Somewhere Kim Cattrall is laughing.
“And Just Like That..” is dead. This will be the “Sex and the City” reboot’s last season.
In a letter posted to social media, creator Michael Patrick King wrote of its demise. “Sarah Jessica Parker and I held off announcing the news until now because we didn’t want the word ‘final’ to overshadow the fun of watching the season.”
However, there was no fun in watching “And Just Like That…” Only frustration they made it in the first place.
In episode seven of the just-aired third season, Anthony Marentino, played by Mario Cantone grumbles, “Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse.” He was talking about a karaoke performance, but it felt like a metaphor for the whole thing.
Every week the bar fell lower and lower, and it became obvious HBO killed the golden goose.
They turned an enduring cultural phenomenon — what started in the late 90s as a sharp and witty aspirational series about four stylish friends unapologetically sowing their oats in an ever-changing New York City — into a woke joke.
The entire endeavor felt like reparations for progressive whinge Cynthia Nixon, who has never stopped complaining about the lack of diversity in the original series.
“And Just like That…” debuted in 2021, in the midst of the great awokening. They killed rich guy Mr. Big, added a few racial minorities, two insufferable nonbinary characters (Che and Charlotte’s daughter Rock) and mirroring reality, turned Nixon’s Miranda Hobbes into a lesbian.
It went from appointment television to checklist TV. Critics hated it.
This season was less invested in the identity aspect, which made their paint by numbers approach all the more glaring. There was no substance underneath the hood.
In season 3, Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw takes a stab at historical fiction. She meets her biographer neighbor who is meant to be a Ron Chernow-like figure.
They swap manuscripts, and he marvels over her prose like she’s Jane Austen. It’s silly. An overbearing Charlotte York deals with her husband’s cancer diagnosis, real estate maven Seema Patel has to give up her chauffeured car after getting shafted by Ryan Serhant, while filmmaker Lisa Rodd Wexley flirts with a coworker.
Miranda sleeps with a closeted nun played by Rosie O’Donnell and is once again gratuitously naked — an unsightly throughline.
In other words, it should have come with a trigger warning.
Then there was the fashion. In the original series stylist Patricia Field expertly molded four archetypes, setting real life trends and turning luxury labels like Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo into household names while Carrie’s Fendi Baguette became an “It” bag.
Carrie was eclectic and cool, the others chic and polished.
This latest version, the women aren’t wearing clothing as much as they are ridiculous costumes. In one scene, Carrie struts around Central Park in a giant Holly Hobbie hat and matching prairie dress. Ditto for Lisa and Charlotte, who always look like Bergdorf mannequins — even at school drop off.
It’s like the athleisure revolution never happened.
No one in New York dresses like this.
The original sold a Cosmo-soaked version of New York City where friendships were unbreakable, sex was plenty and the air was optimistic.
But in their 50s, they all seem to be struggling more than ever. And yes, pathetic.
A younger colleague told me this chapter made her sad and was more of a cautionary tale for 20 somethings.
It took the air out of the fantasy — and ruined the sex.
