AND JUST LIKE THAT: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair—I Mean Met Ball
Also, she put a bird on her head again. Twice!
Hey, you know what I just realized is kinda weird? The fact that in all of Season 1 of And Just Like That we only ever saw Carrie trying to reconnect with Samantha. I mean, obviously the show was always going to make the Samantha sitch ALL ABOUT CARRIE, as per uszh. But like, Miranda and Charlotte were friends with Sam too! Are they just, like, forbidden from contacting her until Carrie—fuuuuucking Carrie—says it’s ok to??? Why didn’t they take some initiative to re-establish their own friendships with this woman that they have also known for 700 years??? I mean, wouldn’t you have loved to see Samantha bitching about Carrie to Miranda via text? I, personally, would have eaten that up! I would have screen-shotted those texts and printed them out and used them as wrapping paper for Christmas gifts for my friends!
Anyway, just something I was thinking about. Ok, time for Season 2!
EVERYONE IS HAVING SEX! Tons of SEX! Every single person on the show, all at the same time, however unfortunately not all in the same place together. (Oh my god, can you imagine! THAT is how this whole 25-year-long ordeal should ultimately end: Carrie hosts a big, all-inclusive orgy with everyone she’s ever known and then the credits roll and we can finally put Sex and the City behind us once and for all forever until someone else decides to reboot it again in 2060 with AIs or whatever.) Basically, the show is like, “Hey remember how Sex and the City had sex in it all the time? This is what you wanted RIGHT?”
Except, is that what anyone wanted? Did, at any point, anyone watching Season 1 think, “You know what would make this clueless fancy dumpster fire better? Lots of softcore sex!” Like, right off the bat, I suspect the And Just Like That writers…learned a lot of wrong lessons from the response to the first season.
But, so, actually one person is not having sex, and that is poor Karen Pittman, whose husband is apparently a musician? On tour? Because she can’t/doesn’t want to have a baby? That was her whole thing, right? And I guess this is supposed to be a bummer, but actually KP having a glass of wine alone at home and watching TV kinda seems like #goals to me. But, you know, what do I know!
(Oh, wait! You know who also isn’t having sex? Anthony! He’s not even in this opening sex montage! NO GAY SEX FOR ANTHONY! And during Pride Month, no less!)
The person Carrie is “having sex with” is Franklin, that handsome podcast producer she randomly smooched at the end of Season 1. I mean, they’re allegedly having sex, but all we see is him in her bed, and then the two of them watching cooking shows on his laptop. Which inspires Carrie to poach some eggs the next morning. And I’m like…there has got to be a middle ground between try-hard awkward sex montage and poaching eggs! What is it??? I don’t know! But then, I don’t get paid to write this show, so…
Anyway, Carrie is poaching her eggs when Seema calls to exposit about going to the Met Ball. Everyone’s all going to the Met Ball! Wheeeee! (I hate the Met Ball. It always reminds me that we’re officially in The Hunger Games.) Then, just as Franklin is leaving, Charlotte shows up UNANNOUNCED, which is TERRORISM, and Carrie has to explain to her about how she’s sexing her podcast producer, but they’re just keeping it casual.
Meanwhile, some stuff happens in Nicole Ari Parker’s closet, but I have no idea what any of that was because the actor playing her oldest son (who I’m going to assume is, like, in his 20s) walks in at one point and he’s so stupid gorgeous that I blacked out and couldn’t pay attention to anything else. Like, can we have a storyline where he and Brady Hobbes make out and are boyfriends and that’s this whole show, please? (I think 29-YEAR-OLD Niall Cunningham is adorable and will not entertain arguments to the contrary.)
Also meanwhile, Miranda is in L.A. doing isolation tanks and being all happy-go-horny California chillaxitives New Her while Che Diaz gets terrorized by Abby McEnany who is the showrunner of their TV sitcom pilot. (Ugh, I miss Work In Progress! Give Abby McEnany her own show back please.) But then halfway through poaching her bones in the iso tank, Miranda realizes she hates New Her and starts anxiety spiraling about Che Diaz not wanting to fuck her anymore. Actually tho, Che Diaz does want to fuck Miranda still, it’s just that they got body-shamed by a mean gay at their TV show costume fitting and they’re all self-conscious now. But Miranda cures that and it’s back to doing sex with nonsensically elaborate bondage strap-on harnesses for the two of them!
Back in New York, Charlotte has a big huge rich lady crisis! Her husband Harry for some reason thinks he’s her date to the Met Ball and is all excited to see Rihanna for 30 seconds when she shows up 2 days late. But actually Charlotte is taking her pet gay Anthony. Oh, no! What is Charlotte to do??? Here is what Charlotte is to do: viciously and ruthlessly tell Anthony he can’t come to the Met Ball! Terrorism again!
It’s fine though, because now Seema also can’t come to the Met Ball as Carrie’s date because her French Dirt Bag boyfriend wants her to have French lunch (just smoking for 12-hours) with his adult son and also adult ex-wife that same day. So, Carrie says Anthony can be her accessory date, and he’s like, “Ugh, I have to go with this dizzy bitch?!”
