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This Week

• I, for one, love this And Just Like That reunion.  

• When did people at the movies become heathens?

• If Sarah Snook doesn’t win the Emmy, we riot. 

• I saw Beyoncé, and still haven’t recovered.

• Ryan Gosling, music superstar. 

The Happily Ever After We Want to See

I have a strange relationship with Sex and the City. It is one of my favorite shows in TV history, and I also think that one of the most important story arcs of Sex and the City is horrendous. Yet I still love the show. I don’t understand how both things are true, other than that I guess everything else besides this one piece of the show that I hate is so good that it makes up for its terribleness: Big (Chris Noth) and Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) should never have ended up together. 

I don’t care to admit how many times I’ve rewatched Sex and the City, which I do often because there’s something about the show that feels healing to me—that is, until I again get to the final episode and again want to throw something at my TV screen when Big rescues Carrie from Paris. While, sure, I understand that Sex and the City is a romantic fantasy in which the single gal gets her happy ending in the form of the man she chased for years finally committing to her—but I also hate that the man is Big! If you watched Sex and the City, you know: Big sucks. 

This aggravation is top of mind this week because, in the latest episode of Max’s And Just Like That, there’s revisionist history happening which some fans I’ve spoken to are annoyed by, but which I think is perfect. 

Carrie, seemingly out of the blue, emails her ex-fiance, Aidan (John Corbett), which leads to them reuniting in New York, now that they’re both single. (Aidan is divorced; Carrie is a widow, following Big’s death-by-Peloton.) Aside from Carrie’s willingness to overlook a shockingly hideous coat that Aidan wears when they meet, their connection is electric, as if a spark from when they first met 23 years ago has traveled through space and time to light up their rekindled relationship. 

The speed of their intimacy is, on the one hand, ludicrous. Carrie’s grief over Big’s death is still very much a dominant storyline; Aidan doesn’t even live in New York; and then there’s the small matter of Carrie having been an absolute piece of shit to him all those years ago. Aidan, to his credit, acknowledges this, with his refusal to go back into the apartment they once shared because it’s too painful—leading to the bizarre twist in which the two of them sublet Che’s (Sara Ramirez) Hudson Yards apartment as an urgently needed love shack. How could they so quickly move past that complicated history? 

On the other hand, there’s the other major part of what’s happened in these last two episodes since Aidan’s return: My god, Parker and Corbett have undeniable, irresistible chemistry. When her friends wonder if things are moving too fast, Carrie says, “If it feels right—and it does—why slow it down?” It’s a fair point in general, in that surrendering to any romance is inherently reckless. But it’s also gratifying—at least to me, as a Sex and the City fan. Carrie and Aidan always felt right. It’s why it was so maddening to see her treat him so poorly and make such sabotaging decisions. Aidan didn’t deserve that; neither did their love.

Ostensibly, Carrie’s behavior—cheating on Aidan with Big; breaking up her engagement to Aidan—was in the service of making sure Big and Carrie end up together. I hated that! Big was horrible to Carrie for so long, stringing her along in demeaning ways, until randomly he was ready to commit to her. So when Carrie, in a fabulously acted scene by Parker, admits years later, “I’ve been asking myself, was Big a big mistake?” I reflexively clapped.

Yes, it’s a sentiment that’s tantamount to heresy within the show’s Bible. It’s especially confusing in the context of And Just Like That, a sequel series that made the decision to portray Carrie and Big’s marriage, all these years later, as very happy and healthy. I understand that a line that seems to fly in the face of what we know about these characters and this show can feel like a betrayal to some fans. But to other fans (me), who have differing, passionate opinions (Big is the worst!), it’s easier to forgive: It validates how I’ve always felt about the show. 

There’s perhaps an even more important line near the end of the episode, when Che meets Aidan for the first time. They see how much he and Carrie are swooning over each other, and how easy their new relationship already seems. What happened that they weren’t together this whole time? “I made a mistake,” Carrie tells Che, devastated. That’s the series course-correction that we should get behind. She made a mistake—yer darn tootin’ she did—which is easier to swallow as a fan (because it’s true) than the earlier dismissal of her and Big’s entire history together. 

These last two episodes of the show have almost seemed like fan fiction for me, because I’ve always thought that Aidan and Carrie belonged together, but given everything that happened between them, it could never make sense. And just like that, though, it finally does.

The Barbenheimer Bad Behavior

It was such a soaring, invigorating experience to see the enthusiasm with which audiences attended Barbie and Oppenheimer screenings in the last several weeks. Getting excited about movies! You love to see it! 

What you hate to see is that people have forgotten how to act while at the movies. 

