The weirder “And Just Like That” gets, the better it is

In Season 4, episode 13 of “Sex and the City,” perennial cool girl Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) describes her “secret single behavior” — something semi-embarrassing she feels singlehood gives her a free pass to do — to her friends over lunch. “I like to make a stack of saltines,” she begins. “I put grape jelly on them. I eat them, standing up in the kitchen, reading fashion magazines.” Encouraged by their ringleader, Carrie’s best pals Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) join in with their own secret single behavior. Miranda likes to rub Vaseline on her hands and put them inside luxury conditioning gloves while watching infomercials, while Charlotte loves to study her pores in a magnifying mirror for one whole hour every night.

In less than one minute, longtime viewers could subconsciously reaffirm what they know about these women, and newcomers stumbling onto a random episode running in syndication would easily understand each character as if they were a fourth member of the friend group. (RIP Samantha.) Miranda is quirky but intelligent, she loves to learn even if it’s about some trashy product you can call a 1-800 number to buy; Charlotte is neurotic and image-conscious, but not unaware of her sometimes troublesome vanity; and Carrie is a fashion trailblazer, feasting on what Bethenny Frankel would call “supermodel snacks” as much as she devours everything she can about culture and writing. These carefully constructed personalities were present throughout every episode of “Sex and the City.” Though they were more put-on and hammed-up in the following two feature-length films, each character’s unique traits remained intact.

In “And Just Like That,” the “Sex and the City” sequel series, you’d be lucky to find a flicker of any of these women. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are no longer characters; they aren’t even archetypes. They are walking and talking sketches of people who look like real women but act as though they’ve been dropped into their bodies just this morning. They are costumed as though you asked a coma patient, freshly awake after 20 years on the ventilator, to sketch these ladies from memory. What’s up is down, what’s left is right. Logical choice and reason do not exist as tangible options to pursue. There is only chaos, and that is what we, the viewers, are left to reap. In its third season, “And Just Like That” has tossed its initial desire to comment on contemporary mores out the window, opting instead to stack layers of full-fat, all-bad-for-you indulgence to make a meaningless yet delicious trifle. Like the richest desserts, it’s designed to spike your blood sugar until you become so agitated you have to take a four-hour power nap, after which you’ll wake up dehydrated and disoriented, but craving another taste of that confusing confection. But there’s a reason we keep shoveling all that sugar down our throats. Occasionally, we’ll get one bite that’s so good, so nostalgically delectable, that it makes the chronic stomach pain of watching “And Just Like That” worth every second.

Earlier this month, Variety published a profile of Lena Dunham, in which Dunham was asked whether she would ever revive her hit HBO series, “Girls.” Like most creatives, who I imagine are exhausted by versions of this question, Dunham graciously responded: “If we had something to say that was really specific and it was a moment in their lives where we felt like revisiting it … I would always want to work with those people again.” This seems to be the common sentiment among a landscape of reboots and revivals, that a sequel to a beloved piece of intellectual property might be worth exploring if it serves the story and the characters. Two years before “And Just Like That” was announced, Parker told The Hollywood Reporter she’d be interested in seeing Carrie Bradshaw parse topical issues like #MeToo, saying, “It’s hard to imagine her not wanting to write about it.” Granted, Carrie was never particularly adept at wading into social issues with grace, but she never met a hot topic she didn’t have an opinion on. And given that the 2020s is a decade of non-stop talking points, naturally, Carrie would be excited to weigh in.

But what co-creator Michael Patrick King didn’t seem to realize when developing the series is that fans never really watched “Sex and the City” to see the world’s harsh realities reflected back at them. Rather, viewers were curious to see how each character handled these specific situations, how they changed with time, and met the moment in their distinguished ways. For its first two seasons, “And Just Like That” wasted endless minutes pushing Carrie and her friends into politicized circumstances that tested the audience’s willpower. In the effort to maintain relevance by discussing matters like late-in-life lesbianism, upward mobility for women of color, and the scourge of cringeworthy non-binary “comedians,” the series lost touch with the characters at its center. Carrie Bradshaw was no longer the It Girl; she was simply A Woman.

(Craig Blankenhorn/Max) Kristin Davis and Sarah Jessica Parker in “And Just Like That”

Maybe breaking Carrie down into a mere semblance of her former self was all part of the long game. After spending two seasons scraping the bottom of the barrel, Carrie has turned her newfound status as just any average woman into a horrific stab at autofiction with her new novel, set in 1846 New York City, where she writes thinly veiled musings about her life. These things are not happening to Carrie, though; they are happening to the nameless narrator, surreptitiously titled “the woman.” Watching Carrie write this novel, click-clacking away at her keyboard, pondering bonnets and buggies, is equivalent to watching a loved one descend into madness. With every passing episode, Carrie slips further into her fugue state, becoming more difficult to reach. It is as though the series will inevitably end with the character opening her eyes and the camera slowly panning out to reveal her padded cell.

