How Did ‘And Just Like That’ Become So Divisive?

How Did ‘And Just Like That’ Become So Divisive?

Trawling through TikTok last week, I came across a scathing review of a recent episode of And Just Like That.

A user named Sabrina Bendory had picked up over half a million views on a video in which she was dissecting bizarre plot choices for characters old and new in HBO’s revival series of Sex and the City. “Miranda Benjamin Button-ed herself back into a 5-year-old,” she said of Cynthia Nixon‘s child-like performance in season three, episode seven. “Balloons!” Miranda exclaims while setting up for Charlotte’s birthday party. “And they’re pink!”

Bendory asked: “Who is this person?”

I’ve been a lodger in this corner of TikTok for a while. Watching audiences try to make sense of this sequel has become a pastime of mine, in fact, and it’s never a shock that people want to hash out their frustrations with like-minded fans. What did make me laugh, however, was a comment left on Bendory’s post from a fellow AJLT watcher: “I’m hoping at the end we will find out it’s a huge AI-written experiment,” they said. “And everyone will be like, ‘SEE? AI is TERRIBLE. You are welcome.’”

This user is just one among thousands of self-dubbed AJLT “hate-watchers.” Simply, we are in a toxic relationship with this show. So, LTW’s (Nicole Ari Parker) father seemingly died twice (see here for HBO‘s clarification on that) and an entire episode arc for Charlotte revolved around her dog, Richard Burton, being canceled. But assome of the most iconic women in television history descend into what some savage viewers describe as caricature, it feels like a disservice not to, at first, celebrate exactly what keeps bringing all of us back.

To say Sex and the City was ahead of its time is an understatement. These women were on the front lines of sex, love and relationships at the turn of the millennium. Sarah Jessica Parker dazzled as the shoe-obsessed sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw. Cynthia Nixon was the cynical and straight-talking lawyer Miranda Hobbes. Kristin Davis started out as glamorous art curator Charlotte York before she turned into the Park Avenue princess we came to love, and of course, Kim Cattrall was deliciously naughty as sex-positive publicist Samantha Jones.

Together, they ushered New York into an era that has us still romanticizing the city today, and left no stone unturned: anal sex, STIs, marriage, divorce, babies, abortion, cheating, swinging … you name it — it was a show that dared to go just that bit further than any others had before. Based on Candace Bushnell’s 1996 book, creator Darren Star and writer Michael Patrick King had uncovered TV gold: These three 30-somethings (and one 40-something) were so utterly fleshed out, so 3D, that watching it almost felt like an immersive experience; you could practically smell the cigarette smoke, or taste their cosmos.

The show’s reception reflected that creative treasure trove. It won seven Emmys and eight Golden Globes, catapulted Parker, Nixon, Stewart and Cattrall to television stardom and, per Nielsen, had over 10 million U.S. viewers by its season six finale in 2004, making Sex and the City HBO’s second-most-watched show at the time (tucked behind mob hit The Sopranos). Netflix then did an enormous act of public service by adding it to their U.S. platform last year for a whole new, sex-curious Gen Z audience to gobble up.

This isn’t to say Sex and the City is a flawless show. Some storylines have aged like milk: Carrie’s bi-phobic reaction to Sean (Friends star Eddie Cahill) was uncomfortable and very weird, considering she’s a sex columnist; Samantha’s relationship with record producer Chivon Williams (Asio Highsmith) in a season three episode was also an extremely tough watch (Samantha tried to squawk about “reverse racism” — yikes). These are just a couple of moments that have, understandably, put off some newer audiences.

But that version of Manhattan was all-encompassing. The world built around these women was so convincing: the parties they attended, the exes they bumped into, the stories they told. I believed them. When the Sex and the City movies came out, I forgave the films for their missteps (of which there were plenty). The characters, their lines, their personalities and quirks were still the same ones we’d grown up with.

And this is why people are so outraged by what’s transpired in And Just Like That. These characters once felt like friends, a tonic to a real world even scarier (if you can believe it) than the one centered on dating men. To witness in real time the writers stray so far from the stories that set us up for adult life can feel like a kind of betrayal.

We lost Samantha from the get-go — Cattrall’s rift with Parker seemingly irreparable — but there was hope for the other three, wasn’t there?

