And Just Like That: A Hypernormalisation Experience Disguised as Entertainment

Season 3, Episode 1: An Alternate Universe Spat Out by CERN, Chimpanzee Writers’ Room, and a Flash of Something Familiar

And Just Like That (AJLT) Season 3 premiered Thursday, and I’m begging the team at CERN to turn the Large Hadron Collider off before this gets any more out of hand. That’s one of my theories about this wild-ass show: that it’s the result of some CERN-based rip in the universe’s equilibrium that opened a portal to alternate dimensions – and I’d very much like to go back to the one where we left our girls at the end of the original series twenty years ago.

Theory two is that this is part of a larger series of hypernormalisation events (perpetrated by whom and for what purpose, I don’t know), which falls in the same category as MH370, the Titan submersible, and COVID to desensitize our brains into accepting an increasingly chaotic world. My grasp on this concept is loose, so the CERN thing seems more plausible.

Warning: this contains spoilers. Not that there’s really anything to spoil, The rules of time and space don’t exist here. How long has it been since Big died? How long has it been since Aiden dropped the 5-year bomb at the end of season 2? We’re forced to guess as we wade in the liminal space with the cat named Shoe and gigantic gingham hats that cost more than my rent, just floating among relics of multiple timelines and parallel universes colliding with one another.

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I want you to take yourself back to the early 2000s when Sex and the City (SATC) was at its peak. When the series finale closed with satisfying ends for each character, would you have ever in a million years believed it if someone from the future came to you and said: “In twenty years this show and its characters will be reimagined in a way that will be completely unfaithful to the original. It will feature scenes like Miranda getting finger-banged by a they/them named Che in Carrie’s kitchen, Aiden will JO in his truck on the phone with Carrie while she stares at her cat (not pussy, literal feline), and Samantha will cease to exist.”

You’d laugh. You’d never believe the culture and the fans would accept even a single episode of it.

Yet, here we are, two seasons in. About halfway through this episode I was ready to throw in the towel. All good things must come to an end, I bargained with myself. I’ll just watch the first ten minutes of season 6 episode 19 over and over and over just to feel something

I am going to complain A LOT about AJLT, but just know that this eventually will circle back to a brief glimmer of hope we get in the last two minutes (we’ll get there, stay with me!). Despite my gripes with the MANY crimes committed in this series I am still going to watch every single episode, even if just for a weak hit, a glimpse of what the show used to be.

And it’s that loyalty – that hunger for more of the original series – that Director/Producer Michael Patrick King (henceforth MPK) and the writers have been banking on. They are dining out on the fact that the audience loves these characters so much that – no matter what they are doing – it still feels like a warm hug to see these women on our TV screens.

But MPK and the writers are abusing the loyalty of the fanbase. Over the last two seasons, they’ve taken HUGE liberties with the universe of SATC and, unfortunately, have not even been faithful to the original show in a way that just seems lazy. (examples in bullet form all the way at the end)

They’re asking viewers – who have spent many years and countless re-watches of these episodes – to suspend disbelief, to ignore the canon of SATC and hang in this weird alternate-dimension version. This “reboot” is an uncanny valley version of SATC and the writers are trying to gaslight us into believing this is the same show we always watched.

MPK and some of the writers even have an official HBO Writers’ Room recap podcast (have I hate-listened to every episode? Yup!). You can tell MPK thinks he’s really cooking. He and the writers talk about the episodes like it’s the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But they’ve spent two full seasons creating a fever dream of a plot, so, no, this isn’t exceptional television – and it's insulting that they are insisting otherwise.

I imagine the writers’ room is actually devoid of humans, filled instead with chimpanzees. On the wall are notecards with various non-sequitur plot lines: “Charlotte’s dog is an asshole”, “Rosie O’Donnell… nun?”, “Charlotte gets dosed and goes to ER.” The chimps are given small fruits that they pelt at the wall at random. Whichever note cards get the most direct hits and juice splatter makes it onto the show. I imagine the un-chosen left for the reject pile could be as batshit as “Steve selected as next Golden Bachelor. Miranda loses mind” or “Lilly contracts incurable STI” or “Cole Escola as Carrie’s estranged sister, moves into her Gramercy home, Grey Gardens-esque sub plot ensues.”

AJLT is poorly-written fanfic. And that’s a tragedy when really excellent fanfic already exists. I’m talking specifically about Lara Marie Schoenhal’s podcast Saving Sex and the City 3.

Each episode Lara brings in a comedian (Drew Doege! Nori Reed! Michelle Collins! Carey O’Donnell!) to create their own version of the ill-fated SATC movie 3, which famously was completely written and ready for production before something* went awry. Guests come to the podcast with just a premise for the next chapter for the characters, and then they develop the plot from beginning to end via an improvisational dialogue. This has included versions where Samantha has to battle an AI-generated version of herself called “Hologram Sam”, the girls survive a plane crash, a version based on the plot of Les Miserables, Carrie gets canceled, Miranda is a slumlord, etc.

(*Allegedly, that something was that Kim Cattrall finally put her foot down as, in the movie script, Samantha was slated to reach new lows – something she didn’t feel like she or her character deserved. Sources have said that the real deal-breaker was that a subplot had Samantha hooking up with Miranda’s son Brady…. Can you even blame her?)

