Meanwhile, although the show tried to rectify the lack of diversity in the original series with various characters and storylines, these also fell flat on their faces. Miranda exploring her queerness was fine; but for many viewers, her doing this with non-binary comedian partner Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), was not, given how cringey they were, from their awful double-entendres peppering every conversation to their downright painful stand-up shows. The Daily Beast dubbed them the “worst character on TV”. While sassy real estate mogul Seema (Sarita Choudhury) was a good addition to the girl gang, viewers queried why another woman, Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) wasn’t integrated properly with the other core friends, being kept especially separate in the third series.
Another character, Miranda’s professor Nya (Karen Pittman) was brought in as one of the new leads, then disappeared after season two. And when actor Willie Garson who played Carrie’s gay best friend Stanford Blatch, died in 2021, midway through filming, his exit was then scripted in a way many found absurd, with Stanford suddenly divorcing Anthony (Mario Cantone) and becoming a Shinto monk in Japan, never to be heard of again.
HBO MaxMiranda’s romance with stand-up comic Che was considered one of the series’ most misguided plot lines (Credit: HBO Max)
Even Big, Carrie’s one and only husband, was barely referred to after the first season, in the show’s great example of collective amnesia – if only the grief of a loved one could be switched off that easily in real life. At least there was finally a passing reference to him in the final episode. But for much of And Just Like That, viewers were punished with the return of Carrie’s other most significant old flame, former fiancée Aidan (John Corbett), with the couple spending the most recent series labouring over their doomed romance. Wouldn’t it have been far more interesting to see Carrie going back into the dating world, later in life, and meeting new men, some fans asked?
The chaotic writing
Instead, plot lines were thrown into the show like hand-grenades, and then never brought up again: Lisa’s miscarriage, Seema burning down her flat and Miranda and Charlotte’s teenage kids hooking up. ALJT’s biggest problem has always been its lack of cohesion and focus compared to its predecessor. Sex and the City episodes ran to a tight 25 minutes, and were always underpinned by Carrie’s voiceover: her narration formed the backbone of every episode. The two or three storylines running within each episode were all woven together neatly into the theme of Carrie’s newspaper column of that week; an exploration of a particular issue – linked to the dating world, and cleverly observed. And while some of these voiceovers were heavy-handed and involved tenuous links – only Carrie Bradshaw could equate her accidentally seeing her friend’s naked husband with The Troubles in Northern Ireland – it became a signature device that made the show tight, snappy and well-scripted.
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Despite finding a few new, slightly forced ways to have Carrie’s voiceover included – the less said about her historical romance novel, which cack-handedly also reflected Carrie’s love life, the better – AJLT was rudderless because of the removal of the central conceit. To keep viewers’ attention, characters were instead forced into increasingly bizarre situations with no real pay-offs, and which made no sense for their or the plot’s progression.
