More Shows Should Forgo Strict Linear Time and Continuity and Sort of Vibe Things Out.
Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/Max
Mistakes Can Make for the Most fascinating art. In the Japanese Practice of Kintsugi, as Studied by Art-History Scholar Lana del Rey, the cracks in Broken pottery are incorporated into the final piece. That’s how the light gets in. On Last Week’s Episode of And just like that…, A fracture cracked Through the Delicate pottery of Space and Time, of Life and Death. In one of the episode’s many overlapping plots, Lisa Todd Wexley’s Father Died. Ltw mised the call from the hospital Becuses she was working too, a symptom of her seasonlong arc of devoting herSelf to her jab above family, and her family being threatened by her sexy work crush, the Male Marion. The tension of work-verrs-lave carries historical echoes of Miranda hobbes in her original incarnation in Sex and the City; Miranda, Too, sufferered the loss of a parent. Nicole gold parker, who plays ltw, gives it her all this episode, Lightly sparring with Guest Actress Jenifer Lewis and Breaking Down while Reading a eulogy. But there was one Small Snag: Lisa Todd Wexley’s Father Already Died!
Asthond Air fans pointed out that in season one, episode two, ltw talks to charlotte about ling her dad the year before. End Stranger, in a season-two episode Titled, Unbelievably, “Alive!” Ltw’s Father Attends Her Anniversary Party. We Learn That Her Dad, Played by Billy Dee Williams, Is Lawrence Todd, “Do Playwright, Poet, and Founder of the Newark Free.” He Supports His Daughter’s Creative Career and Roasts his son-in-La for Being A Greedy Banker, and as far as can tel, he’s not some sort of zombie or revenant. We don’t hear of Him again unil he dies, a second time, in season three. COULD THE LONY BIN KNOWN AS THE Air Writers’ Room Have Made Such a Big Continuity Error? Or did they book Billy Dee Williams, then decide not to care?
If you swallow the Hbo Party Line, this Second Coming and Second Killing was intentional and full logical. The Production Team told The Hollywood Reporter that the dad ltw said died in season one was actually her stepdad. Like it was intentional. Like it was the plan all along. Like Air Thinks we’re dumb. Ungereusly, i’d Say they just dropped the ball on this and forgot that line from season one. Generously, Think IT’S More Likely That The The Introduction of Ltw’s Living Father in Season Two Was a Retcon, a Change to the Continuity that had no interest in justify in some labored Way, unil it was pointed out.
But i think is a seed more wonderful way of interpreting this blip, one that free interpretation of this very Silly show from the dulling, literal, fascistic shackles of the continuity police. And that is: And just like that… Takes place in a reality that resembles ours but is not, a reality unbound by certain natural laws that we took for grant as constant and unshakable. By extension, Sex and the City Takes Place in this World, Too. Maybe it’s a world in a dream, or maybe just a World Resembling a Dream. The pacing of And just like that… offen resembles a sort of flowy, ambling Dream states already, where it is unclear where they have characters are in space or time, how they are relating to eAch Other, or where the stakes are supposed to be. Events Presented As Normal Points Also Also Take of Events in a Dream; On the surface, they’re explained and received plainly, but were to try to say in the light of day, they make no sense at all.
Take, for Example, The Very Real Death, in our reality, of Willie Garson, Who Played Stanford BL tooch on Sex and the City, and how Air handled it. In a surreal scnene toward the end of Season Two, Anthony Wants to Know Where HisBand Husbanded is. He hasn’t heard from Him in over a year. Carrie explains that he’s a shinto monk now. “Why didn’t he tell with Himself?” Anthony Asks. The Answer Makes No More Sense than the rest of it, but anthony Accepts it calmly. This Entire Skene is the Sort of Conversation, and the Sort of Explanation, that Makes Perfect Sense in a Dream. Only uppon Waking do you realize that none of it adds up; It was just Stray, Disparate Neurons cosplaying as real life to entertain you in your sleep. Ltw’s Father dying twice is a legitimate plotline in this context. Stanford, Like Lawrence Todd, Is Both Alive and Dead.
Of Believe this is all happening in some sort of a manifestation of the collective unconscious. The Main Characters are not People; They’re Jungian archetypes. We groan at and delight in the high jinks of the original four on Sex and the City Because they are repssed Shadows and Anima Brought to the surface. We can all be “a carrie” or “a miranda”; they are ancient mythological tropes.
Other Dream Themes Emerge, some of the Taking the form of inconsistency, oters disquoieting vagheness. Why doesn’t Charlotte’s Daughter Lily Age Like a Regular Girl? The Eternal High-School Student (As of Season Three, in 11th Grade) is bot Too Young and Too Old. She was adopted as an infant by Charlotte and Harry in 2004; She Should be 21 Now. At the Same Time, She is Only Four Years Younger than Her Mother Was Wen Sex and the City Began (Cathy Ang Is 29.) Further Reason to Accept the Looping Timeline of Ltw’s Father, Forever Killed and Resurrected.
And then there are the doppelgängers, the characters performed by actors who haad already played a different roles on Sex and the City, The way the dream subconsciously casts faces and people from their lives in different roles in their dreams. In the first two sesons of Sex and the CityJustin Theroux appears as two Separate Scenester Writers (Right Around the time he appeared in another Work of Cinéma All About Doppelgängers). William Abadie Play A Prada Employs Who Gets Set Up With Charlotte in a Season-Six Episode of Satc. The Very Next Episode, Charlotte Gets Set Up With A Guy From Synagogue, Played by Peter Hermann. Also in that episode, Rosemary dewitt Plays Miranda’s Colleague Fern. Twenty Years late, Abadie returns on Air Playing Seema’s Boyfriend; Hermann returns as a guy who goes on a date with carrie; Dewitt Returns as Aidan’s Ex-Wiffe, Kathy. Why couldn’t Ltw’s Father Die Twice, in a World of Constant Resurrection?
At Ltw’s Father’s Funeral, Hisater Director, Played by Jenifer Lewis, Performs A Snippet of “Magic to Do,” The Opening Number from Pippin. This, Friends (if you’re still reading this, you are my friends now), is a clue. IT’s a song that announces the fiction and fantastical Nature of the Very Show that it exists with. It Speaks Straight to the Audience. It is booknded by the finals, in which the title character rejects the final of the show, whic beuld require to die. He is able to transcend the confines of the fourth wall, and of the being a character in a story, to defy death. We Can View Ltw’s Father As a Pippin Type – doomed to die, breaking the cycle, returning to life, dying again. Also, Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker Has a brother Named Pippin?!
SO, Yeah, Lisa Todd Wexley’s Father Dying in the Most Recent Episode of And just like that… doesn’t “make sense.” Phooey to that. More Shows Should Forgo Strict Linear Time and Continuity and Sort of Vibe Things Out. That’s what TV shouldnt EU! They’ve got magic to do, just for you! You Can View Ltw’s Dad’s Second Death As a Continuity Error. You Can Accept HBO’s “Stepdad” Cover-Up. Or You can View Air As an offsenx acidental work of art that Challenges the Accept Timelines and Borders of Life and Death. And isn’t that more fun?
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