And Just Like That… Miranda Hobbes Became My Least Favorite Character on Television Today
This truly ain't it, Miranda.
By Jan 20th, 2022, 3:43 pm
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Spoilers for And Just Like That… up to episode eight
Full disclosure: I’d initially tapped out of And Just Like That… after its second episode where Miranda ended the racial tension with her professor by rescuing her from a mugger in a Chucky mask, and no, I couldn’t make that up if I tried.
In case you’re curious, that whole “leaving my law firm because I was part of the problem” plot thread goes nowhere. We never see Miranda taking part in one of Nya Wallace’s classes (and if the moment is coming in the last two episodes it’s far too late for me to care). Instead, she and her professor end up connecting post-Chucky scare over Nya’s fertility issues.
Why the series felt the need to pretend like there was gonna be some racial awakening with Miranda is beyond me since her “trying to make a difference” narrative shifts to “I’m just not happy with anything in my life period.”
That culminated into a series of events that made both the series AND Miranda herself trend on Twitter last week, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and find out why.
Wow they really did Steve dirty turning him into a bumbling old bore. Even dirtier then when they made him cheat on Miranda in the first movie (Steve would never do that!) Where is the lovable guy from the series? #AndJustLikeThatpic.twitter.com/DMupjwRWm2
After seeing tweet after tweet tearing the series apart I decided to bite the HBO Max bullet and binge the whole thing for two reasons, 1) I’m a Sex and the City “I have that giant pink DVD boxset” fan who is in awe of how much they’re fumbling the bag with this follow up series, and 2) I needed to watch the episodes to get a clear picture of what the tweets were talking about so I could properly write about it.
In the eighth episode, Carrie straight-up wonders who she’s talking to when Miranda excitedly calls her from a taxi cab, having ended her marriage in order to pursue someone who, no joke, blamed weed for the reason why they hadn’t messaged Miranda back. “Safe flight, whoever this is,” Carrie says, and just like that, I realized that, wow, Miranda is my least favorite character on television right now.
What Miranda has done thus far
Miranda, who drinks at any opportunity she gets, tells us that she’s unhappy with the way things are in her life. The way she goes about fixing it is to, well, cheat on her husband and get mad at her friends who call her out on it by either walking away from them (Charlotte) or crying about how unhappy she is (Carrie).
And her friends just … go along with it, because that’s what friends do?
The drinking plotline is, for some reason, treated as a nonissue for several episodes. I have no clue why Carrie waves off Charlotte’s concerns until the very last possible second, and I have no idea how Miranda is magically cured because she got fingered by Che Diaz and has a new outlook on life, but I digress.
Miranda is having an affair and is giggling her way through it, not taking Steve into account until Che (who uses they/them pronouns) gives her an ultimatum after they find out that Miranda’s not in an open marriage. Why this wasn’t a topic of discussion from the get-go is beyond me, but now that Miranda is losing Che she decides that she needs to get a divorce.
Wow.
Why does it have to be like this?
I honestly wasn’t prepared for how much And Just Like That… would make me hate Miranda, so much so that I find myself asking if she was this bad in the original and, maybe, I just forgot because of nostalgia?
In an interview with Vanity Fair, And Just Like That… writers Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky addressed the criticism toward what was happening with Miranda and Steve.
“Everyone on the show, every single person, loves David Eigenberg as a human being,” Zuritsky said. “We love him as an actor. We love Steve. We are really invested in the Steve-ness of him. He’s so full of life, and the Steves out there are good guys.”
“But Miranda’s journey is representing another reality out there, which a lot of people go through—the reevaluations and transitions in life,” added Rottenberg. “Grown couples grow apart, and people come to epiphanies about what their spouse is or isn’t fulfilling for them. Miranda’s story was very representative of a certain path that a lot of women find themselves on.”
“We didn’t set out to make virtuous characters necessarily,” said Zuritsky. “Even beloved people have crises. Even moral, generally wonderful people make choices that aren’t necessarily admirable or virtuous. But they do them anyway because they’re going through something, or they’re working through a crisis.” Zuritsky also wonders if the criticism of Steve’s story line is rooted in some “lopsided gender issue…you feel angry at her and more protective of him.”
