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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Guilty

    Aidan says he invited Carrie to stay with him longer in Virginia because he felt guilty. But is that really true?Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Apples to Apples’Is it time for all of us to face the very real possibility that Aidan is a narcissist?For the second time in their yearslong love affair, Aidan has lured Carrie to the countryside. In “Sex and the City” Season 4, Aidan finds a backwoods cabin in the unfortunately named Suffern, N.Y., and all but forces Carrie to spend weekends up there with him and a domestic terrorist squirrel.This time, though, Carrie is in Virginia with Aidan, not so much against her will. In last week’s episode, Carrie eagerly showed up down south to deliver Aidan a key to “their” (insert eye-roll emoji) Gramercy palace, and then Aidan asked her to stay.Why, exactly, does he do that? Carrie asks Aidan that very question toward the end of this episode. There is only one correct answer, and it goes something like: “Because you’re the love of my life. I miss you, and I wish we could be together all the time, and I just wanted to feel that for at least a few days.”But Aidan tells Carrie nothing of the sort. He says simply, “I felt guilty because you came all the way down here, and if I couldn’t ask you to stay, what does that say about us?”Here is what I think: I think that response solidifies for viewers that Aidan is a deeply selfish, stubborn, manipulative jerk who is dead-set on making everyone close to him bend to his will.For starters, Aidan has successfully maneuvered his way into getting what he wants out of Carrie in this most recent iteration of their relationship. In “And Just Like That …” Season 2, he refused to set foot in Carrie’s house — a melodramatic boundary rooted in old cheating wounds Carrie had apologized for time and again. But then Carrie went and sold it and bought the Gramercy townhouse that he all but refuses, essentially, to set foot in today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    HBO Brings Hot Fellas Bakery From ‘And Just Like That’ to Life

    “Who wants a hot croissant?” asked the actor Mario Cantone, reprising his character Anthony Marentino from the HBO show “Sex and the City.”Mr. Cantone, brandishing an apron and a cake server, added an emphasis on the word “hot” and wagged his eyebrows, turning the otherwise ordinary tray of freshly baked pastries into an innuendo.A group of fans in front of him — most of whom were women with their phones at the ready — giggled and took photos.When “Sex and the City” was brought back to life in 2021 as “And Just Like That …,” Mr. Cantone’s character pivoted from a career in wedding planning to starting up a bread delivery business, called Hot Fellas. As the name suggests, his business is staffed by sexy men in short denim rompers so tight that every arm flex or squat teases a wardrobe malfunction.The fictional business became “a fan favorite story line from the moment it first appeared,” Dana Flax, a marketing vice president at HBO Max said in an emailed statement, citing the engagement and enthusiasm for the Hot Fellas on social media.In the most recent episode of Season 3, which was released last week, Anthony opened a Hot Fellas brick-and-mortar cafe (using a pun for male genitalia to alter that phrase) and his current lover, Giuseppe, an aspiring poet played by Sebastiano Pigazzi, temporarily became a Hot Fella to help with its launch — thanks largely to his ability to fill out the skin-tight uniform.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 3 Recap: An Expensive Date

    Carrie flies to Virginia for a lunch with her “boyfriend,” Aidan. Seema tags along. It is unclear why either is really going.Season 3, Episode 3: ‘Carrie Golightly’They say Virginia is for lovers. They do not say Virginia is for casual lunches and sleeping alone in a guesthouse.In Episode 3, it is Carrie who visits Aidan at his home, but not because her “boyfriend” (I’m still using quotes around that word and you can’t stop me) did something crazy like invite her. It is because Virginia is on a list of locations Carrie could go to promote her work, along with sexier options like Google’s Palo Alto office and Austin’s South by Southwest festival.First of all, why does Carrie even have to choose? She is a childless cat lady with no looming deadlines. What is stopping her from hitting up all three to boost her clout in preparation for an upcoming foray into historical fiction?But Williamsburg, Va. is the only place our gal wants to go because it’s vaguely near Aidan, and she thinks that if she pops down south, cool as a cucumber, “easy breezy,” with no expectations, Aidan might be willing to meet her for a quick meal. Because the bar for this relationship is in the basement.The saddest part about all this is that Carrie feels she needs a cover story in the first place. She can say, “I love you,” to Aidan, but apparently, she can’t simply say, “I want to see you.” And that’s really Aidan’s fault; she is just playing by his rules. But this game sucks.Thankfully, Miranda is in touch with her judgy side, as she can’t stop cracking jokes about Carrie venturing over the river and through the woods for merely a bite to eat with her beau. Yet, Miranda is concocting a cover story of her own. After some bad luck in the romance department this season that included a tryst with a nun and a snub from a straight “guacamole girl,” Miranda is finally sweet on someone she would make sense with: Joy (Dolly Wells) the BBC producer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Textual Relations

