They say life happens to you while you are making other plans. But the main thing is that something happens. And because it is difficult to develop urgent stories out of saturation, the sequel to the series begins Sex and the City – which ended with the protagonists’ relative satisfaction (married with children or happy single, loving man, successful job, extensive shoe collection) – now with a bang: “And just like that … Big died”. Carrie’s husband (Sarah Jessica Parker) sags with a heart attack after a round on the Pelleton bike. And leaves Carrie at the end of the first episode as a widow in her mid-50s and devastated (her huge shack).
That the old, new showrunner Michael Patrick King and his all-female team created the “Point of Attack”, the trigger for the action in And Just Like That … Set in this drastic way is one of the surprises of the ten-part continuation of the series that is often decried as superficial. There was also Sex and the City Although “so white” and so (punching) rich, the questions dealt with in it about distance and closeness in relationships, sexual and human satisfaction, friendship and trust were approached with seriousness: the private is political. After all, physical politics must also be negotiated.
King has also learned his lesson and has only three main characters (Samantha alias Kim Cattrell could no longer be persuaded to participate) put new friends at the side, who – a bit overly clear, but not stupid – should represent that missing diversity and get their own storylines : Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) law professor Nya (Karen Pittman) tries to get pregnant through artificial insemination and has to explain the White Savior Complex to overzealous Miranda, while non-binary, Mexican-born podcast maker Che (Sara Ramirez) confronts Carrie’s openness about sex and This calls into question the past of the entire narrative, and Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) snappy black Park Avenue friend Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) struggles with the snobbish family.
Despite the high-gloss backdrop from the lofts, walk-in closets and streets of a surreally beautiful New York, the showrunner and his co-authors have changed the language of the film. The story is barely structured by Carrie’s punch-line commentaries. Instead, the creators tell: Inside film: In an astonishing scene, Miranda, who is starting her postgraduate course, enters a bar in the morning before the first lecture and orders a glass of white wine. “We don’t open until 11 am,” the bartender informs her. Miranda looks at her cell phone watch, it’s a quarter to eleven, and she laughs at a photo of her son on the screen. “Then I’ll wait,” she says lightly. This toxic combination of career woman, mother and secret alcoholic captured in a picture is immediately taken away from the immanent, looming tragedy.
Botox Positivity
It is logical that the topic of sex, which the previous series defined on the verbal level down to details such as anilingus or golden showers, does not appear at least in the first two episodes that have been accessible so far: In the lives of many people in their mid-fifties, it is (unfortunately ) hardly any different. And Carrie’s controversy with her podcast boss, who accuses her of simply giggling away specific questions about masturbation, is symptomatic of a modern approach to the subject. Because the old series was never really explicit – at its core there was always Carrie, Miranda’s and Charlotte’s longing for the perfect two-way relationship, with which good sex should almost automatically come about. That is over now. The fact that Carrie asks her husband (before his disastrous fitness bike finale, of course) to masturbate in front of her goes further than the cramped protagonist had ever dared.
Despite the gallows-humorous framing, there are typical to-the-point jokes that also address aging: Miranda’s refusal to dye her hair (“I don’t have to be a hot redhead to defend women as a human rights lawyer!”) Is from Charlotte with the reply: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg also dyed her hair” acknowledged. That sits. You can almost forget that Charlotte’s botox mine is difficult to look at. On the other hand, what she does to her face is up to her. When preaching body positivity, you may need to include botox positivity. At least one should think about the topic.
And Just Like That … Michael Patrick King USA 2021; on Sky since December 9th
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