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But the strange thing is that the more illogical the “And Just Like That” universe becomes, the more entertaining it is. It was frustrating to watch Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda mope around the first two seasons, trying to find their place in a world that changed too fast for them to keep up. Instead of meeting their flaws head-on, as they so often did in “Sex and the City,” the women spent their time struggling against these shortcomings, usually making their lives worse in the process. That’s the funny thing about change: If you’re not ready to handle it, you’ll get swept up by it. Now, all three women are essentially broken down, back at their starting point. Carrie’s trapped in a dire long-distance dynamic with her boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett); Miranda’s been Airbnb’ing and her lesbian pickup game has taken a major hit; and Charlotte’s teenagers are out of control while her husband Harry (Evan Handler) is dealing with early-stage prostate cancer. Left with nowhere to go but up, the show has, shockingly, begun to hoist these women out of the doldrums — at least for now.

That’s not to say that the latter half of “And Just Like That” Season 3 is “good” by any standard meaning of the word, only that we’re starting to see glimmers of the characters we once knew and loved. In the same way that “Twin Peaks” was meant to be watched and felt, but not plainly understood, so is “And Just Like That.” But unlike “Twin Peaks,” there is no key to unlocking a deeper understanding of this show, so we must search for hope where we can find it, lest we accept another bitter defeat in 2025. With a show like “And Just Like That,” faith in the series’ future is spun out of pure lunacy. So, when the show killed off Lisa Todd Wexley’s (Nicole Ari Parker) father two separate times — a gaping plot hole that writers have since tried to defend — I had a feeling we were just settling into a groove. It’s not that the writers were trying to pull one over on their viewers; it’s that they don’t think about the viewer at all. And when “And Just Like That” is unconcerned with its audience’s reactions, the show is freed from the burden of trying so hard to please. That’s exactly how this series should be: Focused on its characters, and not charming the viewers who love them.

In this season’s seventh episode, “They Wanna Have Fun” — which, it should be noted, was written by Lucas Froehlich, taking on his first solo writing credit on the show after previously serving as a co-writer and story producer — “And Just Like That” turned a pivotal corner. There was a lightness to this episode’s events that the show hasn’t seen since it premiered. More than that, Episode 7 came with a notable familiarity, with Froehlich cleverly crafting pockets for Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte to exhibit the character traits that the original series so painstakingly developed. By God, they’re fluttering their eyelashes, they’re still in there! What’s more, the criminally underutilized Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), finally stepped into her own, becoming a three-dimensional character instead of a Samantha Jones stand-in.

(Craig Blankenhorn/Max) Sarita Choudhury in “And Just Like That”

The episode’s centerpiece scene takes place at a birthday party Carrie and Miranda are throwing for Charlotte, where Harry’s prostate cancer — a secret that Charlotte has only disclosed to Carrie — must stay hidden. This, of course, creates the opportunity for plenty of hijinks, and for Froehlich to do what this show does best: put these women in situations and see how they react. Meanwhile, Seema runs around the party in a Louis Vuitton eyepatch after a bad lash job, being wooed by Carrie’s handsome gardener, who takes to the karaoke machine Miranda provided and sings “Bette Davis Eyes” to his paramour. Or, in this case, “Bette Davis Eye.” It’s so romantic that it’s swoon-worthy, but more than that, it’s a chance for Seema to understand that what she really needs in a man is humor, not a closet filled with dapper suits or a massive credit line.

After the party, Miranda downloads the night’s highlights with Carrie, which include her spotting Carrie flirting with her downstairs neighbor, Duncan (Jonathan Cake). Carrie bristles, as she always does when Miranda pokes her about something, even playfully. The women get into a small tiff, reminiscent of moments in “Sex and the City” when Carrie felt more understood by her best friend than she wanted to admit. When they’re interrupted, Carrie and Miranda immediately put the fight down, wave the white flag and realize that their friendship is so much more important than an argument they’ve had for decades. What begins as a spark of the old Carrie and Miranda suddenly looks different, more mature, but still just as familiar as these characters can still be with the proper writing. Froehlich keenly showcases what friendship looks like at this stage of life, well into middle age, without sacrificing those thorny parts of ourselves that remain, no matter how ashamed we are. It’s that balance that viewers fell in love with while watching “Sex and the City,” and if “And Just Like That” plays its cards right, the series can maintain that equilibrium.

In the case of “And Just Like That,” television is not something that can be enjoyed or even consumed in the normal sense. It is something fed to us through intravenous transportation, dripping down the highways of our bodies until it puts us into a lobotomized state. The show is designed to be so utterly awful that, when it’s great, it shakes us to our core, and encourages us to have all the more grace for those extended spells when the series is dreadful. If history is any indication, this stretch of “And Just Like That” is merely one of those grace periods. But maybe, just maybe, it’s the dawn of a new day in 1846, and the woman is about to remember who she is.