    Carrie’s long-distance “situationship” with Aidan becomes frustrating in ways she didn’t anticipate.Season 3, Episode 2: ‘The Rat Race’Here in the real world, it’s a common refrain from single people that dating apps are as tired as the tiramisu Seema’s date orders for her without asking. Everyone is sick of the swiping, the ghosting and the serial situationships. The virtual-first connections that seem essential to dating in 2025 have never played a major role in the “Sex and the City” franchise, mostly because the majority of this decades-spanning story has predated all that.But Carrie’s former neighbor Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) shows up at the beginning of Episode 2 to reflect that cultural shift, lamenting to Carrie that, as a single woman of today, she is mostly in a relationship with her phone. Turns out, throwing it across a room may be a more effective way of it helping you meet someone.Some of the characters, though, regardless of age, are no better than Lisette when it comes to phone addiction.Starting with our star, Carrie is in something of a love-hate relationship with texting Aidan. Now that Aidan has cracked the communication door ajar, Carrie feels slightly more empowered to reach out to her “boyfriend.” (I insist on putting that in quotes because while Carrie may use that word to refer to Aidan, at this point, I simply refuse.)First, Carrie drafts a long, meandering voice text to Aidan about a newly-discovered rat infestation in her garden, but she deletes it before sending. Considering Aidan’s request for no contact (or at least very limited contact), she determines it is best to leave him alone.But without any such regard for the rules he set himself, Aidan lights his no-contact contract on fire with a surprise appearance at Carrie’s Gramercy townhouse, to her delight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3 Premiere Recap: Outlook Good

    The new season opener found most of the women prioritizing their men’s needs over their own. That didn’t seem likely to last.My jaw is bruised from hitting the floor when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) tells her gal pals that her boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett), asked for “no communication” while he deals with family issues — and that she is just fine with giving it to him. No communication. For five full years. And this is supposed to be love?Let’s review how we got here. At the end of Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the on-again lovers Carrie and Aidan found themselves at an impasse when Aidan’s son, Wyatt, hit hard times. Wyatt needed paternal supervision — so much so, apparently, that Aidan felt compelled to devote himself to it entirely back home in Virginia. The Gramercy palace Carrie had just purchased for the two of them became a reluctant bachelorette pad, and their love was relegated to a long-distance situationship.At that point, we knew Carrie and Aidan were going to hold onto their love connection but weren’t going to visit each other — as implausible as that seemed alone. What was less apparent until the first few moments of Season 3 was that they weren’t going to speak, period. No texting, no FaceTime, not even the occasional Instagram like. The only hellos they’re exchanging are blank postcards, which they’re each sending back and forth between Virginia and New York, and for Carrie, this is apparently enough. Right.This no-contact-but-stay-together setup was never realistic — even if we suspended every possible disbelief. It is even more absurd that Carrie plays along.It doesn’t take long for Aidan to break his own rule, though. All he needed were three beers and a good, old-fashioned “ache.” He buzz-dials Carrie out of nowhere and lures her into one-sided, rather frantic phone sex. (Carrie may have been more enthusiastic if not for the beady eyes of her kitty-cat, Shoe, who was watching from the edge of the bed. But between that, Aidan’s intoxicated grunts, and a disruptive horn-blare, she just couldn’t quite get there.)Not long after, Carrie calls up Aidan for Round 2, but the time is no good for Aidan. He is back on Wyatt patrol, lying in bed beside his sleeping son. Carrie hangs up in shame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Sarita Choudhury, the ‘And Just Like That …’ Star, Spends Her Sundays

