‘And Just Like That …’ Is Failing Its New Characters

I couldn’t help but wonder, Why is this show patently unable to render Lisa, Seema, Nya, and Che in unembarrassing ways?
Photo: Max

Spoilers for “There Goes the Neighborhood,” And Just Like That … episode nine, which premiered August 10 on Max. 

Watching And Just Like That … consistently requires not just suspension of disbelief but a full-on mental break with reality. There’s too much absurdity, too much irrationality and illogic: Aidan’s abomination of a jacket, Carrie’s comforter gown for Widow Con, Charlotte saying “slurp the sperm,” Anthony’s baguette-shaped landline. These are all surreal glitches in the simulation that test our understanding of the world around us. Judging whether Aidan in tighty-whities makes sense or is inexplicable — that’s our version of the Voight-Kampff test.

But even under the generous terms of “This is a silly television show that cannot hurt me,” Michael Patrick King’s Sex and the City spinoff manages to fall on its face, Carrie-on-the-runway-style, when tasked with consistent character development for its newest ensemble members. “There Goes the Neighborhood” is the latest installment in bizarre and baffling writing, and after watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder, Why is And Just Like That … patently unable to render Seema, Lisa, Nya, and Che in unembarrassing ways? The series has struggled with working these four characters into Carrie’s, Charlotte’s, and Miranda’s lives organically while giving them their own identities, and “There Goes the Neighborhood” is the pinnacle of “Oh yeah, you guys haven’t figured this out yet” cringe. Let’s discuss this character by character because some of us are willing to give these people the attention they deserve!

Why is Lisa pregnant? What about Lisa Todd Wexley — documentarian, involved parent, ranked MILF, and wife of a Wall Street bigwig running for comptroller — suggests this development is within the realm of possibility for her? This is not an ageist critique; it’s a “Lisa has never talked about wanting another child” critique. Perhaps I should have known, when a tired Lisa told Herbert she was “blissfully dreaming I was no longer a wife or a mother,” that pregnancy was in the cards because AJLT doesn’t do anything without heavily foreshadowing it. But the admission to her husband at his fundraising party came out of nowhere narratively. Plus, the whole pregnancy story line feels like a tired spin on the already-tired “Can she have it all?” question AJLT is asking of Miranda, who bickers with Brady about his refusal to go to college and isn’t getting along with the younger interns at the Human Rights Campaign, and of Charlotte, whose return to gallery work has thrown her family (an adult man and two teenage children!) into a panic over not knowing how to prepare dinner for themselves.

I understand that parenting is hard. Was there no other way to make Lisa compelling, though, than to make her a parent again? Isn’t navigating the oppositional worlds of “wealthy wife moving into the political sphere” and “scrappy filmmaker struggling to find resources within the PBS sandbox” interesting enough? My confusion about Lisa’s arc is akin to Harry’s trying to decide whether to order a coatrack for a springtime event: “Nobody knows” … why any of this is happening.

It’s unfortunate that Seema Patel was clearly intended to be the most analogous replacement for the absent Samantha Jones — both are career-driven and spontaneous, upfront about their sexual desires, and seemingly uninterested in marriage — because Kim Cattrall is irreplaceable and Sarita Choudhury is magnificent in her own right. But of the new-character quartet, Seema is at least the most integrated with the remaining trio; she’s not just a friend from school, which Lisa and Nya sometimes feel like for Charlotte and Miranda. It also helps that Choudhury and Sarah Jessica Parker have great chemistry and challenge each other in ways we expect from the established group.

Why then does AJLT keep giving Seema such foolishness to reckon with? “I pay you to blow me, not shrink me” tipped us off that the series would prod her toward uncertainty and self-doubt this season. Yes, Seema previously lied to her parents about having a boyfriend because she was tired of being their unmarried “bad Indian daughter.” She’s a human being, not Teflon. But AJLT keeps doing this thing where it embarrasses Seema, tacitly suggesting that maybe her standards for herself and her life are too high: that hairdresser conversation, the penis-pump guy, her single-people’s-rights rant, how quickly she gets defensive about Carrie and Aidan. If that last story line had been allowed to stretch out, it could have been a lovely exploration of maneuvering a rocky patch in a friendship and how time can both help and hurt — perhaps even a faint echo of what’s going on between Carrie and the still absent Samantha. But it wrapped up so quickly it denied AJLT some much-needed friction, and that leads us to “There Goes the Neighborhood,” in which, wouldn’t you know? Seema finds her own Aidan!

