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One Weird Trick to Tolerating And Just Like That …

As surely as you can count on Sarah Jessica Parker’s saying “rabbit rabbit” on the first of each month, you can count on a new wave of discourse hitting after every episode of And Just Like That …. Every week, fans and haters alike rush to the digital watercooler to discuss the show’s big swings, the over-the-top antics, and Che Diaz. They point out plot holes or continuity errors, complain that you can’t actually call in to a podcast, and declare what Miranda would or would never do. This is no way to live. To quote the late Lexi Featherston, “Whatever happened to FUN?”

Such intense scrutiny is to be expected upon reentering this beloved world of which fans are so protective; it’s natural to want to hold the show to the high standard of the original, and many of the above critiques result from that comparison. But to view and judge And Just Like That … as a direct continuation of the original Sex and the City isn’t just unfair, it’s incorrect. It’s important to remember that in the arc of this franchise, And Just Like That … is actually the direct follow-up to 2010’s Sex and the City 2 — and by viewing it through that lens, we can see that everything outrageous about the show suddenly makes much more sense.

The two Sex and the City movies are the crucial link that bridges SATC and AJLT, not just storywise, but tonally. While the world of SATC has long been a glitzy fantasy version of New York, the franchise leaned into that fantasy more and more over time. The outfits got more expensive and eccentric, the premises wilder, and the comedy more farcical. If you compare the show’s early, more grounded seasons to where it is now, the discrepancy may seem jarring: Where the most disbelief-suspending element was once Carrie’s rent-controlled apartment, now we’re watching her get dressed for the Met Gala there. While this may seem like a stark departure, the franchise’s path has actually been a case of boiling-frog syndrome, a slow and steady march toward the outlandish. But the biggest, most important leap on that march has been the two films.

SATC’s move to the silver screen called for its world to get bigger and flashier, with blockbuster budgets ($65 million and $95 million, respectively) that afforded the ability to up the ante aesthetically. A single ensemble from the second movie cost over $230,000, according to the Instagram account “Every Outfit on SATC” — a far cry from the $5 tutu Pat Field fished out of a showroom bin for the opening credits back in season one. With fashion a key calling card for the franchise, AJLT had no choice but to meet the bar it raised for itself and continue that pattern. (Ironically, thanks to Carrie’s newfound wealth, her ludicrously expensive fashions are now feasible for the first time.)

But in addition to amplified aesthetics, the movies called for bigger story swings, both dramatic and comedic. The 2008 film features Carrie attacking Big on the street with her bouquet while wearing the famous Vivienne Westwood wedding dress and infamous bird veil, Charlotte shitting her pants in Mexico, Miranda letting her bush hang out, and perhaps most absurdly of all, Carrie turning off Meet Me in St. Louis during “The Trolley Song.” Chilling. But the fever dream known as Sex and the City 2 is what really sent the franchise off the rails. The foundation of Sex and the City was the will-they-or-won’t-they between Carrie and Big, a question the first movie finally answered. So when it came time for the sequel, that grounding force was gone, leaving us gloriously untethered. We begin, as all movies should, with Liza Minnelli performing “Single Ladies” at a gay wedding she also officiated. Samantha (who at one point wears the same dress as Miley Cyrus) manages to score the four women a free trip to Abu Dhabi, resulting in a painfully problematic jaunt that gives us the immortal phrase “Lawrence of my labia.”

And yet “comedy concert” is where we draw the line? After 25 years in the game, we should be well prepared for anything AJLT could possibly throw at us, from Miranda’s strap-on fumblings to Carrie receiving a dick pic in front of Gloria Steinem. Yet here we are litigating where Carrie could possibly store her massive gowns and duvetlike coats. Enough! If the films taught us anything it’s to suspend our disbelief. They took the already fantastical world of SATC and heightened it even further.

That heightening — and the effect it would later have on AJLT — can be attributed in part to this franchise’s unusual trajectory from television to film and back again. That change in medium didn’t just change the size of the screen; it upended the storytelling structure. The original SATC had a specific formula for each episode: A question would be posed in Carrie’s column, then the inpidual stories of her three archetypal friends would relate to or answer that prompt. There was even a rubric for the types of stories, as writer Michael Patrick King explained on James Andrew Miller’s Origins podcast. “There’s a sex story, there’s a theme story, there’s a love story, and then there’s a funny parody story,” he said of crafting each episode. “You pick a theme, you break it into four strands, you give one story to each of the ladies.”

When it came time for the first movie, that episodic formula was forgone to better fit the characters into the structure of a more typical romantic comedy. Rather than one subject guiding their plots, the films were more character driven, following each woman’s independent story. In the first (better) film, for example, we follow Carrie being left at the altar and dyeing her hair brown, Miranda’s split and reconciliation with Steve, Charlotte’s pregnancy, and Samantha in a really big hat watching her neighbors have sex.

You may notice an outlier in those examples, which brings us to the most notable casualty of the franchise’s trajectory: Samantha Jones. While the original episodic structure meant the comedy-storyline baton could be passed between the characters, the switch to film placed that baton firmly in Samantha’s experienced hand. While the other women’s stories deepened on film, Samantha bore the burden of keeping up the sexual farce. Despite attempts to give Samantha a sprinkling of depth here and there, her growth as a character was stunted by the switch to movies, where she was relegated to the role of a horny, aging clown most concerned with gaining a “gut” or having hot flashes throughout the Middle East — a dynamic that reportedly contributed to Kim Cattrall’s exit from the franchise.

That exit foiled the planned third film and instead brought us And Just Like That …, which picks up where the films left off and, as a result, leans closer to that format than the original show’s. Since the movies changed the foundation of how these stories are told, trying to revert to the original structure would have been like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. Elements of the show’s first season (like Big’s death) were lifted from the scrapped script for Sex and the City 3, and like the films, AJLT doesn’t have guiding questions, instead focusing on each character’s storyline. And without Carrie’s column, there’s no omniscient narration (save her brief taglines at the end), meaning the other characters and their stories don’t have to apply to Carrie’s life in order to exist.

Ironically, this third iteration of the franchise, which blends the episodic structure of the original series and the character-driven storytelling of the films, could have been the perfect platform for Samantha to shine. She would be free of the burden of having to be the constant comic relief, and her story could develop untethered from Carrie’s column. But alas, apart from her brief upcoming cameo, we remain Sam-less.

Nonetheless, the franchise marches on, as it always has, steadily getting bigger and more outrageous. Much like our Constitution, Sex and the City is a living document that’s constantly changing and evolving and doing things it has never done before. A departure from what we’ve already seen isn’t some kind of betrayal to the original series — to quote Carrie Bradshaw, “Perhaps if we never veered off course, we wouldn’t fall in love, or have babies, or be who we are. After all, seasons change. So do cities.” The franchise has been steadily veering more and more “off course” since the beginning, finding new ways to push its city further toward the fantastical, logic be damned. Because that trajectory has been so gradual, it’s easy to forget that has always been the path we’re on. It’s what led us to And Just Like That …, in which each outlandish oddity shouldn’t be seen as some wild deviation but as the essence of this franchise.