    When Sarita Choudhury joined the cast of “And Just Like That …” in 2021 as Seema Patel, she said the role initially felt “bigger” than her.But three seasons into the show, a revival of “Sex and the City” on HBO Max, the actress has found herself much more settled in playing the glamorous, sex-positive real estate broker who steals scenes in sophisticated neutrals, gesticulates with cigarettes and dons old-Hollywood head scarves.“Just like I grew into playing Seema, Seema also has grown through mistakes, through hanging out with Carrie and being free within her power,” said Ms. Choudhury, referring to Carrie Bradshaw, the character played by Sarah Jessica Parker.Ms. Choudhury has played Seema Patel on “And Just Like That …” since 2021. She also spent many seasons on Showtime’s “Homeland” and starred opposite Denzel Washington in a 1991 romantic drama.Craig Blankenhorn/MaxWhile she has always taken it as a compliment that Seema reminds viewers of the original series’ sexually liberated Samantha Jones (played by Kim Cattrall), Ms. Choudhury believes Seema has carved her own lane. “Her ability to dive into, whether it’s an affair or a quick advice, is similar,” she said. “But apart from that, I find them very different.”In the new season of “And Just Like That …,” which premieres Thursday, she said she is looking forward to more “character growth” emerging in Seema’s arc.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Happy Clothes’ Review: Patricia Field Doc Is Pleasantly Chaotic

    “Happy Clothes” covers her work on “Emily in Paris” and “Sex and the City,” as well as her time as a tastemaker in the 1970s and ’80s underground.Patricia Field likes, as she puts it, “happy clothes.” If you’ve seen her work, you get it; if you’ve watched TV, you have probably seen her work. The fashion maven is one of the most celebrated and influential costume designers of the past three decades, with “Emily in Paris,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City” among her credits. Michael Selditch’s new documentary, “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field” (in theaters and on demand), follows Field as she works on the second season of the Starz comedy “Run the World,” but the feature is really a celebration of her long career.A movie like this can head in a lot of directions, and a possible weakness of “Happy Clothes” is that it tries to go in all of them. There are conversations with Field’s friends and collaborators, including the “Devil Wears Prada” director David Frankel, the “Sex and the City and “Emily in Paris” creator Darren Star, and the actresses Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Lily Collins. Field’s work in the past as the owner of a well-known boutique that bears her name comes to life through archival footage and interviews, while observational images show her working with assistants, shopping for pieces and going to sets.There’s just a lot here. But with a subject like Field, the mild chaos feels pleasantly appropriate. Her taste runs toward the conspicuous and bold, and several interviewees — particularly Parker, who became a fashion icon partly because of her willingness to wear anything Field selected — note that her choices can be shocking at first. Prints and patterns, gems and silhouettes, neons and bold accessories: You never really know what you’ll get when you work with Field.But that’s why people love her. Her style, as she says, is happy. “I like clothes that don’t die,” she explains, a statement that reveals she’s always thinking about longevity. Field is amazingly energetic — her 80th birthday approaches as the film begins — and she’s interested only in the future, telling someone at one point that she doesn’t keep an archive because she’s always looking forward.It’s probably ironic, then, that the most illuminating element of “Happy Clothes” is a sequence in which her taste now is linked to her history as a central figure in New York’s underground culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Former employees and customers attest to what it meant to have a place — her store — where they could be unapologetically queer or trans or just interested in fashion, where they didn’t have to hide their identities. Field was ahead of her time in more ways than one, and this history suggests that she has been practicing an exuberant joy her whole career. That, “Happy Clothes” says, is her real legacy. More

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    As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty

    As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More