And Just Like That: Our thoughts on season one

Last week, the Sex and the City reboot titled And Just Like That aired its last episode for its first season. When the reboot was announced, folks fell into a frenzy. Sex and the City was one of the hottest things to come from the 90s and the idea of a reboot was nothing short of exciting. We watched each week, tweeted about it loudly, and finally, we’re ready to share our thoughts. 

It’s not like we’ve been quiet on our feelings about how Sex and the City treated its queer characters before. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t great. With this in mind, we had many hesitations about another show starting with the same premise. The hoopla around And Just Like That seemed promising though. They were including a non-binary character, more than one in fact, and shaking things up from the way they used to approach queer issues. 

We felt hopeful. We were excited to see how this new approach would work. As the show opened, our stomachs sank. We weren’t wild about what we were seeing, but we persevered and pushed through those initial episodes. Our hesitation about the show very slowly dissipated over time as the episodes aired. These are our thoughts on season 1 of And Just Like That.

Queer representation

Okay, so it wasn’t perfect. Not at all. But, as the last episode dropped, we didn’t exactly hate the way they dealt with all the queer representation that was deliberately included in this season. Let’s start with Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez). If you go on social media, it’s shocking to us to see how many folks out there really dislike this character. 

Full disclosure, we didn’t love Che right off the bat either. When they were introduced we were interested to see what their role was going to be in the show. When we realized that Che was operating as a love interest for Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) we definitely were not wild about that. 

The unapologetically queer character was going to be the reason a marriage broke up? That seemed very on-brand for the way Hollywood deals with queer storylines. We yelled and screamed at the television and we may have thrown some things as well. The writers let the viewers believe for quite a few episodes that Che was some kind of free-wheeling character that was just here for a good time. 

However, when Miranda revealed to Che that she wasn’t in an open marriage, Che lost their mind. This was the turning point for us. Che was operating under the assumption that Miranda had permission to sleep with them. When they realized this was not the case, they flipped out. 

While it initially looked like And Just Like That was setting Che up as the homewrecker, it was in fact, not their fault at all. We don’t understand why everyone dislikes them so much. We ended up really liking Che. Do we love Miranda for Che? Maybe not quite that much. But we loved Che and the role they played in the show. 

Miranda

Let’s talk about Miranda’s big gay awakening. At first, we didn’t love it. It was definitely presented to the audience as a mid-life crisis and that’s definitely not what we wanted the show to do with queer representation. It was initially presented as Miranda being desperately unhappy in her marriage and so turns queer as a fix. It was all very on-brand for how Sex and the City dealt with queer issues in the past. 

However, after Miranda ended her relationship with Steve (lawd, that is an entirely different conversation), her character settled into this new queer space she was navigating quite well. Do we think it’s a bit weird that in the entire time that Sex and the City was on air, Miranda never even once contemplated that her sexuality was anything other than extreme heterosexuality? Yes. People do come out later in life though, so it wasn’t completely unrealistic. 

We also loved that Miranda clearly does love Che quite a lot. It was surprising to her, and also to us, that it just felt so right. We kept waiting for Che to let Miranda down in some way. That they weren’t going to be able to function in the capacity that Miranda needed them. But we were wrong every single time we held our breath. When Che asked Miranda to move to Los Angeles with them, we whooped with joy. We didn’t think they were going to ask, but goodness, we were so happy that they did. 

Rock

We were really worried about how the writers were going to deal with Rock’s (Alexa Swinton) storyline. A really young teenager, Rock (formerly Rose) decides that they aren’t a boy or a girl and adopts the non-binary label. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) actually handled the issue with far more grace than we ever expected that she would. 

Although Charlotte is a little resistant at first, she does her best to support Rock in whatever way Charlotte can. This was perhaps our favorite storyline of the entire season. We think the way Charlotte and Harry (Evan Handler) reacted to Rock’s coming out was very realistic. They were shocked at first, stumbled over pronouns, and felt taken aback by a lot of the changes Rock wanted to make to their life, but at the end of the day, they were there for their kid. 

Despite the fact that we were very worried that the show wasn’t going to deal with the non-binary characters well, in the end, we were pleasantly surprised with how it all went down. 

Stanford and Anthony

We didn’t love that Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone) ended up together in Sex and the City. We really didn’t love what they did to them in the reboot. So, full disclosure. We get it. We know that they were limited with storylines because the very lovely Willie Garson died during filming. But did they have to do the gays that dirty?

It was implied from the onset of And Just Like That that the couple had a very toxic relationship. Always fighting etc, and then Stanford just left one day? Ugh. No. 

Then, when Willie died, instead of dignifying his departure from the show, they had his character run off and leave Anthony behind in New York City all alone. Anthony started sleeping around as nothing had ever happened. It was implied that he never stopped sleeping around after they were married in the first place. There was just a little too much insinuation that the gays aren’t capable of monogamy with this coupling in the reboot.

And Just Like That could have honored Willie’s passing with a little more dignity. Stanford was a pivotal character in the original series and deserved a much better departure than he was given. 

All the rest

There is so much else going on in this show but we wanted most of our review to focus on And Just Like That’s treatment of queer issues. Outside of that, we have many feelings about the way they attempted to deal with the social issues happening in real life right now. 

Did we love the way they attempted to deal with race issues? We absolutely did not. It almost felt like the show was poking fun at all the progress communities of color have been fighting for in recent years. 

Did we love the way Miranda ended things with Steve? (David Eigenberg) We absolutely did not. The writers reduced Steve to nothing. He was such an instrumental character in Sex and the City and we just felt like this reboot really did his character dirty. 

Did we love that Samantha (Kim Catrall) wasn’t part of the show? Definitely not. However, we think it’s strange that fans are continuing to bash the writers for not including scenes with Samantha, especially in the finale. It was Kim Catrall’s decision to not join the reboot so there was no other choice but to write her out. We ended up feeling satisfied with the way they brought that arc to a close. 

How did we feel about Big (Chris Noth) dying in the first episode? Honestly, we never liked that man. We always thought Carrie deserved better so his departure from the show was no big loss to us. 

We aren’t sure if there is going to be a second season. The first season was wrapped up well enough that if it doesn’t happen, it would be okay. But if it did? We think we would be okay with that too. 

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And Just Like That is available to stream on HBOMax right now! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!