Warning: Spoilers for And Just Like That episode 8.
Carrie Bradshaw’s excessive lifestyle was always subject to fan nitpicks back in Sex and the City, which And Just Like That revives with her new neighbor. Although centered around the friendships, relationships, and work lives of four women in their 30s in New York City, Sex and the City also primarily delved into the affluence of such experiences, which received plenty of backlash in terms of how Carrie, a columnist, could afford her expensive apartment, shoe obsession, and forward-fashion extravagancies. While Sex and the City’s characters like Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte were clearly wealthy, it was also curious as to how Carrie could keep up with such a lifestyle on a journalist’s salary.
And Just Like That season 1 has focused on the current lives of SATC’s characters as 55-year-old mothers, widows, and career-oriented women reflecting on how different they are from when they were in their 30s and 40s in the original series. As such, And Just Like That has lacked many parallels into how the characters lived in Sex and the City, keeping their youthful counterparts on the backburner. And Just Like That episode 8 finally introduced a young 20-something New Yorker living below Carrie, who serves as a perfect reminder of Sarah Jessica Parker’s SATC character at the beginning of the original show. As Carrie looks at Lisette Alee and sees a younger version of herself, And Just Like That also revives classic fan nitpicks about Carrie’s old lifestyle.
After Carrie sees Lisette and her friends drinking and hanging out outside of her brownstone, she wonders how she’s able to afford an apartment like this at her age. Ironically, this was a question that irked many friends during Sex and the City’s first few seasons. While Carrie was a popular columnist before she became a best-selling writer in the later seasons, a journalist in the ‘90s would have only been making around $40,000, which doesn’t seem like enough to afford a large apartment in the Upper East Side for just herself. Carrie later revealed in Sex and the City’s original series that her apartment was rent-controlled, which finally answered how a columnist at that time could afford such a nice apartment, lavish clothing, and endless cosmopolitans.
Carrie questioning Lisette’s ability to live in the same building that she’s been residing in since the ‘90s is fairly hypocritical, and shows that And Just Like That is now in on the joke about Sex and the City’s most unrealistic lifestyle quirks. And Just Like That also one-up’s Carries' old ability to afford her Upper East Side apartment, as she discovers that Lisette is an extremely successful jewelry designer, so having a rent-controlled apartment doesn’t need to be explained for her. After being so separated from young New York City life before Big's And Just Like That death, Carrie’s newfound friendship with her neighbor will also be the best way for her to reconnect with the personalities that made her original column so successful. Questioning Lisette’s ability to live in the brownstone was And Just Like That’s way of showing how far removed Carrie is from her younger 30-somethings self, so forming a friendship with Lisette may finally help get her back to Sex and the City columnist Carrie.
By making the young New Yorker who moves in below Carrie already profoundly wealthy, And Just Like That is painting a more realistic picture of the affordability of NYC apartments. It still seems nearly impossible that Carrie would have lived in a large apartment with a walk-in closet in the Upper East Side for only $750 a month - even in the 1990s. At least in And Just Like That is avoiding controversy by trying to pretend that a columnist could easily afford Carrie’s lavish lifestyle. By making Alee a successful designer, the series is able to introduce a younger crowd to counter Carrie’s generation without repeating Sex and the City's unrealistic living situation.