Editor’s note: This article contains a spoiler for HBO’s “And Just Like That.”

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Joy Castro was interviewed for a Jan. 5 guest column in The New York Times on HBO’s “And Just Like That,” the reboot of “Sex and the City.”

Joy Castro

The series focuses on three of the main characters from the original series — Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte — as they navigate present-day New York City. The column by Rhonda Garelick, dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons/The New School, focuses on how the 50-something women seem perplexed by everything from politics to their own bodies.

“It’s as if its characters must have been asleep for 20 years and awakened utterly gob-smacked to find themselves encountering such things as Black professors, nonbinary children and queer longings,” said Castro, Willa Cather Professor of English and ethnic studies and director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies at Nebraska.

Garelick noted that the show’s protagonists often behave with curious immaturity.

Castro questioned Carrie’s reaction upon discovering Big slumped over, but still conscious, after his heart attack.

“If one finds one’s husband collapsed but still alive, does one not call 911 immediately?” Castro said. “Carrie’s behavior was so baffling to me.”

Castro is an award-winning author who has written or edited seven books, as well as numerous stories and essays. Her latest novel, “Flight Risk,” was released in 2021.

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