What It’s Like to Watch ‘And Just Like That’...as Someone Who Wrote a Book About ‘Sex and the City’

Hint: It's hard.

Jun 20, 2025

There is a scene in the second episode of the current season of And Just Like That in which the series suddenly hums to life. A smart British woman named Joy (the delightful Dolly Wells) has popped into the office where Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) works. They have chemistry. They banter: Joy asks Miranda about her life, urging her to spill something “scintillating.” Miranda reveals that she recently took a nun’s virginity, which, one must admit, is a high-quality response to this prompt. “So what you are saying is that you are the Anti-Christ,” Joy jokes.

“Would the Anti-Christ have an office this small?” Miranda counters.

“No,” Joy says, “and the window would be cleaner.”

“And wouldn’t there be more than one window?”

“Not necessarily, business is off everywhere.”

Here we have a scene doing its job. These two women are clearly flirting. Their exchange crackles with possibility. Wells has charisma; an audience can root for this.

On a series that is, as far as one can tell, about the sex lives and relationships of three 50-something women who originally changed the cultural conversation about single women on the 2000s sensation Sex and the City, this kind of scene shouldn’t be a standout. It should be standard.

But as I have trudged through this cynical reboot, I have found myself desperately looking for sparks of hope like this. You see, I have a unique relationship to it: I wrote a book about Sex and the City called Sex and the City and Us. It came out in 2018, well before this reboot, which premiered in 2021, was even in discussion. I had no idea what I was in for.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time steeped in the show’s history and legacy—and defending its honor as a truly great series that transcends the shoes and the fashion and the sex that are its hallmarks. And Just Like That, however, has continuously taken a hatchet to that legacy. I can’t stop watching, even though it’s painful to watch.

I love these women and want to see them on screen, yet nearly every time they appear now, they disappoint, enrage, or bore me. And I say this as not only a fan, but as a person who is desperately rooting for this franchise. I deeply understand the motives of the people who made the original. They were extraordinarily generous and kind to me, granting me interviews and helping with factchecking and sharing photos as I wrote my book. And to be honest, the fortunes of my book are tied up in them.

But I must admit that over its three seasons, a series that could have had a vital and clear mission—redefining the way we view postmenopausal women—instead has often appeared listless, in search of a why (beyond, of course, making money). Its high budget shows on screen in some truly beautiful shots, but like main character Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), it often appears to have too much to spend but not much to do. I love this Washington Post piece from Rachel Tashjian that pans the series’ fashion choices and also serves as an indictment overall: “It is the wardrobe of a woman with too much money and not enough to think about,” she accurately says of Carrie.

The first two disastrous seasons were powered by the very strong ingredient of the very unfunny comedian character Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), a raging narcissist and love interest for/destroyer of Miranda, who for many of us had long been the reasonable, admirable character but was reduced in Che’s presence to a dithering idiot. In what was on paper a wise decision, the show let Che go for this, the third season. But the decision was also a risky move, laying bare the core characters and their storylines instead of allowing Che to take the fire. The result has often been something worse than what we had before—a boring hate watch.

I got the first six episodes of this season ahead of time to review them for The Wrap, and I had to watch them within less than two days. They go down a bit easier this way, the first few a haze punctuated by occasional glimmers, like Rosie O’Donnell as the aforementioned nun and Miranda’s flirtation with Joy. (This arrangement also allowed me to squeeze my eyes shut during the Aidan masturbation scene and nearly wipe it from my memory with the overdose of subsequent episodes.) I can see now that the drip, drip (jeez, everything sounds gross once you think of that Aidan scene again) of the meandering first few installments week after week plays as extra-excruciating when not packaged together as a binge watch.

I still maintain that things pick up right around the episode 5 mark, with some affecting storylines, new guest stars, and a lot less Aidan. Some of the characters actually grapple with age-appropriate, grown-people problems, and this is what I’m hankering for a lot more of. I’m a little younger than these women but always looked to them to tell me what’s ahead, and so far they have not been delivering much on that.

This incredible speech from Fleabag is the energy I was hoping for:

Instead, I get an entire episode of Charlotte’s dog being falsely accused of bullying other dogs, and another of Carrie hiring a landscape architect. While hiring a landscape architect sounds glamorous, it is actually very boring to watch play out on screen.

I know some friends who have finally sworn off the show with this season, and I am envious. I am stuck with it professionally, and I can’t stop until they stop making it. (HBO or Max or whatever you are calling yourself now, this is a plea! #freejennifer) With that and a touch of related Stockholm Syndrome, I choose to focus on a few glowing embers of hope.

The guest stars have been fun—Tim Bagley as the school principal, Cheri Oteri as the faux-Millionaire Matchmaker, Kristen Schaal as the college consultant. Granted, these are skilled and quirky character actors with small and specific parts to play, but it’s telling to me that scenes sing when fresh characters arrive, as if the writers are tired of the main characters. Relatedly, Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker)—a character added for the reboot—along with her family, and even the editor working with her on her documentary, all behave so reasonably that they appear to be on a different show; it feels like there’s a writer or two who are really plugged into that character and her experience.

@darwin_geller “And Just Like That” may be polarizing but they have been delivering on the guest stars! First @Rosie ODonnell (who will get a soecial guest Emmy nom) to the incredible @Cheri Oteri (who also deserves a nom for her work here). Just brilliant!!! #sarahjessicaparker #andjustlikethat #sexandthecity #rosieodonnell #cherioteri #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #fypシ

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And let us pause for a moment in appreciation for Evan Handler as Harry Goldenblatt. I’m always overjoyed to see him, even when the scripts hand him a supreme indignity like peeing his button-fly jeans while attempting to go clubbing. When I polled my fellow Ministers of Pop Culture about Harry, the sentiment was universally positive. My colleague Saul Austerlitz summed it up this way: “I like Harry because he seems to enjoy his life. And not be filled with weird teenage angst as a 50-something.” Perhaps the highlight of this season so far has been Harry’s pure glee at Herbert Wexley (Christopher Jackson) singing at Herbert’s party. Can we get a buddy comedy about these two? One with more singing, please? (Jackson is the original George Washington in Hamilton, for God’s sake.)

Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

have been advocating for a series called Harry & the Wexleys, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

There is, as I mentioned, some promise in the coming episodes as the show struggles to free itself from the straitjacket that is the Aidan-Carrie debacle. (Yes, this is how I imagine that jacket.) There is a new love interest for Carrie, whose greatest attribute is that he is not Aidan, and there are some other affecting moments. But this is by no means excellence, or anywhere near the magic of the original, and one must wonder how much time a show with these resources gets to find itself.

There’s a bit in the second episode of this season where Miranda discovers hate-watching. I can nitpick the technicalities of that—I firmly believe Miranda is both a sophisticated television consumer (remember her TiVo-ing Jules and Mimi?) and a longtime New Yorker subscriber, which means she would have learned the term from Emily Nussbaum in 2012. Or I can acknowledge it as a joke about the show’s own viewers. At one point, an annoyingly derisive Carrie mocks Miranda for continuing to hate-watch the dumb fictional dating show Bi Bingo by pointing out that she has “free will.”

Like Carrie, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was this a knowing jab at And Just Like That’s own audience? And if so, who’s holding whom hostage?