All the Callbacks (Subtle and Overt) to Sex and the City in the “Outlook Good” Episode of And Just Like That…

With the reactions to the third season of And Just Like That… being decidedly “mixed” (a.k.a. not everyone can outright say how uncomfortable it makes them), it bears noting that it did its best to continue catering to the nostalgia that has kept the show going for this long in the first place. That nostalgia being, of course, for Sex and the City (and, more to the point, the late 90s and early 00s). Though, one “can’t help but wonder” if such catering is really a good thing. And Michael Patrick King, too, does what he can to deliver on the nature of that “specific time and place” show with a number of callbacks to it throughout the first episode, “Outlook Good.” Granted, only the true die-hards will take note of some of the more “esoteric” correlations. 

It all starts with the first scene of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) wearing, what else, a bombastic outfit. Specifically, a sheer Simone Rocha dress with a matching “put it over the main piece” ditty she can throw on to coordinate with the frock before going out to deliver a postcard (yes, sending something in the mail is a further sign of Bradshaw’s now “vintage” age bracket). Not just any postcard, of course, but a “love note” to Aidan Shaw (John Corbett). That is, if one can call a heart drawn on the back of it a “note.” But, as Carrie tells it to Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) at the lesbian bar, it’s just to “let him know I’m here, I love him.” Even this is a callback to the first Sex and the City movie (albeit from an inverse perspective), when Big (Chris Noth) would keep sending Carrie “love letters” a.k.a. emails that ended up getting funneled into a secret folder created by Carrie’s ephemeral assistant, Louise (Jennifer Hudson). Who decided to make the folder because she couldn’t bear to automatically delete/block Big’s emails from her life—even though that’s what he deserved (then again, since Carrie clearly is such a masochist about him, one supposes she doesn’t deserve the total exile of Big from her life). While Carrie and Aidan’s mail to one another might be both tangible and actually read in a timely manner, it still harkens back to this other love letter moment in SATC—perhaps further putting the nail in the coffin of Big (especially now that Noth has been cancelled) via this contrast of mutual sending. 

Indeed, Aidan coming out the victor of her two main love options from the original Sex and the City was something few people would have put money on. After all, everyone knows that women rarely ever go for “the good guy”—particularly if there’s an asshole choice at play as well. For Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), the requisite “Samantha replacement” for And Just Like That…, the asshole choice is the only one currently available to her in the form of Ravi Gordi (Armin Amiri), a film director who is more in love with his film projects than he could ever be with any mere mortal.

Even though Seema knows this deep down (or even not so deep down), she still tries her hand at the long-distance thing while he’s on location—this, too, somewhat smacking of the Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall)/Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis) dynamic. And yes, while waiting for Ravi to appear for their video phone sex appointment (phone sex, evidently, being all the rage with the fifty-plus set if And Just Like That… is something go by), it ultimately feels reminiscent of Samantha waiting around for Smith to come home on Valentine’s Day after she puts on the ritz, so to speak, by making sushi and placing it all over her naked body (complemented by sandals with a fishbone strap).

Seema, too, puts on her best “fuck me” finery while waiting for Ravi to get on the call at an hour that accommodates their current time difference. But, like Samantha, she finds herself disappointed (though she doesn’t have the same temper that would incite her to scream, “I am not the type of woman who sits home all day waiting for a man!”). 

In another more “nuanced” Samantha nod, Seema complaining about how she and Ravi “were supposed to go to Jean-Georges” (but instead she gets stuck scouting locations for his next movie with him) further positions her as the Samantha “filler.” After all, it was Samantha who would always name-check that restaurant, mentioning it in the season two episode “The Man, The Myth, The Viagra” when she brags to Carrie of the old man she’s dating, “He took me to dinner at Jean-Georges, we got right in—no reservation needed.” And also in the season six episode, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” when she seethes, “I am so sick of these people with their children. I’m telling you, they’re everywhere. Sitting next to me in first class, eating at the next table at Jean-Georges.”

As for Seema’s conflicting emotions toward Ravi and his unavailability, she explains how much she hates this—the “is this real” feeling she gets from Ravi—while walking and talking with Carrie. To boot, Seema says she wishes she could be as cool and collected as Carrie is about the whole Aidan waiting game (since he told her he needs five years to finish raising his sons). Carrie assures her she wasn’t always this “calm.” To which Seema replies, “I wish I knew you then, ‘cause this girl…” she motions to Carrie without specifically mentioning her massive gingham bonnet, which, yes, entails having both an obscene level of confidence and derangement to wear so nonchalantly out in public. Even in a city as “seen it all” as NY. Not only is this “elephant in the room” hat a callback to some of Carrie’s most (formerly) outrageous fashions, but also, in its way, to Berger (Ron Livingston) mocking Carrie at the end of the season six episode, “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little,” with his caustically sarcastic comment, “Nice hat.” This said about a fascinator-type “topper” that is rendered positively tame in comparison to Carrie’s big ol’ bonnet. In short, maybe Seema really does wish she knew Carrie then, back when she was so, by present standards, “demure.” 

