And Just Like That has a major relatability issue
And Just Like That spoilers follow.
In the Sex and the City heyday, when And Just Like That was but a glimmer in Michael Patrick King's eye, Carrie's lifestyle of hailing cabs in teetering Manolos, scooping up rack upon rack of designer dresses and splashing out on endless cosmopolitans was never particularly authentic.
It remains a mystery how Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) could afford all of this and the rent for her fabulous brownstone flat on little more than a one-column-a-week stipend. But in this show of impossible New York standards, we did get glimpses of Carrie's finances being in a more realistically messy state.
But as Sex and the City transitioned to the glossy hysteria of the two films, the budgets reached bonkers levels and Carrie's wealth quietly rocketed from the second floor to the penthouse, buoyed by Mr Big's monied job in the steel skyscrapers of the financial district.
The lavish majesty of Carrie's (jilted) nuptials in the Sex and the City film arrived shortly after the 2008 financial crash, but brought us a world where money was suddenly no object.
So when And Just Like That came along last year, Carrie had already arrived in the upper echelons of Manhattan's wealth bracket, lending an unreality to the show that is far from the magic of the original series.
And Just Like That is now a world where the characters attend the Met Gala – although through the layman's entrance, not the star-studded steps – and shun visits to the quietly unremarkable brunch spot so many delicious conversations unfolded in.
The wealth gap between the show's main trio and the fans has reached a point where there is now very, very little we can relate to. Carrie and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) in particular have become so out of touch as to be almost unlikeable, if it weren't for the faint remnants of affection clinging on from the original show.
While previous Sex and the City storylines featured Charlotte's struggles with fertility or a sexless marriage, we're now treated to a shopping-list whinge of problems which aren't really problems.
During a fitting for Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) and Charlotte's Met looks, a yawn-inducing moan about their doting multi-millionaire husbands is mercifully interrupted by Anthony (Mario Cantone) exclaiming: "Hey! I'm really enjoying listening to your podcast: Rich People's Problems." A perfect read and also fitting alternative title for the show.
Yet the whinging continues to mount. Charlotte vents over her daughter Lily selling some of her luxury childhood wardrobe to a second-hand website, prompting the actual piece of dialogue: "They took advantage and they took my Chanel."
Charlotte floats the idea of suing said website, only to be talked down by Anthony (who seems to be the only character with his feet still touching concrete), and then later demands to speak to a manager, with no apparent awareness for that ham-fisted look beyond Carrie's blasé reference to "becoming a meme".
This minute level of self-awareness is lost by our leading lady in her own out-of-touch storyline over at podcast HQ, where our once effortlessly cool sexpert is disturbed at having to read advertising copy for a vaginal wellness product. Years down the line from outing and shaming her irresistibly suave politician beau Bill Kelley (John Slattery) for liking pee play, Carrie's prude-dom has only intensified.
Show marketer Chloe (Ali Stroker) rightly labels Carrie a "diva" amid portentous warnings of a slowdown in the podcasting boom, but snug under her sheltered umbrella of wealth, Carrie is simply "humiliated", "mortified" and "wants to die" over this darned ad read.
The result comes at the end of the second episode, when Carrie and her producer/casual hook-up Franklyn (Ivan Hernandez) arrive at their podcasting base to find everybody's carrying harbingers of corporate doom – the single cardboard box.
It turns out everyone's been laid off because Carrie refused to read about vaginas – a questionable series of events, but one that produces an even more baffling reaction from Carrie: a slight furrow of the brow on the lift back downstairs.
She ends things romantically with her now-jobless producer – we could have told you he wasn't sticking around in the leading-man spot with a name like Franklyn – and finally says in the voiceover: "And just like that… I freed up my entire week." And everyone else's without the Mr Big life-insurance cushion, Carrie – good for you!
If we cast our minds back to the original '90s product, the show embodied an aspirational New York lifestyle with an undercurrent of interesting and occasionally groundbreaking cultural commentary, which has morphed into lifeless materialism in And Just Like That.
An insight into Carrie's previously precarious bank balance came most prominently in the Sex and the City episode 'Ring a Ding Ding'. Fans often quibble over Carrie's outrageous demands for a ring-shaped loan from Charlotte to cover her apartment down payment, because all her own cash was accounted for on Manolo Blahnik's profit statement.
But this episode, and storylines like Miranda's unpopular move to Brooklyn after being priced out of Manhattan, took the show to a place real-life friends are often hesitant to go. "Money and friendships don't mix," Charlotte tells Carrie, and it was a similarly divisive topic behind the scenes for that 2002 episode.
"The biggest fight we ever got into in the writers' room was about the money," producer and writer Amy Harris told CNBC. "That was a very big debate." Harris said she's certain Carrie will have since paid Charlotte back, but added: "Money is a tricky, complicated thing. She spent it well on things she enjoyed, and luckily it all worked out well for her."
A little too well. It's an interesting evolution given that And Just Like That is so much more socially conscious, with characters desperate to "check their privilege", but still depicts the uber-wealthy and uber-unaware in a climate where shows like The White Lotus and Succession are reframing elites and promoting 'eat the rich' narratives where affluence is vilified.
Beyond a Schitt's Creek-style fall from the one percent, it's disheartening to consider where the show could possibly go with this major hurdle to the drama, besides creeping higher and higher up the ladder of unattainable wealth and the unrelatable day-to-day dramas it brings, none of which the show seems prepared to laugh at or satirise.
The chief issue is that And Just Like That doesn't seem to know why it exists, because the franchise's original purpose has become so distorted along the rollercoaster ride of six seasons, two films and a spin-off. Even its stars seem confused, as Cynthia Nixon described being "devastated" at the rapturous fan response to Big building Carrie a walk-in wardrobe in the first film.
Appearing on The Wendy Williams Show, she said: "To have this be a climax of the film, that your very wealthy husband built you a nice closet for your clothes, I thought, Wow, that's not really what you love about the show, is it? Cause that's not what we were making it for."
Yet the show has drifted closer and closer to the quest for luxury that moment represents, giving us a world populated by wealthy women who seem so bored they buy a new green-screen apartment on a whim and consider successfully boiling an egg to be a major milestone.
The person we most related to in these first two episodes – besides Anthony – was the response to Miranda's beachside squawk, "I lost my phone!" from a surfer, who sarcastically yells back: "Bummer!"
And Just Like That, the sequel to Sex and the City, airs on Max in the US and Sky Comedy and NOW in the UK.
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