You know what I used to say when pondering the age-old Sex and the City question of “Which of the gals are you?” I had the most annoying answer, one that is slightly adjacent to my colleague Luke Winkie’s correct assessment that everyone is really a Carrie: “I’m Carrie,” I’d say, “but with a little bit of Miranda and Samantha mixed in.” Or in other words: I’m anything but Charlotte.
I loved the women of Sex and the City. Except for Charlotte. Charlotte was the annoying one—honestly, the least feminist one. Charlotte was the one who saw marriage, rather than love, as the goal (which gets her into considerable trouble). Charlotte was the one who gives up on her career as soon as she gets married (and is left aimless after that marriage fails). Charlotte is the one who pretends to be gay so she can hang out with some cool lesbians (Samantha is the one who actually dates a woman). Charlotte is the one who is mean to Miranda about accidentally getting pregnant because she wants a baby so badly. Charlotte is prickly with Carrie about money, even though she has already won a bad-first-marriage lottery that comes with an entire Park Avenue apartment! (She eventually comes around.) There was a several-episode arc about how she thought she was too hot for her second husband, Harry, the best thing that has ever happened to her! She was always a little too precious, a little too judgmental, a little too Upper East Side, way too traditional. Even the pitch of her voice annoyed me. (Who’s the bad feminist now?) Her clothes weren’t boring, but they certainly weren’t inspiring—they were prim, proper, wealthy, and modest … just like Charlotte.
Which is why I am as surprised as anyone to say that Charlotte York Goldenblatt is my favorite character on this second season of And Just Like That…
It started slowly—or did it? As someone who recently had COVID and suffered through the sick-day indignity of watching both Sex and the City movies (I never learn), I would actually pinpoint Charlotte’s transformation to shortly after Carrie’s failed honeymoon in the first film. The girls join Carrie at a resort in Mexico, where Charlotte shits her pants. That’s typical Charlotte stuff—she shits her pants after exclusively eating pudding cups because she’s scared of the Mexican food at their five-star resort (I mean, come ON). But later, back stateside, when she realizes she is happily married and pregnant while all three of her best friends’ lives are falling apart, she has the good grace to realize that she actually has it made, and she should be grateful. And then she starts to actually act grateful, sticking up for her friends in the right ways and thanking her lucky stars for the wonderful life that has lightly fallen into her lap.
A decade and a half later, Charlotte is better than ever. In fact, I would go as far as to say that she is better than everyone else! Charlotte is the most realized character of this series, the most relatable, the most interesting, the one having the best sex, even the funniest! “Put-upon mother” is not a fun role to play, and yet Charlotte is doing it marvelously. Every line that would have once been delivered with a bit of an immature whine is now layered with years and years of exhausted wisdom. Remember in Episode 4 of this season when she talks about how much she loves cum at brunch? Or two episodes later, when she tracks down condoms for her daughter in a blizzard? She is the one bringing the most Samantha energy into the room these days, and thank god someone is picking up that slack.
Also, not for nothing, Charlotte is actually a really good mom. Let’s not talk about last season, which I am going to put into a box under the bed labeled “Reboot Problems.” This season, she sticks up for Rock when they want to be in a photo shoot, and she makes that dream come true. Charlotte, not Miranda, is the one who leads the way on deciding they really don’t need to know more about the drama between Brady and Lily. Her character’s arc this season is also defined by her realization that she is ready to be more than just a mom again. Her path back into the workplace—belt incident aside, although it is very Old Charlotte—manages to be both moving and funny. This is a woman who has both had it and is still relentlessly romantic about her prospects in life. It is so charming!
Even Charlotte’s whole dog thing has become less annoying, with her embracing the strangeness of her obsession rather than being prim about it. An absolutely sublime moment this season is when we see Carrie and the hot Italian baker standing beneath the oil paintings Charlotte has commissioned of her dogs. This lady is such a weirdo! And she is finally owning it!
But my favorite 60 seconds of the entire season is in the most recent episode, when Charlotte reenters her apartment to find her frustrated family asking for things, while she’s been out with her much younger co-workers to celebrate her big sale to Sam Smith, of all people. She shuffles into her weirdly long hallway, giggling to herself, and tells her family that she threw her phone into a pitcher of margs in order to get out of responding to them. Then, she delivers the most cathartic, real, hilarious monologue of this whole reboot: “I was a person, before you!” she semi-shrieks in the general direction of her children. “I was a person before all of you … I am more than just your wife, and your moms! You need to get that, OK, and get it TOGETHER! God, ugh.”
With that, she carries her previously discarded heels, her disheveled jacket, and herself straight into her bedroom. When her dog (this one is a bulldog named Richard Burton) comes up to the door whine-barking, she opens it just a crack, says “Hey baby,” lets him in, and then slams the door once again on her annoying family. Comedy gold!
Who would have believed such a thing from ol’ Charlotte?
