Schadenfreude and the city

For a 'Sex and the City' fan, 'And Just Like That' is a buffet of secondhand humiliation

Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in “And Just Like That.” (Photo: Max)

Every Thursday, I sit down to see Sarah Jessica Parker wear an insane hat and deliver dialogue written by Martians.

Nobody watches “And Just Like That,” the “Sex and the City” sequel from (HBO) Max, because it’s good. Not since the cigarette has society manufactured a public health emergency so compulsively enjoyable. Elle calls it a “hate watching” sensation. Slash/Film describes the “strange, gnawing need” to tune in. According to Them, the show’s “greatest sin is that it wastes fecund narrative opportunities to spend time on inane plots.” Charlotte’s dog getting canceled, Miranda eating the last yogurt out of Carrie’s fridge, things of that nature.

We won’t rubberneck at every confounding plot choice. We could! Paragraphs roil inside me. Comedy terrorist Che Diaz—rest in piss—infected my mind like the “28 Days Later” rage virus. The show’s teenage characters are actual demons. Carrie’s long-distance romance with Aidan this season only makes sense if they’re both guzzling lead paint between scenes.

It’s not a guilty pleasure. I think it’s more like a contemptuous pleasure. So, in true Carrie Bradshaw navel-gazing fashion, I wondered: What does my dedication to this show say about me?

Here’s the thing: I love the “Sex and the City” characters. These ladies are our old friends. They’re the quadrants of our best pop culture personality test. (Carrie sun, Charlotte moon, Miranda rising here.) I’d even say I’m a Carrie defender, and it’s tough to square up for sociopathy.

The nostalgia hook is strong, and I’m an easy sucker. Exhibit A: I’ve seen the first “Sex and the City” movie probably five times. Do not cite the old magicks to me, etc. For years, this film was our most inexplicable use of Jennifer Hudson until we gave her a daytime talk show.

I’ve also seen every episode of “The Carrie Diaries,” the Y.A. prequel to “Sex and the City” that aired for two seasons on The CW. Diabolically cursed premise! It’s one of my favorite TV shows.

But when it comes to “And Just Like That” … something in the milk ain’t clean. Three season in, it’s still a weekly exercise in secondhand humiliation. That’s not a problem in and of itself. Misadventure has always been sewn into the DNA of “Sex and the City.” Remember when a major magazine put Carrie on its cover looking like Dee Snider? Miranda ate cake out of the garbage. Samantha was flayed alive by a chemical peel.

Cynthia Nixon plays Miranda Hobbes in “And Just Like That.” (Photo: Max)

That comedy magic worked on relatability, but also aspiration. You’d watch all this and think: Wouldn’t these cosmopolitan (and Cosmopolitan) exploits be such a thrill, if only you were in Carrie’s Manolos? Heightened as “Sex and the City” was—and no one has ever mistaken it for “The Wire”—its stories encouraged you to live vicariously through messy, glamorous stars in a messy, glamorous New York. Give me your poor, your tired, your horny masses yearning to be free.

I guess when showrunner Michael Patrick King went into the “Jurassic Park” lab to wrench “Sex and the City” from the jaws of extinction, some DNA strands got a little, well, fucked.

You cannot see yourself in “And Just Like That.” Carrie’s no longer a struggling writer, but an out-of-touch heiress. Miranda left proletariat hero Steve in the most destructive way possible. Charlotte, always a princess, ended up getting it all; now what? Samantha, everyone’s favorite libertine, is a ghost relegated to iMessage cameos.

Now, the characters traipse through ugly luxury and live out soap operas in their minds. Carrie’s gigantic new brownstone, with its beaucoup natural light and hardwood floors, has a faulty alarm system that’s driving her mad. “Is this anything?” you can hear the writers wondering sweatily.

There are gestures toward Real Stuff—Big’s sudden death in the first season, Harry’s health problems in the most recent episode—but they pose little material threat. The writing isn’t honest enough to say anything meaningful about the emotional effects, either. And the less said about this show’s clumsy approach to topical social issues, especially race, the better.

If you can’t see yourself in these characters, it’s definitely unthinkable to covet their Cuomo-voter chic—so garish, blunt, clownish, and bleak. Maybe that’s why Kim Cattrall’s Samantha actually peaced out. These people are just too gauche for a bad bitch.

It’s folly from the windows to the walls. The show’s only viable appeal is staring us right in our manic Charlotte eyes: good ol’ schadenfreude.

“And Just Like That” is an embarrassing exercise for everyone involved. As we discussed, if there’s anything a true Miranda-head is trained to seek out, it’s delicious, tasty, secondhand embarrassment. In depicting the lives of its profoundly wealthy protagonists as empty and alien, the show slips on a banana peel every week and pratfalls into satire.

It’s the same feeling you get from seeing Katy Perry board a spaceship and hoping she never comes back. If I can’t laugh with my gals, then I’ll just have to laugh at their bourgeoisie kabuki.

Low-key, “And Just Like That” might be the perfect show for our post-apocalypse. What does that make me? I’m Wall-E, rolling my cute little treads over the wreckage and picking up scraps of dopamine the only way I know how.

One rad thing

I’m not recommending “Dog Day Afternoon,” per se. Can you imagine? Hey guys, I just found out about this cool book called “The Great Gatsby.” Really into this Beyoncé lady—maybe you will be, too. Run, don’t walk to my new favorite thing: ham.

Yet here I am, yelling “Attica!” in your face. Many great films of the 1970s live in my blind spot. I’m slowly catching up. (Why, just a year ago, I’d never seen a single “Godfather.”)

“Dog Day Afternoon” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and I couldn’t believe how spiky director Sidney Lumet’s bank robbery story still feels. Consider its Ford-era treatment of The Issues—police bastardry, class solidarity, trans identity, the discarding of veterans. A modern audience could easily feel discouraged at how familiar these discussions feel a half-century later.

I felt energized, though. Not “rob a bank” energized, but “we’ve been here before, and we’ll make it out” energized. (Streaming on Paramount+ and TCM)

Outbox

My July TV watchlist for Backstage includes the new Meg Stalter/Lena Dunham collab that I’m way too excited about, the final season of “The Sandman” that we’ll all feel compelled to apologize for watching, and “Project Runway,” which I can’t believe I snuck in there.

Read it here.

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Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib (a Turning Out favorite) posts the same photo each year on Instagram of a screen with these words: “Tell a friend that you’re in love with them tonight.” He paired this year’s post with a mini essay on what that command looks like right now.

“I was thinking recently of these interactions, and how to be loved well by your friends, to be deeply in love with your friends over many, many years, is to be blessed with a series of mirrors. Reflections that inform you of your constant becoming, and the versions of you that you left behind in order to reach this one, and all of the ones that might be ahead.”

It’s all quite lovely. Read it here.

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I’m begging you to read Variety’s interview with Chi Lewis-Parry, the actor who played the alpha zombie in “28 Years Later.” If you saw the movie, you’re wondering something. This will provide more answers than you could have ever wanted. Read it here.