Friday, June 30, 2023

June 30, 2023

Welcome to another look at five things that caught my eye in baseball this week. As usual, I’m following a template set by Zach Lowe, who is great at his job and popularized the concept. Summer doldrums are here for many teams, but nearly everyone is in the race and there’s still plenty of fun baseball happening. I was particularly drawn to two young catchers this week, as well as two key members of the 2019 World Series winning Nats and some great baserunning. A quick programming note: I’m spending this whole weekend on vacation and not watching any baseball, so this column will take a break next Friday and return the following week. Let’s get started.

1. Patrick Corbin (Briefly) Returning to Form
I won’t surgarcoat this – Patrick Corbin has been one of the worst starters in baseball over the past three years. He went from key cog in the Nats’ World Series machine to a guy who couldn’t buy an out in seemingly no time at all. He has a 5.89 ERA since the start of 2021. The only worse marks posted by a pitcher with 200 or more innings belong to Dallas Keuchel, who played himself out of baseball with remarkable speed in 2022, and ex-teammate Chad Kuhl, who got released earlier this week. Keuchel accrued his 6.35 ERA over 222 innings; Corbin has thrown a remarkable 421. He’s actually among the top 25 starters in innings pitched over those years, despite the eye-watering ERA.

It’s been a swift fall for the former star, made all the more strange because his once-fearsome slider was the main problem last year. But trust me, that slider still pops on its best days. I’m always a little hesitant to say that Corbin is turning the corner – he’s burned me before – but after this Wednesday’s start, I want to believe.

Mariners fans, cover your eyes: On Wednesday, Corbin absolutely shredded Seattle, to the tune of nine strikeouts over seven scoreless innings. Just like he did at his best, he used the slider in unlikely fashion. The Mariners ran out eight righties against him, which you’d think would hurt a guy who made his reputation throwing sinkers and sliders. Instead, he wore out the lower inside corner, and snapped off back foot sliders that left Mariners hitters flailing. When they were on their heels, he countered by floating it in for a called strike:

Are these just cherry-picked highlights? Well, sure, but I think this game is slightly more than that. There’s a new style under the hood, or possibly some new horsepower. Corbin’s slider was up two ticks, back to the speeds he frequented in the late 2010s. He posted the highest average velocity on his sinker in any start all year while simultaneously throwing sinkers less frequently than in any previous start. He filled in the gaps with extra sliders, but also with extra four-seam fastballs. He threw more four-seamers than in any previous start, and threw them harder than in any previous start.

Those were the only three pitch types he threw; no changeups, no cutters, just fastballs and a mindbending slider. I’d say it was an audition for what Corbin could look like as a reliever, but he threw 102 pitches. Let’s just say that, at only 33, it might be premature to count him out for good. A few more outings like that, and teams might come calling for some starting pitching help (provided Washington chips in some money), something that felt impossible at the start of the year.

2. Too Much Framing
Francisco Alvarez has been a rare bright spot in an otherwise desultory Mets season. He’s holding his own offensively, which no one was worried about, but he’s also putting together a solid defensive campaign, truly impressive for a 21-year-old catcher. He’s allowed too many stolen bases so far, but it doesn’t look like a terminal problem. He has a league average arm and gets the ball out quickly; over time, I think he’ll figure that out. He also rates as one of the best receivers in baseball this year; he’s already added six runs worth of extra strikes behind the plate.

Sometimes, though, that urge to frame gets to be too much. You miss 100% of the framing attempts you don’t make, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. This pitch was never going to be a strike, no matter how perfectly Alvarez received it, but he still went for it, and it cost him:

Most passed balls are the result of catchers trying to make tough plays. There’s a cross-up or a pitch in the dirt, and emergency measures are necessary. As you can see from that telltale glove jerk, that’s not what was happening here.

