American Gurls #1: And Just Like Why?
I couldn't help but wonder: Why does this ill-conceived revival have us in such a chokehold?
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And now: Let’s get to the real reason we’re all here — to see the legacy of a once-great TV show utterly destroyed by its creator, while we’re somehow all compelled to watch! (Plus: Texts from Samantha!) And if you’re reading through this wondering why does this lady care so much about Sex and the City to begin with, well, I wrote something for the debut of And Just Like That back in 2021 that should help fill the gaps.
Over the summer, I found myself in Portand, where I used to live and where, like a little aristocrat, I still travel quarterly to get my hair cut. I texted a friend of mine to tell her I was in town, and we ended up watching the newest episode of And Just Like That, projected huge on the wall of her adorable book-filled, pink-and-green-swaddled ranch-style house in the suburbs. As we drank seltzer over frozen orbs of watermelon purée, we gave what amounted to a PhD thesis defense in Sex and the City Studies to her delightful friend who was also visiting, an abortion fund employee who had never seen the show.
It was an ideal evening. But what really put it over the top was that I didn’t have to explain why I wanted to watch And Just Like That. It was understood that the world of Sex and the City had so fully sunk into our psyches that the show felt deeply good to watch, even as it arguably undoes some of the greatness of the original series, which was already pretty shredded to begin with thanks to the very silly feature films that revived the series the first time around.
I returned to my tiny house Airbnb that night seltzer-drunk and cozy, with a borrowed book about the Mr. Goodbar murders (we contain multitudes) and a full heart. And that’s one obvious explanation for why this ill-conceived revival has us in such a chokehold: It’s a source of connection and community for the generation that grew up with the original. But I still find myself confused by the seeming contradiction of how off-putting I find the show, and how much I want to watch every new episode as soon as possible. If this show so bad, why did we endure two whole seasons of it? Why will we almost certainly sit through a third?
Just like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder. And so I set out to investigate.