It’s worth a listen if you’re a SATC fan or if you just enjoy funny people. But all of this is just to say: the writers of AJLT should have taken a page out of Saving SATC 3’s playbook. Because even though the pod’s plots are bonkers, they are STILL more realistic and true to the original canon and characters than AJLT.

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The following, verbatim from my notes app on S3E1:

• [On the opening scene:] “Carrie dressed like Miss Havisham in her little nightie dress waiting for her man to come back. Stop pining for that man who doesn't want you in the apartment you bought for him!!!”

• The second Aiden appeared on-screen, drunk in his stupid truck: “I HATE HIM”

• “Harry Goldenblatt shows up occasionally, being perfect.”

This is already too long so I’m going to go character by character:

Miranda and Rosie

I was thrilled when I found out Rosie O’Donnell was going to be on this season, but BOY did they do her dirty. She’s just come off a cameo on Hacks where she was so good and herself that it made the kid in me who religiously watched her 90’s talk show feel ALIVE again. Instead, we got a virgin nun who had zero chemistry with Miranda. What a waste! She could have been a new acerbic wing-woman or the human manifestation of Lea DeLaria’s joke “What does a lesbian bring to a second date? A Uhaul.” Rosie would have NAILED that! This storyline was LAZY and a gross misuse of Rosie’s talent.

As for Miranda, you kind of feel bad that she has no game. She’s single and looking for the first time in decades — and for the first time as a lesbian. The writers missed an opportunity to also highlight that this is also her first time dating as a sober person. That alone comes with its own challenges she’d have to overcome, especially (as fans will remember) for the Miranda that got so drunk on a date once that the guy left behind the number for AA. Focusing on that would have been way more interesting than an unlikely one-night stand with Rosie.

We have to mention Che (sorry) because MPK did a bit of fibbing on the Writers’ Room podcast. He said Che was always going to go the way of every other “boyfriend of the week” from the original seasons and just kind of disappear into the ether. He says relationships are just a function to move plot forward, but that was not at all how they positioned Che for the first two seasons. Che had solo scenes about the sitcom pilot and as a vet tech — no other previous fling had their own scenes. Che also had a separate friendship with Carrie (which I took issue with too). I don’t need or want Che Diaz on my screen, I’m just pointing out that it’s pretty obvious that MPK is trying to rewrite history and act as though they weren’t positioning Che to be the token non-binary, long-term character for two whole seasons. Come on.

LTW

I don’t care that her husband is running for Comptroller. I don’t care that the doll smells like pork. We don’t know her well enough for any of this to be compelling.

Charlotte

The dog storyline is so fucking random I wondered if I’d mixed up my nightly magnesium supplement with PCP. I do not care AT ALL about Lilly’s ballerina crush.

Seema

If she was going to break up with Ravi in the first episode of this season, then WHY didn’t they just have her break up with him at the end of the last season when he said he was going on location for 5 months? It would have been more true to her character (one we barely even know so far, but I’m guessing) to be like you know what, I’m a bad bitch and I’m not waiting around. It would have been a better contrast to Carrie’s co-sign of Aiden’s vague 5-year deal. Anyway, now that she’s free of that man she can go back to doing what I most like watching her do: ripping cigs out the window of her chauffeured car.

Carrie

I think what felt most unsettling about this first episode is that it’s not clear to the viewer what Carrie and Aiden’s relationship parameters are, and we have no idea how long it’s been going on. We find out in bits and pieces that not only did Aiden ask for her to “wait” for him, but he also has at some point said that they have to go “no contact” (a phrase usually reserved for snakey ex’s you can’t stay away from) and are solely communicating through mostly-blank postcards.

An alarming revelation from the Writer’s Room podcast: the writers each have different interpretations of what the agreement is and where it’s going – whether Carrie thinks she’ll get “time off for good behavior”, that maybe Aiden would soften over time, that maybe she was looking for a loophole and wouldn’t stay faithful. All of these things could be true, but if the writers themselves don’t seem to know what either Aiden or Carrie’s motivations are here, then how the heck are the next nine episodes going to play out? Does anyone have a PLAN?! (cut to room of chimps who have run out of fruit to throw)

Because we don’t have Samantha or Stanford to call Carrie out on her delusional bullshit, Anthony has to step in as the voice of reason. (I’m sorry, but Samantha would have EATEN here).

Apparently all of her friends – except Anthony – just let Carrie brush off questions about her bizarre arrangement with Aiden. Maybe they’re tired of her shit. We all remember the fight Miranda and Carrie had in the clothing store when Carrie admitted to talking to Big again. And the fight they had when Carrie was going to move to Paris for Petrovsky. Damn, Miranda was a good friend. Where is THAT Miranda?! That’s part of what doesn’t feel authentic here. Even if Miranda is too busy with her own life, she still would have found time to call Carrie out.

But here’s where they have finally made their way back to something resembling the original soul of the show: Carrie convincing herself that something is working for her when it isn’t is deeply relatable for women.