The excellent SNY camera crew caught what happened perfectly. Alvarez was trying to catch the ball with his glove moving towards the zone. That’s a common trick to make the pitch look better than it is. In slow motion, you can see the problem:

At first, I thought it might have been a cross-up, but doesn’t quite make sense. That pitch was a changeup; Ottavino doesn’t throw any pitches that break further to his arm side. If it were a problem of missed signs, Alvarez would have missed from the inside going out, expecting something closer to the plate and scrambling outside. Instead, he got his glove further out than the pitch, and then tried to pull it back in. On the broadcast, Keith Hernandez was all over it right away.

Watch this angle:

Again, you can see what he’s going for. If your glove is moving towards the zone when you receive it, the pitch just looks better, not least because the momentum of the ball will carry your glove towards the zone instead of wildly outside. His plan was to get out there, then reverse course to bring the ball in. Maybe the pitch location wasn’t perfect, but it was catchable. Alvarez is still a work in progress defensively, as this play showed. It didn’t end up mattering – Jesse Winker popped out – but that’s the kind of youthful mistake the Mets are hoping Alvarez will iron out over time.

3. More Rookie Catchers
450 miles west, another young catcher is breaking in. Bo Naylor spent 2022 tearing up the minors, then spent 2023 tearing up the minors again while waiting for Mike Zunino to get DFA’ed. Now that he’s joined the major league team, he looks like a good bet to stay there; Cleveland needs hitting like I need air and water. Don’t sleep on Naylor’s athleticism, though:

That’s a hard play for a ton of reasons. The best reason? It was supposed to be a pitch out! The Guardians drew this play up because Nicky Lopez was on first. No one calls pitch outs anymore; Statcast lists only 18 of them this season. You can see why the Guardians did here, though. Lopez was very likely to go, and Freddy Fermin is not such a fearsome hitter that you can’t afford to waste a pitch fishing for a free out on the basepaths.

Unfortunately for the Guardians, Trevor Stephan was having a rough night. He’d just allowed the go-ahead runner to score by throwing the ball away on the previous play. He missed his pitch out location by a lot:

Naylor made a great play just to catch the ball; if that one got past him, Lopez’s speed might have gotten him to third base. That’s usually where this would end – when runners steal on pitches that go astray, catchers generally just eat the ball.

Instead, Naylor entered the matrix. He was facing the wrong way, with the ball carrying him into a full 360 degree spin. No matter; he still made it work:

Everything about this play is amazing. Watch his footwork. That little hop step with his left foot keeps him in the game; if he’d taken the standard right-footed step instead, his momentum would have carried him too far towards third base to make the play. He then gets both feet planted into a throwing position while mid-spin, then uncorks a laser from a solid throwing position. The throw was right on the money, too, despite the tailing action that no doubt resulted from the difficult setup. I’m willing to bet that he accounted for the tail by starting his throw a little bit to the left side of the bag, even.

This isn’t the kind of play that catchers make often, because they’re rarely in this situation. It’s not a huge part of catcher defense, because again, catchers are rarely in this situation. But don’t say that catchers aren’t athletic, because my goodness what a play. Just try to spin and throw at home without having to catch a 92 mph fastball while wearing catcher’s gear first. It’ll give you a whole new appreciation for this daring feat.

4. Physics Are Overrated Anyway
When I was a kid, my dad used to settle arguments by citing Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Did he eat my candy stash? Heisenberg uncertainty principle, anything could have happened to that candy. Were we late for my friend’s birthday party? Maybe, but maybe the atoms in our clocks were all conveniently wrong. I’m not sure he was using it in the spirit of the concept, but apparently his physics professor in college had them calculate the infinitesimal odds that the positional uncertainty of atoms would let you throw a baseball through a battleship, and he used it in that vein.

Hey, random physics professor, I have a better idea. Why not calculate the odds that Matt Vierling can slide through Marcus Semien? I don’t see any other explanation for this:

That’s not how baseball works. That throw was there in plenty of time; baserunners can’t just choose to briefly become intangible in pursuit of avoiding a tag. If they could, the sport wouldn’t work very well. Also, why isn’t Vierling doing this more often?