Yet over the course of three seasons, fans have been forced to unlearn everything we thought we knew and loved about Sex and the City: Miranda is now goofy, obnoxious and uncharacteristically frightened of confrontation (this is the same woman who challenged Carrie several times about her subservience to Big in the original series). The charming cynicism that captured our hearts has been replaced by what I can only assume is Nixon’s own pep spilling into Miranda as the two women, so intimately connected for the best part of 30 years, become one.

Charlotte is reduced to a flustered housewife, though there have been some attempts at reintroducing her love of art and life away from Upper East Side motherhood. But the nuance to Davis’ character has vanished; she fusses over children Lily and Rock, she walks the dog, she cooks. One of the more tender moments in the entire show came when husband Harry (Evan Handler) finally admitted it was wrong that Charlotte wasn’t able to confide in her friends about his prostate cancer diagnosis. Finally, Davis is given a chance to show off her acting talent with some meatier material — something she used to have in abundance.

And then there’s Carrie, who is a heightened version of her lesser traits from SATC: prudish, private and lacking in humility. Living in a decadent Gramercy Park brownstone feels a far cry from the Carrie that used to hole up in her familiar apartment, getting splashed by passing buses and clambering around for a cigarette she dropped down a drain. She isn’t this woman anymore, of course — the writers made clear that this was an exploration of 50-something New Yorkers who have things a little more figured out — but everyone’s edges have been, well, smoothed.

One of the buzzier scenes so far this season was Carrie and Miranda’s argument in the kitchen after Charlotte’s party. I don’t mind them sparring — it’s something they often did in the early ’00s (remember, “Oh, what are you gonna do, Miranda? You gonna cut me out of your life like you did to Steve?“). But the odd tone of their recent fight when Miranda comments on Carrie’s flirtation with her writer neighbor Duncan (Jonathan Cake) is uncomfortable. Miranda doesn’t dig deeper to try and understand why Carrie is so clearly deflecting. She panics and swiftly backs down. TikTok users were quick to catch on to this: “Old Miranda would have stood her ground,” one person said, “and asked why she was wasting five years waiting on a man when there’s a good one downstairs.”

Another wrote, “If it were truly reminiscent, Miranda … would have told Carrie exactly what she thought about Aidan.” A comment just below these two read: “This show is awful. I’ma watch it tho.” Hundreds of others follow, many of them calling Carrie rude, a terrible host and “ruined” by the writers. Miranda doesn’t get a nice reception, either: TikTokers say she’s victim of flat out “character assassination” and trapped in a cycle of weekly humiliation rituals.

A source tells THR that And Just Like That continues to perform as expected, so the overwhelming majority of fans partaking in online discourse are still watching this show. “It is the worst show ever created, it’s awful beyond words,” a TikTok commenter called Mary Ann writes on a recent dissection of the latest episode. “Please don’t let it get cancelled. I’ll be devastated.”

On the question, “Why the hate-watching?”, I found a Reddit user who captured it quite perfectly: “I can’t look away. I think a part of me still is holding out false hope for a return to the SATC I knew and loved.”

It’s a testament to the bond forged by Sex and the City that we’re willing to persevere through And Just Like That decades on from the expertly crafted original forms of these characters. The world is still a familiar one: Patricia Field’s styling ghost haunts every outrageous outfit choice and Carrie’s heels still clack satisfyingly on the sidewalk. There’s solace to be found in these women, even if we tip further into uncanny territory with each passing episode.

New additions to the cast are, I think, worthwhile: Nicole Ari Parker is fantastic as Lisa Todd Wexley and the same goes for Sarita Choudhury as Seema. Though, their arcs feel less explored, their decisions sometimes random, and a cohort of fans refuse to welcome them into the fold in protest of Cattrall’s absence.

But it’s true: We don’t have Samantha, and with her went the four corners of our perfect Manhattan quartet that so playfully tackled a range of storylines from varying perspectives — a realist, a romantic, a party girl and someone who embodied all three — an element so blatantly missing in the revival series.

Still, hate-watchers of And Just Like That hold out hope. Hope that Samantha might relocate back to New York (she’s still texting Carrie, after all); that Carrie rediscovers her column and gets over this cringe-worthy version of Aidan (John Corbett) in search of a life of city singlehood once more; that Miranda finds her misplaced backbone and owns up to how she hurt ex-husband Steve (David Eigenberg); that Charlotte seeks substance beyond her quasi-tradwife existence (and reacts with a facial expression other than wide-eyed glee).

Are we baffled? Yes. Are we tired? Very. Will we be tuning in this Thursday for the next episode? Abso-fucking-lutely.