I’m not talking about displays of excitement. Barbie, for example,was made even better by watching it with an energized crowd reacting vocally and uproariously. When I saw it, people in my theater kept repeating some of the film’s best lines—the ones we all couldn’t believe Mattel allowed in the film—out loud, like a reflex born out of disbelief. It was fun. It was usually accompanied by a secondary giggle. That’s the fun of a communal experience.

Not fun: everyone being on their damn phones. Phones glued to our hands like they’re now a part of the appendage, like a new form of human evolution, is an inescapable-if-annoying new reality. But I feel like we all used to operate with an understanding that we don’t use them during movies. 

Over the last few weeks—especially during the films’ opening weekend—iPhone-filmed footage of Barbie and Oppenheimer was all over my social media feeds. Not only were people using their phones in the theaters, but they were also literally filming the screen. That violates, like, two social norms I thought we all had the common sense to abide by.

Aside from that was the endless scrolling, made obvious by the glow of phone screens throughout both films and audience members’ heads down looking at them instead of up at the movie they paid to watch. I sat next to four people at one Barbie showing who were dressed in pink outfits and posed for selfies before it started. Theoretically, they were interested enough in this movie that they had procured costumes to wear while watching it. Then, during two of the biggest movements, three of the four of them were scrolling and typing on their phones, their heads down. I know this because it was so distracting for me, but I also was confused by their behavior—these people missed the scenes that were kind of the whole point of the entire movie!

This poor moviegoing etiquette isn’t new; my colleague Coleman Spilde wrote about it for Obsessed last year. But it all seemed super-charged during Barbenheimer weekend, in a way I hope doesn’t become normalized. 

Anyway, I’m going to pour myself some prune juice, open up my copy of AARP magazine, settle down for a marathon of Matlock or Murder She Wrote, and stop my old-man whining. But I needed to get it off my chest!

Sarah Snook Really Deserves the Emmy Now

I loved Kate Aurthur’s lengthy profile of Succession Sarah Snook for Variety for several reasons. 

For one, I don’t remember ever coming away from an article believing so strongly that a performer must win all the acting awards for their performance before. The feature had fascinating insight from Snook and collaborators about crafting her performance that made her work on the show seem all the more impressive. It’s the kind of deep dive into an acting triumph that someone hoping to win an Emmy dreams of—a good sign for Snook’s chances, should the Hollywood writing and acting strikes end and the Emmy Awards ever happen. (AMPTP, I will never forgive you if we’re denied a Sarah Snook Emmys speech because of your villainous behavior.)

But there’s one detail in the piece that really blew me away. Apparently, Shiv Roy’s pregnancy was written into the show midway through the final season, when Snook herself learned she was expecting. Episodes and scenes had already been shot in which, when Snook performed them, there was never a plan for Shiv to be pregnant. Additional scenes were written and filmed for those episodes after the fact. Some of the most explosive exchanges, though, like the one where Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) tells Shiv that she’s “maybe not a good person to have children,” were filmed before there was the decision for Shiv to be pregnant. 

It’s really interesting to read about, which you can do so here! 

How Does Beyoncé Do It?

I saw Beyoncé perform last weekend at one of her shows in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It’s unreal, even unfathomable, how good she is at this. Every element of the show operated on a different level from any performer I’ve ever seen live, from her vocals (stronger than ever) to the choreography (humans shouldn’t be allowed to move that way) and the unbelievable stagecraft and costumes. (It is maybe the most unimportant observation, but she looked stunningly beautiful—and also just really happy!)

It’s hard to articulate how phenomenal the show was, other than to say that it was so good, it was worth the godforsaken journey to New Jersey. So I’ll let the one person most able to sound coherent and smart while also being wildly effusive do it instead. Take it away, Oprah:

Ryan Gosling, Pop Star

“I’m Just Ken,” the hilarious ballad Ryan Gosling sings in Barbie, debuted this week on the Billboard Hot 100 chart—an encouraging sign of taste in America! (Less encouraging: It’s only at No. 87. Let’s get this straight to No. 1!)

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

The Real Housewives of New York City’s reboot continues to be a sheer, silly delight—complete this week with discourse about popsicles in vaginas. Read more. 

Paul Reubens, who was Pee-wee Herman, never fully got the critical reappraisal he deserved after his arrests in the early ’90s and ’00s. Read more.

The scariest scene in the new season of The Witcher on Netflix was also its bloodiest. Read more.

• Passages: This movie is sexy-as-hell, and everyone should watch it. (Now in theaters)

• Only Murders in the Building: Delightful show continues to be a delight! (Tues. on Hulu)

• Heartstopper: Swoon-inducing show continues to cause swoons! (Now on Netflix)

• The Meg 2: The Trench: Jason Statham battling a giant shark shouldn’t be this boring! (Now in theaters)

• The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart: Sigourney Weaver deserves better! (Now on Prime Video)

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