Okay, fine, a closer examination reveals that, like most magic tricks that seem to defy physics, this is just sleight of hand. It’s amazing sleight of hand, though:

The decision to go for a wide slide looks questionable to me; Vierling was trying to avoid getting tagged on the foot heading in, but I think he might have beaten Semien to the bag. After he decided to go wide, though, it’s pure beauty.

Semien covered a ton of space with his tag. Even though he started on the wrong side of the base, he was able to keep his glove high and right in Vierling’s way. The body control necessary to make this play is outrageous; he’s adjusting his arm and also pushing his torso backwards using his right leg, all mid-slide. Not only that, he has to get back to the base afterwards, so his left foot turns into a brake as soon as he eludes the tag.

I don’t have anything more to say about this. Please, though, check out even more angles, courtesy of the Tigers social media team. This play is worth your while:

Matt Vierling ate with this move and left no crumbs. ? pic.twitter.com/aeaVy4lDMX

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) June 27, 2023

5. Juan Soto, Incandescent In The Dark
Remember when everyone was worried about Juan Soto? He started the year scuffling, not hitting the ball hard enough and striking out too often. He had a sub-.200 batting average at the end of April. This wasn’t some “batting average is dumb” fact, either. His wRC+ was a shocking 100 on April 26.

Yeah, about that. Since that arbitrary April 26 cutoff, Soto is hitting .311/.460/.563, good for a 180 wRC+. He’s walking more frequently than he strikes out, naturally, but he’s also crushing the ball. He’s at a 153 wRC+ despite that slow start to the year, the sixth-best mark in baseball. He plays every day; he’s appeared in all 81 Padres games, and only once as a pinch hitter. He’s even much improved on defense; he was perhaps the worst outfield defender in baseball last year, and he’s only a hair below average this year. This is the guy the Padres thought they were getting at last year’s trade deadline.

There’s just one problem: the Padres stink. They’re six games below .500, mired in fourth place in a surprisingly competitive NL West. Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado have combined for a league average batting line, not exactly what you’d expect from two stars. Gary Sánchez has come back to earth. Jake Cronenworth turned into a pumpkin. The Matt Carpenter/Nelson Cruz DH platoon is below replacement level.

Some of their record comes down to bad sequencing and bad luck. They’ve outscored their opponents by 20 runs this year, and BaseRuns thinks their true talent is a bit better than that. Per our Clutch stat, which measures wins added or lost by over- or under-performance in high leverage scenarios, their bullpen has cost them nearly three wins through high-leverage failures, the second-worst mark in the game. Fernando Tatis Jr. missed a chunk of the season and has been excellent since returning. All is not necessarily lost.

It’s probably lost, though. We give them a 28% chance of making the playoffs, and it’s getting late in the season to change that trajectory. They’ve been stuck in neutral all June, 12-14 despite outscoring their opponents by 20 runs in the month. A team this star-studded shouldn’t be this bad.

Maybe that’s just Soto’s fate, to excel while everything around him falls apart. Things didn’t start out that way, but the Nationals fell into disarray while he was their best player. The Padres didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory last year, though they had a nice playoff run. Despite his strong performance this season, they appear to be on the outside looking in.

I don’t find Soto, or stars in general, less interesting for playing on bad teams. Heck, Ted Williams’ Red Sox only finished in the top two spots in the American League in six of his 19 seasons, and I don’t hear anyone saying he was no fun because of the team he played on. It feels weird in this day and age of free agency, though. I hope the Padres make a run, but I’m enjoying Soto’s toiling anyway, a rare bright spot on a disappointing club.

San Francisco Giants Top 49 Prospects

Toronto’s Splitter-Squad Doubleheader

Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @_Ben_Clemens.

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And Just Like That Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: Carrie Fakes Covid and Che's Big Scene - ELLE

Spoilers below.

In the past year of her life, Carrie Bradshaw has said goodbye to Mr. Big, recovered slowly from her loss, and apparently already written and published a popular book about the experience. In episode 3 of And Just Like That... season 2, Carrie is entering another round of grief that might be worse than the first, even if she is making royalties.

