And Just Like That….There is NO sex in the city

SPOILER ALERT***

“And Just Like That …” the new, 10-part series from the creators and three-fourths of the actresses who headline the trailblazing HBO TV show “Sex and The City,” is a putrid slog into the gals’ fifth decade of life in which there exists little sex, too much Botox and enough cringe-worthy awkwardness to fill the entire city of New York.

This obvious cash-grab stars three white ladies who appear to have been embalmed some time in the early 2000s – hopelessly befuddled in the ways of modern lingo, technology and gender identities, who seem never to have met a black person or a human being who deviates from doing the deed in the missionary position.

The “Sex” makers should have seen this one coming. The beloved show spawned two pretty bad movies, including 2010’s “Sex and the City 2” – possibly the most Islamophobic piece of garbage ever created.

Predictably, “And Just Like … whatever” is also so godawful and embarrassing to watch, the writers, producers and performers should have done us all a favor and sat this one out, as did Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), who could not face reprising the role she played so spectacularly with her real-life frenemies. She was the smart one.

The rest of the cast should have followed Kim’s lead, counted their money, and ran like hell to the exits. It’s that bad. Not so bad it’s good, but so bad it’s supremely, hideously, unwatchably rotten.

The show, whose first two episodes dropped Thursday on HBO Max, opens more than a decade after the last movie left off, with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristen Davis) and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) all still married to the male spouses they wed years earlier. Miranda is played as an uncomfortably uptight, former corporate lawyer who is seeking another degree at Columbia University in human-rights law, if that is a thing.

Her 17-year-old son by Steve Brady is mystifyingly named “Brady,” Doesn’t this make his moniker the serial-killer-like “Brady Brady” ? This factoid never comes up.

Nor does the sheer horribleness of Nixon, who plays a racist and sexist numbskull, determined to publicly squelch her son’s pot-smoking and ensure that the sex he has with his girlfriend, almost the only action enjoyed in a series supposedly obsessed with sex, should be his last. In real life, Nixon is a failed, leftist gubernatorial candidate ensconced in a same-sex marriage. In the show, she manages to cluelessly insult her new college professor (Karen Pittman) by uncontrollably spewing about her “black” hair braids, as if the prof were some kind of alien creature.

While the original “Sex and the City” was often rapped for its dearth of African-American characters, this one can’t stop making minorities as well as a non-binary Irish/Latinx podcaster Che (Sara Ramirez) into objects of ridicule and weirdness. This, from a cast and writers who certainly know better.

Of course, Episode 2 ends with sparks between Miranda and Che, raising the possibility that something – anything – related to sexuality might actually happen as the series progresses.

Charlotte is a mother of two girls whose basic purpose seems to be criticizing her younger daughter’s fashion choices, as well as to talk Carrie into postponing her planned trip to the Hamptons with her hubby John Preston, AKA “Mr. Big” (Christopher Noth) in order to attend her younger daughter’s piano recital. Before she arrives at the recital, however, Carrie talks her hub into pleasuring himself for her own entertainment, perhaps the least sexy sex scene in modern entertainment history. Eeew!

These plot devices result in Big staying home alone on his Peloton bike, bringing on a – spoiler alert! – massive heart attack just as the pitiful series is taking off. (And it prompted the makers of Peloton to issue a statement declaring that the company’s exercise equipment doesn’t kill,)

But can Carrie say the same?

Astonishingly, what does Carrie do after coming home to her stricken, but still-breathing, man? Call 911? Give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until paramedics arrive? Nah.

She cradles him in her arms until he dies. It seems that Noth, who is alive and well, just couldn’t take this show for another minute.

The question remains. As we launch into a racially and sexually woke future, is there any room for sex among three, boring, idiotic middle-aged Caucasian characters?

Perhaps a more apt question is – Does anyone really care?