Listen, I know that there are people out there who reach a point in their lives where they no longer feel content with the way things are. I also know that this was a sentiment folks felt (and have been feeling) during COVID. Many relationships that we thought would last forever have broken apart, so no, I’m not saying I disagree with the notion that some couples drift apart.
The problem is that the show continues to pretend like there wasn’t a moment, at all, where Miranda was happy, and it keeps doing it in a way that comes at the expense of others who truly don’t deserve it. Sex and the City spent several seasons making us love Steve, so yeah, we’re gonna react when his only screentime is “losing his hearing joke” and “has forgotten how to finger his wife.”
It’s not some “lopsided gender issue,” it’s watching a woman who is so insensitive about her actions that the one time we see her try and initiate sex with her husband (who is clearly into it) she tries to recreate the affair she’s having.
That’s not fixing an issue, that’s being an awful person who’s feeling some kind of way about being left on read for three months. The awkward attempt at sex is the one time we see Miranda trying to do something about how unhappy she says she is with her marriage, then she proceeds to tell Carrie that it’s “dead on arrival.”
Bravo.
If Miranda is unhappy, fine, but why isn’t she talking to Steve about it? Why isn’t she talking to Steve at all? Why is the series going out of its way to make Steve such a burden on Miranda? Steve needs hearing aids? Fine, that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent. If you know he’s hard of hearing why are you yelling at him through the phone at the farmer’s market? For f*ck’s sake, TEXT him instead of making him feel like a buffoon!
Furthermore, it’s revealed in episode eight that Miranda hasn’t been honest with Che, either! Miranda, again, being completely nonchalant about the damage she’s causing, simply says she didn’t want to bring it up because her time with Che is “so special.”
Am I … supposed to be rooting for Miranda in this series? Because she’s “working through a crisis” and has had some sort of epiphany? “My home’s wrecked already,” Miranda says in an attempt to save face with Che as if that justifies everything that’s happened.
Wow.
Just … WOW!
Like. This is the same Miranda Hobbes who accused Steve of breaking them because he cheated on her, right? Why is she so dismissive of her own actions, furthermore, why is everyone else who knows what’s going on? Charlotte, rightfully, reads Miranda for filth. Miranda, in turn, gets huffy about it. Carrie decides that no, they can’t let this tear them apart because they’ve already lost Samantha and she’s already lost Big, so Miranda walks back over to Charlotte and CHARLOTTE APOLOGIZES.
For what?!
It doesn’t matter, I guess, because from that point on NONE of Miranda’s friends hold her accountable for her actions. It doesn’t matter that she’s a married woman with a son, it doesn’t matter that these women know Steve personally, they just let Miranda go down this messy path that will inevitably hurt Steve and, potentially, hurt Miranda too, as she is clearly not on the same page as Che in regards to what they want in a relationship.
Why, for the love of everything, is this the big queer storyline in the series? Why is it a messy, infidelity plotline where the communication is so poor that Che thought Miranda was in an open marriage and Steve thought things were fine? And in the preview of episode nine, after Miranda rushes to Cleveland to tell Che they can be together, we see Che flat out say that they aren’t dating and Miranda isn’t their girlfriend.
Miranda acts brand new to this even if Che has said they don’t do traditional and, clearly, believes in open relationships. Not that Miranda was listening, I suppose, so focused on her own “big feelings” that she is under the impression that she’s now living in a rom-com and that she didn’t make Steve feel bad.
And just like that … Miranda is the absolute worst.
Briana (she/her - bisexual) is trying her best to cosplay as a responsible adult. Her writing tends to focus on the importance of representation, whether it’s through her multiple book series or the pieces she writes. After de-transforming from her magical girl state, she indulges in an ever-growing pile of manga, marathons too much anime, and dedicates an embarrassing amount of time to her Animal Crossing pumpkin patch (it's Halloween forever, deal with it Nook)