As Carrie is tasked with recording the audiobook of her newest memoir, she struggles over Chapter 3, which recounts the night she found Mr. Big on the floor of the shower after a fatal Peloton ride. She would love to have an actress reading her words, like Julianne Moore or Julianna Margulies, but her publisher insists that readers deserve the author’s own voice on such a personal piece. The job brings up a lot of feelings about her husband that Carrie thought she’d already processed.

In a sweetly affecting scene, Carrie runs into her old friend Bitsy von Muffling (Julie Halston), the former wife of Broadway big shot Bobby Fine (Nathan Lane). The good news is that Nathan Lane is very much alive. The bad news is that Bobby Fine has apparently kicked it. As a fellow widow, Bitsy opens up to Carrie about how time moving on takes her further away from her beloved husband, bringing up the pain she thought was over.

She does offer Carrie some advice from her Kabbalah class, saying, “The hole never fills, but new life will grow around it.”

Courtesy of Max

Encouraged by Bitsy to plant some seeds, Carrie goes on an optimistic shoe shopping trip—then she panics and lies about having Covid to stay out of the recording booth.

Carrie’s not the only one having difficulties with letting go this episode. Seema is missing her Birkin, which was ripped out of her hands right in front of her townhouse. To her dismay, no one in the street threw themselves on the thief to save her purse, which had enormous sentimental value. Stealing comes up again later in the episode with an extremely confusing incident at a Bryant Park Bulgari pop-up store, where Carrie's lithe and lovely neighbor Lisette is selling pieces from her brand. A cater waiter starts shoving her jewelry in his pockets while everyone looks on. Carrie tries to scare him away by shouting she has Covid and the waiter runs off, but so does everybody else.

The lie doesn’t work to save Lisette’s baubles and it doesn’t save Carrie from having to confront her past. The publisher reschedules and she gets back in the booth after her fake virus has run its course. This time, she gets through Chapter 3. The thing that really seems to help Carrie accept her grief, and her embarrassment over her emotions, is comforting Lisette. The young art maker has taken to her bed after losing all her work, and Carrie curls up beside her and finally gives in to her sadness. It’s weird Carrie has a key to her place and is wearing her outside clothes on her bed, but Lisette doesn’t seem to mind.

Over in California, Miranda is still having a blast and considering getting a tattoo after meeting an incredibly thoughtful tattoo artist named Ricky. She wants to remember who she is in this moment after years of being a corporate lawyer robot. Che, however, is still super stressed over the upcoming taping of their pilot. They should be, because their girlfriend is about to screw it up big time.

Sara Ramirez as Che and Tony Danza as himself.

Courtesy of Max

While waiting to get into the audience, Miranda gets a call from her son Brady, who has been M.I.A. in Europe with his girlfriend. Sobbing, he tells his mom he got dumped in Amsterdam and almost walks in front of a car. She tells him to get back to the hostel and call her when he arrives. The only problem is that security is making people lock up their phones.

Miranda lies to the security guards about being free and easy after losing her phone and sneaks it in. Inevitably, it goes off during a pivotal moment between Che and Tony Danza in which Che is finally leaking some tears. The only professional in the room is Danza, who tries to get everyone to cool down and go back to one. The show’s writer, BD, nastily shouts that they’ll never get the moment back because Che is a STAND UP, not an ACTOR!

Outside, Miranda apologizes profusely, but tells Che that she’s headed back to New York to meet Brady when he flies home from Amsterdam. Che is pretty offended Miranda would bail for “real” family stuff, and thinks Miranda is over reacting to the situation. It’s an ugly parting, and when Miranda is sitting back in her Brooklyn living room waiting for her heartbroken son, she gazes at her new wrist tattoo reading “MH” wistfully.

When Brady walks into the house and his mom’s arms, it's clear he’s not only grieving his first love, but also the separation of his parents, which is still fresh despite his world travels.

