Is ‘And Just Like That ...’ a pure ‘hate-watch’ or an insidious social experiment?

Ida Giancola, a 32-year-old fashion influencer from Chicago, thinks “And Just Like That …,” the sequel to “Sex and the City,” is an awful television show.

Among the issues, besides the cringe dialogue, overacting, and plots that come and go with no discernible reason: The nonsensical predicament Carrie has fallen into, reuniting with ex-fiancé Aidan, who says they need to “wait” five years to truly be together, but in the meantime what even is their relationship supposed to be? Charlotte has the children she always dreamed of, but the bratty teens get far more screen time than they should. Then there’s Miranda’s one-night stand with a virgin nun — guest star Rosie O’Donnell! — that she may have engineered mostly for the sake of having a bed for the night, since the former partner in a top New York law firm is inexplicably homeless.

“It’s like a surrealistic art piece,” Giancola said. “Like a ‘how bad can it get?’ sort of thing,”

And yet, she’s excited to watch every week. She chats about the show with her friends. She listens to podcasts that analyze and mock each episode. She and her sister talk on the phone about the ridiculous storylines.

“It’s a completely crazy, topsy-turvy version of something that I love,” said Giancola, whose mom let her rent DVDs of the original series from Blockbuster and now shares her thoughts about the sequel with 136,000 followers on TikTok.

Some might call what Giancola does “hate-watching,” a well-chronicled phenomenon since the new series debuted in 2021. (Viewers nearly revolted against the insufferable Che Diaz — Miranda’s first queer partner, played by Sara Ramirez — who referred to a stand-up comedy act as a “comedy concert.”) But in the middle of its third season, “And Just Like That …,” which airs on HBO Max on Thursdays, appears to have transcended the hate-watch concept to become something akin to a social experiment.

Specifically: What if you take one of the most beloved TV shows in history — a groundbreaking portrayal of four single women in their 30s that helped millions of young viewers shape their identities and ideas about relationships and friendship — and twist it into something unrecognizable?

Will they keep tuning in? For years?

As it turns out, absolutely. Even if they need some coping mechanisms.

“I just watch from a lens of satire … maybe we’re just in an alternative universe,” said Shelton Boyd-Griffith, 33, of New York City.

Tom Zohar, 41, of San Diego, once posted on X that he watches the show through his fingers. But “at this point, this season, I’m not even watching it like a horror movie,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s an actual horror that is unfolding in front of me in real life where I might actually be in danger.”

He can’t wait until the next episode.

Indeed, “Sex in the City” became cemented as such an emotional, formative experience for so many viewers, particularly millennials, that they physically cannot stop watching the sequel, no matter how preposterous the storylines: Miranda encountering a naked man wielding a meat cleaver at her Airbnb, for example. Or Carrie’s failed effort to have phone sex with Aidan from his truck, parked in a Virginia field. Or Anthony (Mario Cantone) opening a bakery where the business plan is hot men in tight denim onesies. Or not one, but two, subplots involving a banana. Or the outrageous fashion, always a staple on the original series but which now includes Carrie in a billowing bonnet reminiscent of old-school Strawberry Shortcake.

Sound like standard TV sitcom scenes? Sure. But even when the slapstick humor doesn’t fall flat, fans say, the antic absurdity of the new series lacks the nuance and poignance that hooked them on the original — and they can’t help put compare the two.

While “Sex and the City” basked in its campy nature, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) now bumble through disparate storylines that sometimes seem like they’re not even on the same show; Samantha, for years embodied by Kim Cattrall, remains notably absent, except occasionally via text message. But viewers still get a jolt when the rest of the original cast shows up in a scene together, such as one emotional moment when Carrie comforted Charlotte when her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“I do think that this really does boil down to the obsession with ‘Sex and the City’ and the franchise and our love of these women, even though they have become caricatures of themselves,” said Lizzie Ezratty, 33, of Los Angeles, who enjoys parodying John Corbett’s portrayal of Aidan on TikTok. “There’s almost a safety to watching it, a comfort. We’re so familiar with these characters.”

In times of need, viewers have turned to one another. Fan posts on social media and Reddit threads and Discord servers turn into a group therapy sessions as commenters try to process what they have seen:

“AJLT is basically if SATC died and came back as a Zombie.”

