*SPOILERS AHEAD*

And just like that, Michael Patrick King and Darren Star missed the mark in their attempt to revive the “Sex and the City” franchise with the release of their latest reboot series. 

“And Just Like That…,” another spin-off of “Sex and the City,” began airing on HBOMax in Dec. 2021. The ongoing series follows the beloved trio as they transition into their 50s and continue to navigate friendship, romance and post-pandemic New York City. In the two-episode premiere, the audience is reintroduced to Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte — no Samantha — having lunch together as per usual. Charlotte lives with her husband and two daughters in an enviable Park Avenue apartment, Miranda has left her corporate law career and has enrolled in Columbia University in order to pursue a master’s degree in human rights and Carrie finally has it all — happily married to the man of her dreams, Mr. Big, and living in a gorgeous apartment while she expands her fruitful writing career. Things are looking good for the ladies; however, the series quickly escalates and turns from a light-hearted dramedy into a questionable, confusing rollercoaster riddled with loss, awkwardness and futile attempts at being “woke.”

The downward spiral starts with the death of Mr. Big at the end of the first episode and by the middle of the series life for all three women has changed completely. Carrie is a widow, Miranda is an alcoholic and Charlotte is a struggling parent. Carrie’s new boss, Che Diaz — a queer non-binary Mexican-Irish diva — tells her that she needs to work on her content and be more explicit in order to keep her podcast gig. Miranda scrambles to get through her new class with her younger classmates, anxiously spewing microaggressions and failing to connect with her Black professor through wildly uncomfortable overtures. Charlotte learns to navigate raising her transgender child, Rock, as they go through middle school while struggling to help her older daughter, Lily, as she deals with all the drama that comes with being a teenage girl. 

The inclusion of this new, diverse cast of characters could have been beneficial and interesting if it wasn’t so obvious that they were just tokens meant to aid the main character’s developments — or to bring on their downfalls. Instead of appropriately integrating issues of gender and race, the writing in this series trivializes it with insensitive distillations.

The series is full of risks, which is good if executed correctly. However, the inevitable chaos laid out by this plot first comes to a head by the fifth episode. Carrie is laid up in bed after hip surgery, depressed over the loss of her husband and her career struggles as Miranda and Charlotte take turns watching over her. 

At this point, Miranda is dependent on alcohol to cope with her midlife crisis, something that is exacerbated by  the social rejection she faces  and her lackluster marriage. Carrie is napping while Miranda is watching her and Che stops by with a bottle of tequila. Miranda and Che start taking shots in the kitchen, then drinking leads to smoking, which then leads to a steamy sex scene between the two. While Miranda was having her mid-life crisis sexual awakening, Carrie pees the bed because she is unable to make it to the bathroom by herself. 

“Sex and the City” is a lot like COVID-19. Once you think it’s finally going away for good, it comes back and gets worse. It could be argued that there’s a reason this series isn’t called “Sex and the City” — that the writers were deliberately trying to separate “And Just Like That…” from the glamour and fairy-tale endings and take it in a new direction — but the reality is that it is extremely difficult to revive a show that was popular because of its insight into Manhattan’s sexual and social scene from 1998 to 2004 and expect it to have the same punch two decades later. The writers, actors and producers have simply lost their touch, something that has been obvious since 2010 with the release of “Sex and the City 2.” With widespread criticism for bad writing,  problematic scenes and a dismal 16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie should have ended the franchise for good. 

A far cry from the powerful, confident women this series once celebrated, “And Just Like That…” focuses on Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte dealing with their obsolescence. But women don’t shrink and crumble with age the way the “Sex and the City” franchise has. Although “And Just Like That…” may offer fans closure that the last movie didn’t provide, it’s a rather bleak look into the lives of women that were once known for their fabulous lives and unshakable confidence. It’s about time for the writers to stop beating this dead horse and with a 2.4 star audience rating, it seems like viewers are mostly in agreement.