Nicole Ari Parker as Lisa and Kristin Davis as Charlotte.

Craig Blankenhorn

The C Plot unfortunately involves Charlotte and Lisa finding out that a student at their children’s school has made a “MILF list” ranking the hottest moms. Obviously, they are in the top three. They’re even more titillated when they find out the list was created by Milo H., a hunky teenager. Is he handsome? Yes. Is it extremely uncomfortable to watch? Also yes.

The show is trying hard to weave together all of the main cast’s friends, so Lisa is now inexplicably interviewing Nya for her documentary. While on set, she meets the hunky sound guy and he asks her out to dinner after feeling her up for her lavalier mic. We shall see how that develops, but it’s about time Nya got some action.

The episode ends on a high note when Seema finds her Birkin under a bush after the thief grabbed the wallet out of it and tossed the purse itself. A classy old fashioned mugger! The city is back, baby. She and Carrie celebrate at dinner and end up seated at a communal table with some sexy Australian rugby fans.

And just like that...Carrie really gets Covid.

Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.

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Thursday, June 29, 2023

'And Just Like That' Episode 3 Recap: Somehow Che Diaz Is Even Worse - The Daily Beast

This post contains spoilers for And Just Like That Season 2, Episode 3.

Friends, our long national Che Diaz-induced nightmare is over. Finally, And Just Like That seems ready to break Miranda Hobbes out of her midlife crisis. At the very least, our girl is back in New York. It’s a start!

Back in the day on Sex and the City, Miranda Hobbes was always the “together” one—even if she was faking it half the time. Since the start of And Just Like That, however, she’s been a mess—anxious, socially awkward, and reckless. It’s not that she should’ve stuck with Steve forever no matter how lackluster their relationship got. (Although, she must know “there’s good stuff here,” right?) It’s more that the problems that apparently bubbled up between them felt contrived—like excuses created to explain a world in which Miranda Hobbes, Esquire moves to California, a place she used to detest, for Che Diaz, a person she barely knows.

Thankfully, that disaster might soon be behind us—and it’s all thanks to her sobbing son.

Everyone’s got problems this week. Carrie’s real estate broker friend Seema’s Birkin bag gets stolen on the street; Che is nervous about filming an emotional scene for their sitcom, which they seem to hate; and Carrie is struggling to record the audiobook version of her memoir. (Chapter 3, in which she describes finding Big dying in the shower after his Peloton-induced heart attack, is understandably challenging—and that’s even without trying to remember to stop “popping” her “P’s” in the mic while recording.) For a while, Carrie decides to fake COVID and play hooky instead—which, predictably, prompts an untold number of unwanted gift baskets and gestures of care from friends.

The exception to all this suffering is Charlotte, who is delighted this week to learn that she and her friend Lisa are both at the top of a “MILF list” created by one of her kids’ high school classmates. (There’s also a bit in which she and the other moms swoon over the teen boy who created it, which... really? We’re still doing that in the year of our lord 2023?)

Theft appears to be a running theme in this episode, which also includes a random robbery at Carrie’s neighbor’s jewelry show. Much like the random racist incident that befell Lisa’s husband last week, however, And Just Like That never bothers to contextualize the robberies within the broader episode. Was it just meant to set up Carrie’s toast at the end “to New York City—the good and the bad”? Like many story threads this season (and last) it’s hard to determine what the robberies are meant to tell us about Carrie, her friends, or the city they love.

But hey, let’s focus on the positive: Miranda’s back, baby! Apparently, sitting around and waiting for Che to finish working is not as rewarding as Miranda expected. She lost her phone at a beach clean-up last week, and now she’s getting tattoos?! (At first, she was contemplating a robot to symbolize how dehumanized she was at work; apparently, she settled on an “MH” on her wrist in Times New Roman font instead. “Rebel Rebel,” am I right?!)

Cue, Brady. While Miranda’s college-aged son was getting on his parents’ last nerve in Season 1 with his incessant love-making, this time around he does the best thing he can do for his mother: he gets dumped.