While all this is going on, Carrie finds her own crisis to manufacture, which is: the nice man (Franklin) she is doing alleged straight sex with asks her to come to his friend’s party, but she doesn’t want to go because fuck buddies who are also work colleagues don’t go to parties together! So, she spirals about that for several days and talks to everyone she knows about it, until finally Jackie, who used to be on her old podcast, is like, “Just tell him you don’t want to go.” Which is also what several other characters already told her. But finally she listens to Jackie because he is a man and is like “Franklin, I’m not going to your dumb party,” and it’s all fine.
She really needn’t have created that whole drama for herself though, because when Met Day rolls around there’s a real crisis: all the seamstresses in the city have passed away of influenza in their tiny garret hovels, so the gown Jackie’s girlfriend Smoke (why not!) was making for Carrie is not ready!
So, while Smoke and Jackie are all running around Carrie’s apartment trying to duct tape her into this weird blue and white striped tube, Seema is at lunch finding out—to literally no one’s surprise—that her French Dirt Bag boyfriend is a dirt bag who still lives with his ex-wife. She storms out of lunch and is like, “Carrie, I’m coming to the Met Ball again!” Even though she knows Carrie invited Anthony in her place! Is that legal??? So, Carrie fully disinvites Anthony again! Truly, these women are MONSTERS!!!
But this all works out too, because Harry takes one look at himself dressed as The Babadook and Charlotte dressed up as insane equestrian dominatrix ringmaster or whatever and is like, “NOPE!” So, Charlotte makes Anthony be her date again, and it’s like, is there literally not a guest list at the Met Ball? I mean I know rich people can do whatever they want all the time with no consequences ever, but I kinda thought Anna Wintour excreted a little crowd control at this one event.
Back at Carrie’s, Smoke experiences some kind of mental break trying to finish the dress and is like, “You can’t wear this!” and throws it out the window.
Carrie: “I can’t just go to my closet and find a perfect dress to wear!”
Really? What about this one:
Or this one?
OR THIS???
Carrie: “Oh, right.”
So, she puts on her Vivienne Westwood (R.I.P. queen) wedding dress from the first movie, staples that bird to her head again and flounces off to the Met Ball—WHICH WE DO NOT EVEN GET TO SEE.
And then, oh god, HBO Max dropped 2 episodes, so I’m just gonna try to speed force right though this next one:
Carrie, an adult woman and alleged sex writer, is incapable of doing an ad for vaginal wellness on her podcast and throws a whole pearl-clutching tantrum about it. Her refusal to do this ONE AD leads to the entire production studio or whatever going out of business and tons of people losing their jobs. But Carrie is like, “Lalala, this is fine tho because I’m so rich and don’t need to job.” Confronted with her total lack of remorse at ruining dozens of lives, Franklin breaks up with her. Fucking Carrie!
Seema: Has fight with toxic gay who blow dries her hair; briefly gets back with French Dirt Bag, but then he tries to make her invest $200,000 in a discothèque so she sets him on fire with her cigarette.
Miranda, still a wino I guess, goes to AA in L.A. where she gets kidnapped into doing beach clean-up which = picking up seaweed (isn’t that supposed to be there???). Her phone accidentally walks into the sea to be rid of her, so she has borrow a conch shell from Prince Neptune the Surf Board God to call Che Diaz, who sends THEIR CURRENT HUSBAND Jackson Maine WHO THEY ARE STILL MARRIED TO to pick her up. Which makes Miranda miss dinner with Che Diaz and Tony Danza.
What even is Miranda’s life right now?
Back in New York, Nicole Ari Parker’s mother-in-law is visiting and she is…very into Respectability Politics, I guess? Like, she is very…particular about how Nicole Ari Parker does her daughter’s hair and says things like “Didn’t the Emancipation Proclamation free us from headwraps?” So, when Herbert, NAP’s husband, gets 100% totally justifiably mad at a cab driver who won’t pick him up due to racism, NAP’s mother-in-law gets furious at him for not being dignified or something. And NAP…agrees with the mother-in-law? And all of this—systemic racism, Respectability Politics, how dangerous it is for Black men to express frustration, anger, anything in public—gets like 10 min., tops, of screentime. Great job phoning it in, show.
Also, this tiny white child:
What…Why…What is that? Who was that for???
Karen Pittman: Breaks up with husband due to him wanting to have sex with his back-up singer.
Elsewhere, Charlotte’s daughter Lily has dyed her hair purple like Psylocke and is an angsty musician now. She needs a new keyboard so she can write songs about PRIVILEGE (I actually woke up with her dumb song in my head this morning; WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?) So she sells all her clothes on the black market, causing Charlotte to FLIP THE FUCK OUT because all of those dresses cost more than most people’s annual salaries. She and Carrie try to infiltrate a fancy consignment shop where the dresses are being held captive. It’s like Tiger King but the tigers are dresses and Charlotte is Carole Baskin. Unfortunately, she is defeated by a lowly shop girl. Then Charlotte realizes that she has 100 bazillion dollars and can buy more dresses, different daughters, etc., and lets it go.
Meanwhile, Carrie puts a bird on her head again.