Carrie Bradshaw never stops starting over. After the original Sex and the City series ended with Sarah Jessica Parker’s polarizing sex-columnist heroine rejoicing in her soulmate Mr. Big’s (Chris Noth) long-awaited declaration of love, 2008’s follow-up movie had him leave her at the altar so she could cry it out with her best girlfriends on what was supposed to be the couple’s honeymoon. The bloated SATC feature ended with Carrie and Big’s reconciliation; though their City Hall wedding stuck, an atrocious sequel film teased marital malaise before sending the ladies to Abu Dhabi for some lighthearted cultural appropriation. Which left Max’s revival, And Just Like That, with little choice but to upend Carrie’s life again: RIP Big, done in by his Peloton.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
The show’s second season finale offered yet another ending. Carrie hosted a “Last Supper,” gathering AJLT’s unwieldy cast of characters for a dinner-party farewell to her iconic single-girl apartment, and had everyone pledge to let go of something in their life that was holding them back. For her part, Carrie released “expectations.” Including the expectation that her rekindled romance with Aidan (John Corbett) would proceed in typical fashion. He put the relationship on pause for five years, to concentrate on parenting his problem child, Wyatt (Logan Souza), in Virginia. And she let him, laying groundwork for the surprisingly effective reset that is Season 3, which premieres May 29 on Max. In shedding so much of the clutter it, like Carrie’s studio, had been accumulating since the 20th century, AJLT finally feels less like an SATC hangover and more like its own preposterous yet generally fun thing.
Crucial to this rebirth is an overdue pruning of the cast. In a laudable but clumsily executed effort to make AJLT less straight and white than its predecessor, the first season conspicuously paired each of its three returning leads with a new woman-of-color friend. Carrie got Sarita Choudhury’s glam, no-nonsense real estate queen, Seema. Charlotte York-Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) made a mom friend in documentarian Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker). Retraining in human-rights law, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) awkwardly won over her professor, Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman). And when Miranda burst out of the closet, crushing her nebbishy husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), the nonbinary comedian and meme-in-the-making Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) was waiting with open arms. The SATC women’s for-some-reason-married (blame SATC 2) gay best friends, Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) and Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone) were also getting more screentime. Meanwhile, the show was haunted by the specters of Big (who was even cut from flashbacks after two women accused Noth of sexual assault, which he has denied) and Samantha Jones, the spectacularly promiscuous fourth lead, who was shipped off unseen to London when Kim Cattrall declined to reprise the role.
It was too many characters to juggle, especially when AJLT creator and SATC alum Michael Patrick King spent so much time marinating in Carrie’s residual grief and circular love life. Whether they were part of his plan or not, the cast departures that have happened since are for the best, with the tragic exception of Garson’s death in 2021. A distraction from the start, Che had little reason to linger after her Season 2 breakup with Miranda; when Ramirez’s exit was announced last year, amid reports of behind-the-scenes drama, it was a relief. Smart, grounded, and self-possessed (not to mention the closest AJLT got to middle-class representation), Pittman’s Nya made more sense as part of the ensemble. But with Miranda out of school—and Pittman doing great work in the sublime Forever—her absence from Season 3 works.
Carrie’s ghosts must have stayed behind at the old apartment. As she readies her palatial new Gramercy home for Aidan’s eventual cohabitation and tries not to pine too hard for Aidan—who doesn’t even want her to text him when they’re apart (no, I’m still not sold on this storyline)—it’s as if Big never existed. On the spike heels of Cattrall’s overhyped, split-second appearance, speaking to Parker by phone in the Season 2 finale, AJLT seems to have Samantha out of its system, too. Her presence in the six Season 3 episodes sent for review is limited to a text message or two.
After cleaning out the cast list and the walk-in closet of people from Carrie’s past, King emerges with a fresher, more balanced and focused show that has come a long way from the SATC nostalgia act of Season 1. With just five women to follow, Seema’s and Lisa’s storylines finally get as much weight as Charlotte’s and Miranda’s. LTW has the PBS greenlight on a passion project she’s been laboring over for years; if only her husband’s comptroller campaign and a pesky work crush weren’t threatening to derail her. Though her season begins with a weirdly abrupt twist, Seema is soon thrown into a juicy professional crisis of her own when her business partner suddenly retires and sells his shares to Ryan Serhant (yes, the Million Dollar Listing/Owning Manhattan guy; yes, he appears as himself; and yes, this does feel like human product placement). Choudhury’s performance might be AJLT’s single best reason for existing, and her increased presence this season makes it better with every imperious line reading.
Not that this is never going to be a great show, much less an important one like SATC, for all its flaws. Despite its popularity, AJLT wouldn’t recognize the zeitgeist if it knocked on the antique door of Carrie’s Victorian townhouse begging her to vote. It’s still a fluffy, head-in-the-sand, rich-lady fantasy. The teenage characters seem to have been written by people who haven’t talked to an actual teen since they were teens. Carrie remains the absolute worst; an episode that has her fuming over her (distinguished British author) downstairs neighbor’s request that she stop stomping on his ceiling in heels made me apoplectic. And I don’t think there’s enough substance—or chemistry—in her relationship with Aidan to justify the outsize attention it gets.
But even as it’s earnestly improving, learning to integrate the indignities and health scares of late middle age without tanking the mood, AJLT is having more, better fun with its inherent absurdity. Who wouldn’t want to see Miranda get obsessed with a trashy dating show called Bi Bingo or hook up with guest star Rosie O’Donnell, whose character’s backstory is sure to make jaws everywhere drop? Charlotte getting into dog-park confrontations (“I feel like the mother from The Bad Seed!”) and stalking a college-admissions guru named Lois “The Finger” Fingerhead, played by a prepped-out Kristen Schaal? Yes, please! Scenery-chomping appearances by Jenifer Lewis and Cheri Oteri? Bring ’em on! In what might be the season’s goofiest development, I regret to inform you that Carrie has begun work on her first novel, a historical romance that sounds like ChatGPT’s attempt to rewrite her diary as if she were living in the 19th century—the literary equivalent of a sepia-toned novelty photo. (“The woman had survived the treacherous journey mostly intact.”) It’s dreadful. And yet, as with so many of AJLT’s most ludicrous storylines, I am here for it.