All it takes is one tearful call, and Miranda springs into action for her son, booking a flight home and getting a game plan together like the old Miranda would. Che is furious, however, when Miranda receives a call from her son in the middle of their taping—where she’s not supposed to have a phone.

“It’s my kid—the most important thing to me,” Miranda tells Che. “You don't know what that feels like.”

Che’s reply? “Then I guess we’re even.”

So, that’s not looking great! Could Miranda’s quick trip back to New York turn permanent? I’d trade a thousand Birkin bags I will never own to make it so.

And speaking of priceless Hermès... Seema does ultimately reunite with her stolen purse. It turns out, the guy who robbed her is old school—meaning, he still tosses the bag assuming the wallet inside it is worth more. (Big mistake—huge!) Meanwhile, Carrie’s neighbor does not recover her stolen jewelry, but she does get a visit from Ms. Bradshaw herself, who joins her to sulk in bed over their respective losses. Lisette has lost her livelihood (for now), and Carrie has lost the life she was building with Big.

Much of And Just Like That has been about loss. Carrie is getting over losing her husband; Charlotte is contending with two kids who want to grow into their own people; and as the tattoo of her initials suggests, Miranda has lost her sense of self. (We’ve also lost Samantha, but apparently no one’s taking that one too hard.) Still, it seems like everyone’s finding a way to move on. At least, by the end of this week’s installment, Carrie’s finished recording her memoir. If Miranda’s back in the city for good, things can only get better from here.

And Just Like That

Chapter Three

Season 2 Episode 3

Editor’s Rating 4 stars

Photo: MAX

Oh, friends, I really hate to do this, and from the bottom of my heart I apologize for starting things off this way, but I think I need to be earnest about And Just Like That … for a second. I know, it’s disgusting. Please don’t leave! I promise we’ll still have so much to giggle and snark about! We get to watch part of Che’s pilot in which Tony Danza calls them his “little cannoli,” okay? They can never take Che Pasa away from us. That’s ours. But first, the earnestness: Carrie’s story line in this episode is so moving and lovely and I cannot BELIEVE part of that has to do with Bitsy von Muffling, but here! we! are!

Three episodes in, and it is abundantly clear that season two of And Just Like That … is much lighter and more fun than its freshman run, and yet how wonderful and thoughtful that they aren’t simply ditching Carrie’s grief full stop like it’s Miranda’s alcohol problem. I was worried when at lunch, Charlotte says she and Miranda are so proud of Carrie for how she’s “moved on,” because any griever with a loss like Carrie’s knows that there isn’t moving on, just moving forward. But in the end, this episode gets that. It gets that grief can come out of nowhere and wallop you, even when you think you’re past the worst of it. Sometimes it’s something small (or nothing in particular, really) that triggers it, and sometimes it’s something pretty major, like having to record the audiobook version of the memoir you wrote about your husband’s death … suddenly you’re right back in the shower where you found him dying and you are just laid out by it. That’ll do it.

It’s chapter three that really gets Carrie. Chapter three is the big Big moment in the book. While Carrie doesn’t seem super comfortable doing the audio recording of her book at any point — even though the two audio producers seem like real sweeties, b.o. and all — it’s chapter three where things go downhill. And how could it not? She’s reliving the worst moment of her life. Everyone gets it. When she can’t hold back the tears and needs to stop for the day, everyone gets that too. Except for, maybe, Carrie herself. But wouldn’t ya know, on her way home, she runs into Bitsy. You never know what you’re going to get with Bitsy, but here, what Carrie gets is the perfect person to talk to in her low moment because Bitsy is a widow too. Listen, friends are great and all, but sometimes you need a chat with someone who has been through it. Carrie tells Bitsy about her breakdown and how she thought she had gotten through the hard part — she survived year one. But because Bitsy’s been there, she’s able to tell Carrie the “dirty little secret” no one tells you about grief: Year two might be harder. Life around you has gone on without that person, they feel further away from you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Bitsy says it best: “It’s just awful.” Bitsy, too, gets the whole moving on versus moving forward thing. Sure, she’s quoting someone from her Kabbalah class, but still: “The hole never fills, but new life will grow around it,” she tells Carrie. Her advice: Carrie needs to “plant some seeds” and do whatever makes her feel better or helps her get through the toughest parts. For Bitsy, that’s a face-lift, of course. For Carrie, it’s shoes. So many shoes.

