'And Just Like That': How the Hella Rich Live
Sometimes verisimilitude requires getting outside the bubble.
I was never a huge fan of Sex and the City1. I enjoyed the show to an extent—there were great one-liners, some surprising moments, and lots of great performances. And I could appreciate that the show was exploring themes and situations I might not otherwise engage with2. Plus, The Duchess loved it, and as previously discussed in this space, when it comes to television viewing The Duchess has a rare ability to bend reality to her liking3.
Naturally, when And Just Like That... dropped onto the streaming waves The Duchess insisted we watch it. And it’s ... okay, I suppose. Excruciating in parts (the whole Miranda storyline, woof) hilarious in others (some of Carrie’s one-liners dunking on her friends are hilarious). It’s just a show. A show about insanely rich people, but so, so many television shows depict insanely rich people as a sort of norm, and it’s kind of typical for shows to be set in fictional universes where apparently money problems simply don’t exist4.
But And Just Like That … is extreme. I mean, literally everyone on this show is so wealthy they might shit diamonds. People turn down $1 million gifts, casually sell multi-million dollar apartments, and are the sort of characters who can “make a call” and get just about any service to simply happen. Which is fine, to an extent—plenty of fictions are focused on the hyper wealthy, and it’s often the reason we read/watch them. But the problem with And Just Like That...’s approach to wealth is simple: It treats it like everyone is this wealthy5.
Do You Not?
On the one hand, of course the characters on this show are rich. The main group are in their 50s and 60s and have been working at their respective careers for decades6. Carrie, who made an improbable living as a columnist in the original show7, is now an established author and celebrity of sorts, Miranda was a corporate lawyer for decades, and Charlotte came from money and worked as an art dealer, which is the sort of job rich people do to pass the time. She later married a successful partner-level lawyer. Most of the new characters introduced in And Just Like That... are similarly established.
So, okay—you work your ass off for decades, acquire some property, maybe even marry some money, and chances are good you’ll be doing well in your 50s8. But not everyone marries a wealthy lawyer or financier, and not everyone owns huge properties in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world9. But even the characters who are apparently not quite as monied—a professor at Columbia, a comedian and celebrity podcast host—are still, you know, richer than many if not most people. And even so—we don’t get to see their lives. We don’t see their slightly smaller apartments, or their slightly less new appliances and wardrobes, as if seeing a normal apartment would bring the mood down10.
Ten million people live in New York City, and many of them are not rich. The way this show aggressively ignores that actually Streisands the money: Instead of lulling us into not thinking about how rich everyone is, having zero poors on screen actually makes us think about the money constantly. Even when Carrie meets a young version of herself who moves into the apartment below her and annoys her with late-night parties and noise, it turns out to be a model and jewelry designer who routinely gets celebrities to wear her work in order to boost sales. She might not be as rich as Carrie, but she’s still rich11. The complete and utter lack of anyone living in a modest one bedroom in The Bronx is just ... weird12.
The First Rule of Rich Club
Even more egregious is the way the show pretends money isn’t a thing.
No one discusses it. No one needs it, that’s for sure, but no one even brings it up. When Big’s ex-wife Natasha turns down a $1 million bequest in his will, it’s done so casually it destroys suspension of disbelief. Can we believe Natasha is rich enough to be able to turn down $1 million? Yes. Do we believe she’d do so without even a second’s hesitation—and that no one would find this objectionable? Nope. We do not13.
The result of this strange approach to wealth is a fictional universe that feels less real because the show simultaneously obsesses over that wealth. If you want to build a fictional universe where everyone is rich and enjoys being rich, you can do that14—and there’s an audience out there that wants that kind of escape. But And Just Like That... has built a fictional universe where wealth is treated as the norm, but then it delights in showing us the enormous apartment Carrie buys, the art collection Charlotte’s new friend has in her fabulous apartment, the casual purchases that many people would have to work months to manage, the complete and utter lack of restraint these folks have on their lives. If you want to just wallow in crapulence and ask your viewer to pretend not to notice, you can’t then turn around and point at the crapulence and shout “LOOK AT THAT CRAPULENCE!15”
Having even one major character who was less-than-wealthy would help tremendously16. It would contextualize the wealth, it would stress how these characters deserve what they have, and it would add a touch of realism to the show.
