I have a confession to make: I just watched the season premiere of the third season of HBO’s “And Just Like That,” the hit sequel to the cult late '90s-mid-'00s “Sex and the City.” Wait, there’s more. I watched every single episode of the first two seasons, too.
Although I was not a fan of Carrie Bradshaw and her coven’s original run from 1998 to 2004, I am low-key obsessed with the sequel series. “Sex and the City” was an iconic show that defined gender norms — for better or worse — for a generation. The women in my life in early aughts New York City were all ambitious and stylish. I was neither ambitious nor stylish. They had dating horror stories, and I spent many Saturday nights alone. During those years, women frequently asked each other which of the show’s four sexy, successful characters they resembled. Meanwhile, most dudes I knew wanted to be Neo from “The Matrix” or Adam Sandler in almost any of his movies. I liked to think of myself as a “The Wedding Singer” with a “Happy Gilmore” rising.
I watched the first AJLT season out of sheer boredom, and before I knew it, I was mumbling to myself, “Am I a Carrie?”
I don’t think I’ve ever even been able to finish an episode of “Sex and the City,” although I’ve tried. My wife, on the other hand, can quote entire episodes.
It’s not that I didn’t find Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis and sassy demi-goddess Kim Cattrall funny or attractive or charismatic. They remain one of television’s most fabulous foursomes. But turn-of-the-century me was more interested in the popular markers of masculinity at that time, like David Fincher’s grimy look at male impotence, “Fight Club,” or TV’s “24,” which was about Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer doing whatever he has to do to save America — or, God forgive, the intense but sensitive rock music of Creed.
In other words, I was too busy acting like a man, which meant reading men’s magazines filled with musky body spray ads and editor-vetted pick-up lines that I’d practice delivering directly to my bathroom mirror reflection.
And yet, when it comes to “And Just Like That,” I can’t get enough. I watched the first AJLT season out of sheer boredom, and before I knew it, I was mumbling to myself, “Am I a Carrie?” I literally just typed that sentence on my laptop in my New York apartment. This is a show about being in your 50s and living a messy life. That’s me.
One of the predictable facts of growing older in modern society is the speed at which culture zooms past you. But I wasn’t ready for how few stories there are about how much life happens between hitting the big 4-0 and, you know, departing this earthly plane of existence.
Teenagers? Twenty-somethings? Young parents? Mainstream culture has you covered. There are times I feel the entire entertainment industry falls over itself to tell young people how to live and who to be. Then you hit your mid-40s and stories about growing and loving, struggling and navigating life seem to disappear.
“And Just Like That” follows Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte, along with a few all-new characters, as they break up, come out of the closet and pursue careers in New York. There is sex, and there are incredible apartments. But this show isn’t just about money and glamour (although there is plenty of high fashion, which I don’t care about because I’m the sort of person who owns two hoodies); it’s also about how getting older doesn’t mean mellowing out. Life doesn’t end when you’re old enough for routine colonoscopies.
Which is exactly the message I need to hear these days because, friends, I am not in a mellow place. I am hustling for work and showing up for friends and family, and there are days when I feel more adrift and frustrated about where I am, and where I want to go, than when I was 25. In fact, things seemed simpler then, even if they didn’t feel that way.
I was expecting a show about white women eating lunch and talking about men and jobs and having it all. And it is that, but it’s also about middle age and disappointment and death, which was surprisingly goth.
In that first season, Carrie loses her husband, Mr. Big, a smooth-talking alpha dog who is unlike any man I’ve ever met. It was heavy stuff to just off him like that, and I was hooked.
The ladies in “And Just Like That” are full of life. They’re parenting and running businesses and getting it on. It is never too late to do what you want or love who you want. As cliché as that sounds, it’s a message not often offered to people past a certain age in this society.
I’ve not told any of my dude friends about my love for this show, so I’m coming out with my secret on the internet, a famous safe space for anyone sharing an opinion. Will the admission that I can name all the characters in “And Just Like That” enrage a few bros online? Probably.
It is an unavoidable fact of life that if you care about anything, deeply and passionately, you are cringe. So embrace it.
But when you get to my age, you realize that men who get angry at other men for not being manly enough are lonely, and if they’d only surrender to the charms of my imaginary girlfriends, their inner emptinesses would fill.
It is an unavoidable fact of life that if you care about anything, deeply and passionately, you are cringe. So embrace it. Miranda does (and, another confession, she’s my favorite).
I relate to the ladies of “And Just Like That” because I too am of a certain age, and I have a small circle of friends who I talk about important things with, like the series finale of Disney+’s Star Wars show “Andor.”
We are not rich in any way, but we’re healthy, give or take a Lipitor prescription. I’ve known these guys for years, decades. They have, each, been there for me during dark times and vice versa.
Sometimes, when we’re eating at a greasy diner together, I’ll order a side of coleslaw with my eggs and the dudes will all say, “That’s such a John thing to do.”
More recently, though, we are having deeper conversations about what we want out of life, and who we are as we gray and slow down just a little bit. We get into new dreams and old fears more than we once did. A few of us are in therapy for the first time. And just like that, things change.