And Just Like That... Vivante Saves the Show

Sex and the City reboot is finally relevant, to me.

Charlotte is right, The Americans is brilliant! And Just Like That is… getting there.

I was scared to watch season two of And Just Like That, the Sex and the City reboot. Season one was so painfully serious and deeply cringey, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through all that again.

While I am more than pleased with the new cast members (and absence of Big), the writers did an awkward job as they reckoned with the show’s “whites only,” heteronormative past. They sacrificed both Miranda’s character on the altar of well-meaning-but-completely-offensive-white-feminism — which I get but was a harsh watch — and the show’s winning formula.

That formula includes a cosmo cocktail of bad dates, awkward social and sexual situations, decent corny jokes, and incredible style.

When I finally pressed play, I am happy to share that I was rewarded for my bravery.

After the third episode, I literally yelled out loud, “YES, they’re back!” Talk about being over invested!

SATC’s strength has always been how well it spotlights the way the world is evolving socially in this moment: how we connect or fail to connect with each other, in person but also by using the current social and media tools at hand. Carrie’s job as a writer has helped keep it relevant in that way — we’ve seen how she communicates with her audience and what she communicates. It’s always reflected a bit of our own experiences.

But SATC has also always been primarily a fantasy, placing those realistic situations into aspirational lifestyles. When I first started watching the show, I had just gone from making $5.15 an hour working at a movie theater to $10 an hour at Urban Outfitters — and I thought I was rich! Carrie wrote one article a week and had a closet full of Manolo Blahniks.

Side note: SATC and AJLT also do a great job showing how we age (despite or including the fillers), i.e. Harry’s “dust balls” and the subsequent Kegels. I’ll be sending a newsletter that explores aging in a week or so.

I’d already started writing this when the The New York Times newsletter “‘And Just Like That’ Everyone Is Part of the 1 Percent” hit my inbox. And I hate to break it to the critics, there are plenty of people that live like the characters in AJLT. There’s no reason to be jealous, we just have to fight together to change the broken capitalist system. Let this show be the reason for the revolution!

As someone who deals in the ways we communicate, I really appreciate that they expanded Carrie’s reach from the weekly column and occasional book. I did find the whole Carrie on a podcast idea unbelievable. She’s not that conversationally compelling! But in the episode “ALIVE!”, Carrie asks her old (in both meanings of the word, according to the episode) Vogue editor Enid (Candice Bergen) to include her in her popular “Ask Enid” newsletter. A newsletter? Now that is relevant. To me at least.

And am I the only one who wishes they kept the SATC theme song?

Enid is launching Vivante, a magazine “focused on women our age,” as she tells Carrie, adding, “Women our age are grossly underrepresented in the media.” And Carrie blanches, offended that as a woman who is nearly 60, she might be grouped in with a lady who is in her mid-70s! The gall! And in that moment, you kinda hate Carrie. But then, by the end of the episode, Carrie also hates herself a little! And that, my friends, is good programming.

In that episode, Carrie also meets the great Gloria Steinem (something most regular people don’t get to do either). “Every revolution starts with a conversation,” Gloria Steinem says in a speech. “Maybe that new frontier is aging.”

Maybe And Just Like That can be the Vivante media revolution? Can I be the Vivante revolution? This old girl can dream.

And let’s start talking about that other revolution I mentioned before. I’m underemployed and have plenty of time on my hands.

Off with their heads — after this season, maybe?