“It’s insane and terrible and I’ve never had this relationship to a show before. I think it’s awful and I crave the hot mess.”

“I’m in a toxic relationship with this franchise.”

“In the series finale we will see Samantha lying in a tent in Peru, and we discover the whole show was her Ayahuasca trip.”

“The best part of watching the show for me is talking about it online,” said Torre Jackson, 26, of Queens, who received hundreds of comments when she posted on TikTok about the “character assassination” of Miranda, who temporarily moved into Carrie’s house, where both acted as though they had never shared a living space with another human before. “There are so many people who just have such a deep relationship with the original series, and are continuing with the new series trying to look for a glimmer of hope — just a sprinkle — that this is something worth watching.”

Matt Caulfield, 33, posts to his TikTok account @AndJustLikeMatt where he analyzes the show, a touchstone for him from his time growing up a queer person in Southern California; “Sex and the City” was his exposure to a world he never knew existed, and he ended up moving to New York City. He can attest to the emotional connection that fans have with the series, just by a scroll of his comments: “People seem like they know these [characters], and it’s fascinating to watch.”

The third season has had continuity issues with its newer characters as well, such as Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) finding out that her father died … even though Lisa told Charlotte in the first season that she lost her father. (Apparently the writers were referring to Lisa’s stepdad the first time, though viewers had no idea.) And fans don’t know what to make of Seema’s (Sarita Choudhury) sidelined plot as a powerful real estate broker now suddenly out of a job.

“Sex and the City” loyalists are also mourning what could have been. In particular, they see missed opportunities to delve into what it’s like to date in your 50s; the original series was famous for its sharp, candid conversations about sex and relationships. Sabrina Bendory, a self-described elder millennial from Long Island, can’t get over the scene this season in which Carrie went for drinks with her former neighbor, a young woman who started venting about the hopelessness of modern dating.

Instead of comparing war stories, Carrie just nodded blankly and cracked a couple of one-liners.

“There was a chance to have an insightful conversation about dating back then and dating now in the city as a Gen Z-er,” said Bendory, a relationship coach. “That moment was really infuriating to me.”

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong wrote the book on the show in 2018, “Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love.” She is rooting for the sequel’s success, but remains baffled by its meandering direction and surface-level stories, given that the possibilities exploring the love lives of postmenopausal women are endless. The show’s executive producer, Michael Patrick King, and the writers have certainly heard the intense reaction to the series, and sometimes allude to it on their “Writers Room” podcast — but they typically wave off criticism by noting that Carrie is a flawed heroine.

“That’s not the problem now! That’s not why we’re mad,” Armstrong said, pointing to Carrie’s newly passive nature, and how she shrugged it off when Aidan admitted to sleeping with his ex-wife during their five-year “wait.” Carrie and her friends were considered revolutionary in the 1990s, Armstrong said, because they defied the stereotypes of single women and showed that you could have a happy, sparkly, full life with friends that became family. Now, Carrie just seems to be listlessly floating around in her enormous Gramercy Park townhouse — a millionaire widow, having inherited the late Mr. Big’s fortune — without any sense of urgency or community.

Some have thrown in the towel. Orli Matlow, 31, of New York City confessed that she stopped watching in the first season, though continues to read the Wikipedia episode summaries obsessively. While the fans make their negative opinions known online, another contingent genuinely enjoys the show.

Dianne Gauthier, 59, of Quebec, recently spoke up on the “And Just Like That …” Facebook page to defend the show amid its many critics. We asked her to elaborate.

“This season allows us to get to know the characters from a different perspective … and this season dives deep, demonstrating mature and solid values,” she wrote, adding that the polarized discussion around the series itself lacks nuance. “The detractors remain nostalgic and stuck in the past.”

Amid all the critiques, fans emphasize that they wouldn’t vent so passionately about the sequel if the franchise didn’t mean so much to them.

“The comments I’ve seen are more wistful — not hate-commenting, not being evil,” said Rachel Reno, 35, of New York City, another TikTok analyst of the show. “The overall sentiment of what people are articulating and trying to say is, ‘I want better for these people, the characters I knew and loved.’”