It’s also lying about having COVID to get out of doing her audiobook. Listen, it’s not an exact science. Like, I get it, but also Carrie remains a menace. There are two really vulnerable and, dare I say, truthful moments that come out of this lie to stall for time, though. First, when Seema arrives to check on her “sick” friend, Carrie tells her the truth and opens up as to why she felt like she had to use this lie not just on her editor and the audiobook team but on Miranda and Charlotte, too. She didn’t want to have to explain what was really happening in the audio recording and how she’s been feeling because she thought she’s already asked her two best friends to carry enough of her grief. That’s such a complicated and nuanced part of the grieving process — not wanting to be that person that is constantly talking about their grief or falling apart because of it when it really is such a huge part of your life — and this is a lovely way to explore that guilt while also highlighting how sometimes you need specific friends for specific moments. For Carrie, right now, that friend is Seema — someone without the baggage and guilt that can come with a long history. It also doesn’t hurt that Carrie can take a little time out from her grief to talk about Seema’s grief over her stolen Birkin bag. Seema’s even scrolling the Hermès website in tears like she’s scrolling through an ex’s Instagram. It really is a beautiful bag (don’t worry, she winds up getting it back) and a beautiful thing for Carrie to know that she has a lot of people around to support her if she lets them.

The second moment comes from another new friend: Carrie’s neighbor Lisette. Is the robbery at Lisette’s big Bulgari show in Bryant Park one of the slowest and weirdest robberies on television? Yes. From the casual way the guy is pocketing the jewelry to Carrie screaming, “I have COVID” to get people out of there to the fact that there are NO SECURITY GUARDS in the room (Bulgari would never) to Seema using her handgun lighter to get rid of the guy, the whole thing was absolutely wild and I would like to forget about it immediately. But, out of it, we get another moving moment in Carrie’s grief story. The next day, she goes to visit a devastated Lisette. Carrie finds her in her bed, unable to do anything else: “It’s gone. Everything I worked so hard to make. It was perfect. I have to start all over again,” Lisette says about her jewelry. And you know what? If anyone gets it, it’s Carrie. The two things aren’t exactly the same, but this is a major, earth-shattering loss for Lisette, and Carrie understands it. Maybe it’s something about having to be there for someone else who is hurting, or maybe it’s simply that Carrie needed some time to feel her grief, but soon enough, she’s back in the recording studio, and she can finally get through chapter three. It’s such a wonderful little glimpse into the ups and downs of grief. And isn’t it nice to see And Just Like That … finally be able to nail the balance of dark and light? I feel like a proud parent!

The two characters having the best time in this episode, however, are undoubtedly Charlotte and Lisa Todd Wexley. It’s like we’re finally seeing what a great comedic pairing Kristin Davis and Nicole Ari Parker are for the first time, and let us pray to the gods of oversize necklaces that we only get more of it throughout the season. This pleasant surprise is all thanks to a MILF list, a sentence I never thought I’d be writing about here in the year of our lord 2023, but we’re going with it, folks, because it is comedy gold.