In another storyline of the episode involving Lily (Cathy Ang) having a crush on a ballet dancer, Carrie, Anthony (Mario Cantone) and his boyfriend, Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi), go to Lincoln Center to take in a ballet performance with her and Rock (Alexa Swinton). It is here that Carrie being grilled about her relationship by Anthony is a reminder of when she suddenly realized at Smith Jerrod’s play, Full Moon, that she was “playing the part of the woman in the great relationship whose boyfriend was coming down with a cold” (to be sure, one of the top twenty most cheeseball lines of the series). Except now, she’s playing the part of the woman in the great relationship whose boyfriend will “be back eventually.” After telling his girlfriend “no contact” is the best approach for now. 

Among the more obvious nods to SATC, however, is karma coming back around for Carrie when she’s running through her luxurious townhouse to try and turn off the alarm that keeps getting triggered for no reason (yes, it’s peak white people problems) and then slipping on her hardwood floor and landing on her back. The first person she calls (since she already has her phone in hand), naturally, is Miranda. The same Miranda that Carrie infamously ignored when she called Carrie in the season four episode, “Time and Punishment.” This after Miranda throws her neck out because of how she angrily towels off her hair in the wake of getting bitched out by Charlotte on the phone for not supporting her choice to quit her job at the gallery.

Realizing the pain is dire, Miranda then rings Carrie to come over. But rather than cancel a meeting with her editor, Carrie takes Aidan up on his offer to go check on Miranda, finding her ass-out naked on the bathroom floor. As Miranda explains to him (not having expected his presence), it was the only way to feel semi-comfortable after her neck condition worsened. Though she tries to move again to spare Aidan from seeing her, she foreshadows Carrie’s phrase (itself a riff on those Life Alert commercials), “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” by admitting more directly, “I can’t get up.”

Later in “Time and Punishment,” when Carrie comes to see her for the first time post-being outfitted for a neck brace, Miranda derides her for 1) bringing over “bullshit bagels” as a “pretense” to talk about Aidan and 2) “If you fell or something, I would never send my boyfriend to help you. And yes, I know, I don’t have a boyfriend” (oh how that would take on new meaning in And Just Like That…). In other words, never send a boyfriend (or girlfriend) to do a best friend’s job. Even though Carrie wouldn’t have been able to pick Miranda up off the floor like Aidan. It still doesn’t matter to Miranda, who sees it as not just an affront, but an inherent breaking of some tacit “girl code.” One that she doesn’t violate, as promised long ago. For she shows up to Carrie’s abode alone, finding that, as usual, Carrie was being a bit of a drama queen as it’s only her pinkie that bore the brunt of the fall. 

But falling is hardly the height of Carrie’s drama in “Outlook Good.” Oh no, much worse than that, she’s cajoled into the most cringe phone sex of her life. Because, that’s right, Aidan manages to outdo Big in the season six episode, “The Perfect Present,” when he calls her up unexpectedly and manages to needle her into what she bills as “accidental phone sex.” Also adding at the “coffee shop talk” the next morning, “Well actually, he had phone sex. I was on the other end trying to figure out a polite way to get out of it. Turns out, there is no polite way to get out of phone sex.” She finds herself in a similar dilemma with Aidan, who calls her out of the blue despite establishing the “no contact” rule (which, yes, is weird). At a “bar/restaurant talk” with Charlotte and Miranda, she again says something very akin to what she did about Big: “More specifically, he had phone sex. I stopped midway.” She cites Shoe, the kitten she recently got, staring at her as the turn-off, even though anyone would have been turned off by Aidan’s attempt at seduction. At least Big regaled Carrie with memories of their sex life past to get things going, set the mood, etc. Which apparently worked for Carrie, who didn’t need to fake it with him on the phone like she does with Aidan. 

What’s more, Carrie is never the one to reach out with this method of “intimacy,” reminding her friends in “The Perfect Present,” “He called me. I’m a lady.”  In another mimicking pattern of what happens with Aidan in “Outlook Good,” Carrie has to be the one to call Big and ‘fess up to the truth: she’s been seeing someone and it just got serious, so continuing to do “those types of calls” must now end. Just like Carrie has to call Aidan to admit she wasn’t really “in the mood” when he called, but now she is. Unfortunately, Aidan manages to top his previous boner killing ways by telling her he can’t do this right now because his son is sleeping next to him. Mortified (and possibly disgusted), Carrie quickly hangs up just as the alarm once again goes off. A bit of a heavy-handed metaphor, but that’s usually the case with the SATC universe. 

The alarm bells in and out of her head are ringing so strongly that she’s actually prompted to stay awake and write. This being a big deal since, as she tells Giuseppe at the ballet, she hasn’t been doing much writing lately (for, just like in the season five episode, “Unoriginal Sin,” Carrie has difficulty writing when there’s nothing romantic or sexual going on in her life—hence, turning to fiction for the first time). But maybe she would have been better off not taking pen to paper, if you will, when we see/hear that the sentence she comes up with is as banal as: “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into.” So, too, have many viewers who have stayed the course with And Just Like That… A commitment that perhaps begs the Carrie question of “The Perfect Present,” “Can you get to a future if your past is present?” For Carrie Bradshaw and Michael Patrick King alike (who keeps dredging up the past in the so-called present, packaged as “homage” rather than recycled plotlines), the outlook is, well, not good.