Of course, maybe I’m just jealous because I can’t have bottles of Pappy Van Winkle droned to my mountain retreat on a whim. Okay, forget the “maybe.” I am jealous.
Next week: Yellowjackets and unreliable everything.
In part because this was in the earliest days of universal access to Internet porn and I misunderstood the title to be Sex IN the City and had all sorts of unmet expectations.
Also, I didn’t have cable TV until I moved in with The Duchess, who refused to live without it. I was a primitive, half-formed person before marriage, and don’t ever let me tell you otherwise.
The one area of my life I have held the line and refused to conform to The Duchess’s wishes is bedtime. The Duchess goes to sleep at a shockingly early hour, and for years she fought a grim battle insisting that spouses should go to sleep at the same time. I countered this madness with the simple strategy of suggesting she could stay up later and get the same result. The war is currently in a cease-fire, but if I ever grow ill and weak I know she will pounce.
This show is also a prime example of the folks who don’t understand that New York City—any large, expensive city—is a totally different experience for those who have money and those who don’t. Ubering around Manhattan is not the same as taking the subway from Brooklyn.
I think the first time I realized that some of my high school friends had a lot more money than I did was when I went over a friend’s house and there were rooms we weren’t allowed to go into because of the interior decorating.
Meanwhile I have been writing since I was 9 years old and all I have is a small collection of magic beans and a pile of scrawled IOUs from my fellow authors.
She apparently got paid by the letter.
This ignores some realities, of course, like the fact that raising children is ridiculously expensive and divorce will financially ruin people, or that we’re all a heartbeat away from disastrous medical bills that will absolutely bankrupt us. What a time to be alive!
The definition of “doing well” varies greatly. For example, for me “doing well” means I can afford to have enough pairs of socks to make it to next laundry day without having to construct ersatz socks from milk cartons (I call them “mocks” and then burst into tears).
I’m also fascinated by depictions of home life on television that don’t involve crap just being everywhere. A consumerist society like ours means we’re all just drowning in stuff, and yet the homes depicted on TV are usually ready for a pictorial in Architectural Digest all the time. And also spotless despite there being no indication that these folks actually clean their own homes or even have a cleaning staff. If you dropped in on me without warning you would have to navigate a foyer covered in cat litter and the vague smell of sausages, and if you ask me if I’ve cooked sausages recently the answer, after a disturbingly long pause, would be no.
This sort of weird calibration around money is common in TV shows and films, which often imagine you’re either eating dog food and living in a crumbling tenement or you’re comfortable, with nothing in-between. There’s a lack of nuance in depictions of money, in other words, that ignores the wide middle ground of people working 2-3 jobs and drowning in credit card debt but superficially living a “middle class” existence of some sort.
Even more egregious is when Carrie goes on a few dates with a recently widowed teacher and money is simply not an issue at all. She just sold a multi-million dollar apartment, and he’s a teacher. Money is absolutely coming up.
I don’t know much about rich people, but in my limited experience rich folks are the cheapest bastards you will ever meet. The richer you are, the more likely you will chase a wind-blown dollar bill for at least six blocks.
Bridgerton’s ears are burning.
"Look On The Crapulence and Despair” is the title of my memoir.
For extra credit, that character could be a middle-aged author who lives in Hoboken and always shows up at people’s apartments seeking free cocktails. Why is everyone staring at me?
Carrie, with her closet full of Manolo Blahnik shoes, got to me. I used to work in a shoe store. The average price she paid for a pair of Manolo Blahniks, or Jimmy Choos, was equivalent to a month's worth of paychecks to me. But whatthehell, I loved that show when it first aired. My husband did not. I wrote a story once in which the women of a tiny podunk town in the west watched S&TC, and the editor refused to believe it could happen.
"7 She apparently got paid by the letter." Make that syllable.