That’s why we fell in love with this show. That’s what we want more of: when they tap into situations or feelings that feel this deeply female it feels like gold.

Carrie isn’t aspirational, but that’s why she’s always been compelling to watch. She made so many bad decisions. And sometimes we want permission to make bad decisions too.

I, unfortunately, relate acutely to Carrie withholding details to Anthony. She doesn’t want to be questioned and she doesn’t want to hear the truth because she’s trying so hard to ignore it herself. And there’s been a time in every woman’s life where you lie by omission to your friends because you know exactly what they will say and you don’t want to face it.

I have another theory that I don’t think is correct, but there sure is a lot of evidence to support it: this whole thing is Aiden paying Carrie back for all her original sins. This is all part of an extremely long con for revenge. Aiden never got over the cheating and the one that got away. So when he found out Big died, he couldn’t help but swoop in. He got her attached and hopeful – a woman in grief is the perfect target.

Carrie never loved Aiden the right way, she hated his Suffern house. But a soft place to land when you’re wounded is (again, so deeply relatable) impossible to say no to. He got her to believe that she could have a happy ending with him. Did she want kids and a house in Virginia? Hell no, but anything is better than being alone (ladies, am I right?). So she bought a big-ass house with Big’s money and it’s at this point – when she’d already fallen hook, line, and sinker – that Aiden drops a bomb that he has to spend the next 5 years dealing with Wyatt and asks her to wait for him (to punish her).

So she does. She hangs out in her huge, empty house in flowy nighties like a prisoner. She puts up with him asking for no contact, which I don’t get because there has never been another time in history that it’s been easier to communicate long-distance. Aiden created the rules of this arrangement and Aiden breaks them only when it’s convenient for him just to torment her.

He calls Carrie from his truck in a field, not because he wants to feel connected to her or cares about her needs, but because he wants to get off and feel something for a few selfish minutes. It’s reassuring and even hot to him (sick) that she’s trapped in her pretty, white doll house where she can’t hurt him. So he has phone sex AT her and is oblivious to her poorly faking it on the other side of the phone. When she tries to reciprocate days later, he blows her off.

So, annoyed and sleepless, she finally sits down to write – something else she’s been avoiding. Carrie stops writing when she’s hiding from herself. Notably she didn’t even bring her laptop to Paris in S6. During this whole Aiden arrangement she’s apparently taken a break from it too.

Again, so relatable. When you’re writing you can’t hide from the truth or yourself. There’s something about it that taps into a deep subconscious layer. In one of my very first morning pages when I started The Artist’s Way a few years ago, I wrote this about a relationship I was in. It was something that hadn’t occurred to me consciously until it spilled out:

I asked for real, long-term love and now I’m watching it happen like a bag in the wind. I'm getting wishy washy. I don’t want the universe to take it away. I just need more time to decide how I feel about it.

Ten days later I ended that relationship. That’s the promise of writing and The Artists’s Way: it will shake out of your life what doesn’t belong because it requires pure self awareness and honesty.

But when Carrie does sit down to write in the last minute of this episode, she writes in the third person for the first time ever. She’s detached herself so much from the reality of the Aiden situation and tethered her so much to the fantasy of it, she can’t even bring herself to actualize it in the first person. “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into,” she typed in the first moment approaching honesty of the whole episode.

It was really only that final moment that felt like the original show. That small hint of the show we used to love hooked me again so I’ll have to keep enduring this fever dream of a series and (sorry) ranting about it.

Main arguments for CERN alternate universe theory:

• The change to Miranda from SATC to AJLT might be the most jarring. She fiercely valued her independence and career. She was horrified when Charlotte gave up her gallery career when she married Trey. Are we supposed to believe the same woman gave up a promising internship to chase her very-new fling to California? She was a high-powered professional and they want us to believe that she would be blasting micro aggressions at her professor and unable to operate an iPhone? Please.

• Carrie being a prude on the podcast in season 1. You’re telling me the woman who (for decades) wrote a sex and relationship column and multiple books is suddenly too shy to talk about sex on a podcast? Not buyin it.

• I preface this by saying I love Bobby Lee, but Carrie would never maintain a friendship with his character.

• I don’t know what they could have done better on the Samantha front, but I simply refuse to believe that she wouldn’t have come to Big's funeral. Samantha was a good friend in that she’d bury a body for you without asking any questions. She would have shown up, not just sent flowers. I did appreciate them paying her an ungodly amount of money for a brief phone call at the end of Season 2, but honestly it would have made more sense if they killed her off like Big before Season 1. I’m sorry, you just can’t make me believe that she would have suddenly become an avoidant friend that never visits.

• Speaking of dead friends, Stanford was also handled really poorly. I don’t know that Willie Garson’s ghost would be happy with this beloved character’s final narrative being that he ran off to Japan with a client.

• Big erasure. When Aiden re-enters the chat in AJLT, Miranda and Carrie are on a walk and Carrie wonders if Big was a mistake. What the fuck? Grief does things to people, sure, but I don’t believe she would be crazy enough to say something like that out loud. That question eradicates soooo much history and evidence that it was always Big and Aiden was always just a placeholder (one she cheated on and broke up with twice at that).