Since its premiere on HBO in 1998, Sex and the City has portrayed Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) as a sophisticated character. Despite her romantic shortcomings, she excelled in knowing the best places to socialize, how to dress stylishly, and defining the quintessential New Yorker.
In the recent episode of And Just Like That… on MAX, we discover a new side of Carrie as she and her friend Seema (Sarita Choudhury) reveal their unfamiliarity with air travel. During their flight to Virginia, they disregard norms, attracting disapproving glances and subtle scolding from the flight attendants.
Witnessing these typically cosmopolitan women struggle with a routine commercial flight was surprising. It makes one ponder… Has Carrie Bradshaw ever flown on a plane before?
Let’s back up and set the scene. And Just Like That… Season 3 Episode 3 “Carrie Golightly” opens with Carrie turning down several high profile appearance requests in lieu of huffing it to Williamsburg, Virginia for a tiny event. Carrie’s reasoning is romantic. She says will be about an hour drive away from Aidan (John Corbett) and his farm so they can get lunch! (Girl, Norfolk is actually like two hours from Williamsburg, but whatever.)
Anyway, Carrie invites Seema to accompany her. Soon, the two women are boarding a flight to Virginia. Now, And Just Like That… is a show that often demands you suspend your disbelief, but this whole plane sequence drove me insane. The plane Carrie and Seema board seems to be a relic of the 1970s, where leg room was spacious and seats softly cushioned. Okay. That’s fine. It’s just a set.
However, Carrie and Seema then proceed to act like absolute animals. They casually use the middle seat for their designer purses; this led to my abject disappointment that the show didn’t give us the gag of someone actually trying to reclaim their ticketed seat. Carrie takes her laptop out and puts it on her lap at the exact moment where everyone knows you stow your damn laptops! Oh, and Seema just stands in the aisle, delaying the flight’s departure because…she wants to??
Kudos to the writers for actually having the flight attendant say something about Seema’s inability to sit, but, dear lord, no one acts like this on a plane in 2025 without getting shamed on social media or thrown off the flight! Maybe I don’t know how to balance myself in stilettos, but at least I know how to behave on a plane.
What’s even more frustrating is that we know Carrie has flown commercial before. There are full arcs in the original Sex and the City where she travels to California and Paris. Heck, part of Sex and the City 2 actually sees the girls traveling to Abu Dhabi! Furthermore, if the show wanted Carrie and Seema to travel to Virginia in diva style, couldn’t they have just flown private?
Of course, nothing about this trip makes a ton of sense to me, a real life New Yorker who actually has been to both Williamsburg and Norfolk many times. And Just Like That… not only gets the distance between Williamsburg and Norfolk wrong, but also the vibes of both areas. Williamsburg looks distinctly Victorian in style, not Colonial, while the Norfolk Carrie visits in the teaser for next week’s episode looks nothing like a city best known for its beaches and Naval bases. (Did the writers room confuse Charlottesville and Norfolk?? I feel like that has to be it?)
Anyway, all of this is to say, while I would love to grab brunch or cosmos with Carrie and Seema, I never want to see them on my plane. Monsters!
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