A guy who initially drove her a little crazy, check. A guy who knocks her out of her comfort zone, check. A guy who connects immediately with the actual Aidan, check! This is not a knock against actor Armin Amiri, though I laughed and laughed at his character, director Ravi Gordi, who’s described as someone who would make an RRR-like cult classic and then leave behind India’s highly lucrative film industry to work on the umpteenth MCU entry. That is as unrealistic as the idea that the highly professional Seema would have sex at work, or that she wouldn’t be irritated by a man wasting three weeks of her time with apartment showings he wasn’t interested in instead of just directly asking her out, or that she would be worried about actresses sliding into her man’s DMs. Choudhury has a strong grasp on Seema’s bearing, self-regard, and physicality, but she’s being asked to convince us of decisions that are increasingly out of step with the character’s established self. If AJLT sends her, Ravi, Carrie, and Aidan to that Hamptons beach house together, that would not be cool for the summer.

Quick, tell me something you’ve learned so far in season two about Nya. She’s a professor! No, that was established when Miranda took her law class last season. (Side note: How many years is Miranda’s master’s degree going to take? Is her HRC internship for credit? Is she not taking any more classes? Did she already graduate and I just memory-holed this?) Back to Nya: Anything else? The fact that she baked herself a beautiful chocolate soufflé really and truly should not count, but that’s nearly all we get about this heavily decorated scholar until “There Goes the Neighborhood,” in which we learn she … likes sex. Who knew? Wild stuff!

That’s at least a more palatable development than Nya’s sudden heartbreak at learning that her ex, Andre, has (as expected) impregnated the backup singer he was helping to “write songs” and is sharing the news on social media. The question of whether Nya and Andre should have kids dominated much of her season-one arc, so it’s not entirely surprising that the issue would come back around. But Nya is already the most thinly sketched new character, with scant shading given to the requirements of her job (academia is dramatic as hell, and I’m sure a department rival could be introduced for her), what she wants from a romantic partner past convenient sex, or her goals and aspirations. Theoretically, Miranda moved in with Nya not just for a place to crash but to deepen their friendship; there has been none of that, though, and this woman can’t even get a throwaway story line like Seema’s Hamptons beach house! Sending Nya into a tizzy over an ex and a relationship that was pretty clearly a closed book isn’t just regression; it’s a suggestion that AJLT has no idea how to move Nya forward.

We’ve had some good times with Che, haven’t we, folks? Remember learning they’re still married to Kate Hudson’s brother? That was fun! They traipsed through the snow for Widow Con because for some reason Carrie couldn’t find anyone else to go with her — that was something! But Che has remained more of a meme than a fully developed character this season, with AJLT swiftly dashing her TV-pilot dreams, then making her do unhinged things like record Cameo videos in bed with Miranda. Che’s depressed funk at least had more time to fester than Seema’s discomfort with Carrie and Aidan’s relationship, but in the past couple of episodes, Che’s screen time has primarily been devoted to asking Carrie leading questions about why she and Aidan didn’t work out. Thank you for being a source of exposition for people watching AJLT who for whatever reason did not also watch Sex and the City, Che! Aside from that function, though, AJLT isn’t doing much to make Che feel needed in this milieu anymore.

They and Miranda are over (correct, Miranda was being a drag), and their apartment is no longer Carrie and Aidan’s hookup spot (also correct, Carrie and Aidan are individually and collectively wealthy and should never have been weirdly frugal about staying at an Airbnb in the first place). Do we need to see Che flirt with someone who drops off a box of abandoned kitties at the animal clinic? Or struggle to write stand-up again after … at most, maybe a few months off? Admittedly, I do not understand time in the AJLT universe; it feels as if we have been stuck here for eons. But these are hardly story lines, let alone entire reasons for Carrie and Che to remain friends after they barely clicked as co-workers! (About that: Why doesn’t Che get another podcasting job? I’m not assuming that’s easy, but it hasn’t even come up as an option. Weren’t they pretty good at hosting? What is Bobby Lee’s character up to?) From the beginning, Che has felt like only a device — someone to challenge Carrie’s prudishness and unlock Miranda’s sexuality — but at least they were connected to the series’ core trio professionally and personally. Without those responsibilities, Che is adrift, stuck in Hudson Yards, and unbelievable as a member of this crew. At least the kitten they try to guilt Carrie into keeping would have its own bedroom in her palatial new Gramercy Park place. That’s more space than the series has made for Che to grow.