I’m not sure if it’s the organic lawn care or the high fence or the abundance of seed-producing plants and trees or what, but our backyard is real wildlife haven and in recent years, baby nursery. Two years ago some robins built a very sturdy nest on one of our downspouts and two generations of chirpy babies have been born there. This year, a pair of doves moved in and hatched at least one fluffy baby. Thankfully the baby was big enough to fly when days of heavy rain (and perhaps, family overcrowding; the nest was built for compact robin butts not bigger dove butts) caused the nest to fall down. The whole family perched on the fence outside our kitchen door and stared in at us like FIX IT.
Toward the back of our yard is a divot in the lawn that has become a literal rabbit hole in that six or seven rabbits have been born there. I have very mixed feelings about this. While I like the rabbits and love to see the babies, I also have two idiot dogs (who as a bonus are sighthounds). There is also a hawk living in a towering spruce the next yard over, and several neighborhood cats prowling around doing bird murders. I worry too much about these tiny things!
We have three baby rabbits this year. I hadn’t seen them until yesterday when they were discommoded by the sound of lawn equipment and bing-bonged out of their cozy nest. My husband gently collected them, chattering softly at them in French*, and I think I have to write a children’s book about them now? Trois Petits Lapins et Un Homme. I hope those babies stayed in their nest. We saw their mother in the yard this morning and I have never so badly wanted to be able to ask a wild rabbit a question. Keep those babies in their baby hole!
I mean, come on. Our friend says this one’s name is Honeybunny:
I watched the third season premiere of And Just Like That… last week and briefly considered posting a Substack note about it, or recapping it in more detail here, but there is probably enough about it on the internet already. IYKYK. It’s not a good show! The dialogue sounds like an awkward cocktail party despite the actors knowing one another personally, and playing these characters, for decades. It’s stilted! They’ve dialed down the doofusification of Miranda but the cost was doofusifying Charlotte. Carrie is still sad, pinched, and kinda mean? The manic pixie jewelry designer neighbor Lisette comes back at some point, WHY?
The only reason I watch this now is to be able to participate in the zeitgeist of making fun of it. Healthy? Not at all. But I am making the healthy choice of not addressing THAT Aidan scene. I will not be taking further questions even though MANY ARE WARRANTED.
What I do want to talk about vis-à-vis this show and the one that came before it, the one we sort of all wish we were still watching, are the respective subreddit communities. I spent some time taking a spin through each, and, let me tell you, I don’t think I’m dealing with the top brass.
I spent less time in the AJLT sub because the posts are more what you’d expect: complaints about how the writers don’t seem to have watched the original series, accusations that Michael Patrick King not-so-secretly hates women over 50, complaints about Che Diaz (even though they are no longer on the show). This all makes sense to me and if it is sometimes inelegantly expressed, so be it.
The Sex and the City sub on the other hand…woof.
Part of the problem comes from a new generation of viewers having trouble dealing with the fact that the show is 25+ years old, and that jokes you could make on HBO in 1998 are not jokes you could, or should, make now. They shouldn’t have been made then, in many cases! And I would love to give first-time viewers (I don’t think they are always “younger,” necessarily) the benefit of the doubt. But “Big assaulted Carrie in the elevator!!!!” is a bad and uninformed take. “Carrie is a garbage person” tells me you cannot handle human imperfection. And “Charlotte should have worked things out with Trey” is grounds for going to prison.
Calling out the behavior of television characters for being toxic in their relationships is like…missing the whole point of television? OF COURSE THEY ARE TOXIC. Without toxicity, there is no show; it’s just a bunch of people existing, and that is what your real life is for!
Honestly I read a lot of scary doomer essays these days and the thing that makes me despair most for the future of our species is an internet forum about a TV show where someone asks in all earnestness “Don’t you think Carrie should have invited Miranda to stay at her place instead of letting her rent an Airbnb?” It is a TV show, not a documentary! Please go outside sometimes!
The other element at play here (I guess I am talking about it after all) is the discourse around the AJLT fashion, which is of course over the top. The thing is, the fashion in the Sex and the City universe has been ridiculous for a long time, particularly since the second half of season 6. (Sorry to those of you who are nodding out right now.) But this is a known thing. They are not going to suddenly start dressing these women in stuff they bought with Kohl’s Cash! I follow the costume designers on Instagram and they work for months to source the wardrobe. So it is not ever going to be anything other than a main character.
This week, I read a rando on Substack who wondered (she couldn’t help! But wonder!) if the show is a critique of out-of-touch wealthy people. It’s not, but it’s certainly a lens through which to view the show if you so desire. However this person went on to say that if the show is just going to be about “pretty fashions” it should be about relatable things that real women over 50 can wear. M’am may I recommend the window of your local Eileen Fisher store? Like…why do you watch television, exactly? Go flip through a J. Jill catalog and leave Carrie Bradshaw’s (admittedly shocking) gingham hat out of this.
A couple of weeks ago we went to the recliner theater to see Mission Impossible 27: The Last One, We Promise (Wink) and it was fine. Not good mind you. But fine. Pom Klementieff is back as Paris even though she definitely died in the last movie! But someone had to be sexily perp-walked through an Austrian prison in a cropped white tank top and low-rise pants, and she, I suppose, drew the short straw.
If you see this movie in the theater, or if you saw Top Gun: Maverick in the theater, then you know that Tom Cruise now treats himself to a little delusion between the previews and the main event: a little hope-you-enjoy-the-show welcome message. This is weird, right? Just his huge face looming above you, wishing with all his performative might that you will enjoy this work of art he has endeavored to provide for you. The most recent one was especially strange because you could see his pupils moving back and forth across the teleprompter, even though he has been an actor for about 40 years and one assumes has memorized quite a bit of dialogue in his time. The man played the lead in a movie written by Aaron Sorkin, who has never used one word when three dozen will do!
This week it is going to be summer, finally. The weather has been so psycho that last night the house got cold enough for the heat to come on, which eventually triggered the air conditioning. Sorry to the atmosphere and also my utility bills.
I am hoping for good weather on Saturday, which will mark my first appearance in public as a car show wife. My husband is very nervous but I think if we just practice glaring sternly at children who don’t ask before sitting in the car, we will be fine. Maybe we should have practiced on our nieces and nephews, now that I am thinking about it? Although they never really take us seriously, and who can blame them.
The thing I am most excited about is my exalted car show VIP status, which I assume means access to a real restroom and some free bottled water. Good enough for me! I will also take plenty of sunscreen and a book. If I learn anything of anthropological value I’ll be sure to share it here. It will be a good way to repurpose my Carrie Bradshaw-related Reddit perusal time.
* He is also learning French. We have a lot of conversations in very poor French around here.