Forgive Me: I'm Writing About 'And Just Like That'

Unpopular Opinion: Aidan is Carrie's Worst Boyfriend

Bear with me here - I have a couple of ideas for posts about politics that are coming up, but for now, I’m hate-watching And Just Like That and need to vent about it. The second season is not quite as painful as the first, but it’s close, still puritanical and preachy, still oozing Newspeak, still way too many images of old people having sex. Last year, I wrote the following:

So why am I watching it? For the same reason I went to see the second Sex and the City movie: it is my sacred duty as a woman. Still, I was honestly hopeful about the reboot. I watched the original series and liked it. As a viewer the age of Carrie and crew, navigating relationships and career, it — forgive this phrase — spoke to me. The characters talked about what my friends and I talked about; they went through similar struggles, though with more polish and better apartments. The show dealt with the “shoulds” we all felt and our ambivalence about so many of those shoulds.

To be clear, my friends and I talked (and still do) about books and politics and travel, as well, which the ladies on SATC rarely did, but that, in a way, was part of the show’s charm. It was frothy and generally light. An episode dedicated to the city of New York shortly after 9/11 was as close as it got to acknowledging the spinning, horrific world. In spite of that, it did address - think of the episode A Woman’s Right to Shoes - the divide that can exist between women, and the contempt with which some hold others. I remember having coffee with a couple of girlfriends, women who would definitely call themselves feminists. And they both went on rather lengthy rants about how “selfish” and “awful” the women of SATC were. When I asked for elaboration - how are they selfish? How are they awful? - the subject was uncomfortably changed. I suspected that both of these women - married at relatively young ages, both with children and mortgages - did not want to admit that what they meant was that any woman who has different dreams and goes after them is selfish and awful. One of these women expressed similar contempt for Elizabeth Gilbert, for the same reasons. (For the record, I do find that Carrie, in particular, can be selfish and awful. But not because she doesn’t follow a conventional path. And I find Gilbert annoying but not because of any alleged selfishness - more for her political posturing and some of her ahistorical commentary. But damn, she’s a fine writer.)

AJLT does not address any divides, in my view - other than the giant chasm between good and bad taste, between people who waste their time watching it (such as myself) and smarter people - nor does it have the original show’s sense of fun, nor the chemistry of the previous quartet. It is like an uncertain adolescent, desperate for love and attention, trying to shock in the process (I’ve been there and it was not pretty). It thinks it knows everything but it is awkward and lacking confidence. And the worst part of this season (which is saying something) is the general amnesia surrounding Aidan. He is not wonderful. He is selfish and whiny. And controlling. Everything one does not want in a beau. And yet his return to the Sex and the City world has been treated by online fans as some sort of romantic inevitability, Carrie’s dream man finally back. Honestly, he is the stuff of nightmares. Dost thou not remember? He wouldn’t even go on a date with her unless she stopped smoking; he made fun of her clothes and shoes (this cannot be forgiven); he forces her to go to his house in the country when she has no desire to do so; he does not respect her need for space (see previous point) or her fear of marriage and instead, gives her an ultimatum that effectively ends the relationship (probably the biggest favour he ever did her); he - knowing she is not financially stable - forces her to buy her apartment within thirty days or else find somewhere else in a notoriously merciless and costly real estate market. And now, upon his great return, he won’t set foot in that same apartment because it reminds him of his pain from decades past. (I have personal experience with this sort of thing. My spouse and I dated a long time ago. It did not work out. We bumped into each other years later, got back together and - call me Captain Courageous - I bravely stepped again through the front door of his - now our - home. I am here to tell the tale!) Also, Aidan is desperately in need of a haircut and fashion advice.

None of this prevents psychotics on the internet from cheerleading for this godforsaken couple. These are the same people completely obsessed with SATC canon, pointing out all the discrepancies between AJLT and SATC - Lily and Brady are the wrong age, Harry’s mother died a long, long time ago, Miranda used to be sure she was not a lesbian, and so on. But they seem to never have noticed or else forgotten what a truly dreadful boyfriend Aidan was - right up there with Jack Berger, who at least had some wit (and the actor did a magnificent job as Lewis Nixon in Band of Brothers, so he gets bonus points from me). Give me Mr. Big any day. Or Petrovsky, “the Russian,” as Carrie called him. Heck, he took Carrie to Paris and she - similar to Aidan - whined because he did not behave exactly as she wished. She was in Paris with Baryshnikov! She couldn’t just appreciate that? I always liked the Russian - incidentally, that is what my mother used to call Michael Ignatieff - because he was upfront about who he was and did not play games.

You can’t go home again, can you? But if you want terrific women-centric entertainment, you can watch reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Absolutely Fabulous and The Golden Girls or look forward to the fourth season of Emily in Paris. And you can get a kick out of this scene: to me, a perfect example of what made SATC so appealing.

[Seriously, Parker should have won an Emmy for this scene.]