Carrie could make a stunning sheath dress out of it.
Which she appears to be doing, instead of, you know, acting like the grown-ass rich widow she is and calling Aidan out on his bull.
“And Just Like That…” purports to celebrate the mid-life do-over, just as it purports to show that women in their 50s are just as vibrant, complicated and fun as women in their 30s. Both are admirable goals, neither of which the series achieves. Even with its title — ”And Just Like That…” — this series seems determined to erase everything that might have made the older versions of these characters interesting and resonant.
Like the ability to buy a house or say the word “cancer” or get out of an unhealthy romantic relationship before it spits right in your eye.
The post Commentary: ‘And Just Like That…’ seems determined to insult women over 50. And under 50 appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