The Arbor School PTA is in an uproar when it’s discovered that a student has made a MILF list ranking the moms of students. Do the youths even know and/or use the term MILF these days? Is it outdated or has it made a comeback? Youths, please discuss below. Anyway, as much as they have to pretend to be appalled, all the moms, including Charlotte and LTW, are VERY INTERESTED in learning more about this supposed list. And by that, I mean they all just want to see where they land in the ranking. When LTW gets her hands on the list — she’ll never reveal her sources — she discovers that she’s ranked second and Charlotte third. They’re very satisfied, even if a very nice dad at the next meeting tells them they should be first and second. LTW and Charlotte’s synchronized faux-surprised reactions when the other moms call them out for defending Milo H. against a harsh punishment because of how high they rank, followed immediately by their synchronized faux outrage when the moms are then called out for objectifying a student, is a great button on the whole thing. Parker and Davis really make this whole thing work, but can we also agree to retire the whole MILF thing? I mean, unless we’re talking about the iconic Fountains of Wayne song “Stacy’s Mom,” which remains a jam to this day.

• In L.A., Miranda ruins Che’s emotional moment — one they’ve been super anxious about — during the pilot taping when she sneaks her phone in because Brady’s in distress in Europe after getting dumped by Luisa. Their argument afterward hints at some major underlying issues — Miranda doesn’t get how important Che’s work is to them, Che doesn’t get why Miranda’s so upset about Brady — and while they make up before Miranda leaves for New York to be with her son, I feel like the odds are slim that this relationship survives the season.

• Wow, the Che Pasa showrunner is a dick, huh? They pretty much call Che a terrible actor in front of the entire studio audience. This, along with everything else that’s gone wrong so far, does not bode well for Che’s TV dreams coming true (add it to the list), although Tony Danza is quite sweet with his onscreen child, isn’t he?

• I am already a fan of this LTW and Nya friendship: LTW interviews Nya for her documentary and LTW helps the newly separated Nya snag the very hot sound guy’s number. This has the makings of another great AJLT team.

• After all that, Miranda just gets her initials tattooed on her wrist? What did Ricky the Emotionally Available Tattoo Artist say about this?

• Just wanted to say that Seema is freaking fabulous and I hope in the next episode we learn she ran off (temporarily, we need her) with one of those Australian rugby players. She deserves it!!

• “And just like that, I got COVID”: That’s what we’re going with here? Honestly, none of these random episode-ending one-liners really fit in seamlessly. Maybe we’d be better off cutting them entirely? They do nothing for me!

• Richard Burton’s rainy-day outfit!!!

For more, join us for And Just Like That Club, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter dissecting and obsessing over all the minutiae of the new season. Existing subscribers can visit this page to sign up. If you’re not a subscriber yet, click here to get started.

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Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Does 'And Just Like That ' Signal the End of Stealth Wealth? - The New York Times

So does the pop culture and fashion wheel turn.

And just like that, stealth wealth, the aesthetic made viral by “Succession,” with its toxic billionaires in their Loro Piana baseball caps and Tom Ford hoodies locked in a C-suite cage match to the death, has been swept off screen.

In its place: logomania, branding that can be seen from whole city blocks away and accessories that jangle and gleam with the blinding light of bragging rights.

The outfits, that is to say, of Carrie and Co. in Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the “Sex and the City” reboot come recently to Max — the streamer that, as it happens, also gave us the Roys in their greige cashmere. Both shows are set in New York City, the home of strivers and entrepreneurs, of “Washington Square” and Wharton, of constantly evolving social castes highly, and literally, invested in their own identifiable camouflage.

If watching “Succession” was in part like engaging in a detective game to suss out what character was wearing what brand, so insider were the fashion politics, watching “And Just Like That …” is like attending brandapalooza: the double Cs and Fs and Gs practically whacking you on the head with their presence. (Warning: Spoilers are coming.) All the over-the-top fashionista-ing is back. The room-size closets!

It’s the yin to the “Succession” yang: a veritable celebration of the comforting aspirational dreams of self-realization (or self-escapism) embedded in stuff that may actually be the most striking part of an increasingly stale series. Certainly, the clothes, which often serve as their own plot points, are more memorable than any dialogue.

Well … except maybe for that instantly classic line in Episode 1, uttered by Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) on her way to the Met Gala in reference to her gown and feather hat: “It’s not crazy — it’s Valentino.” But that’s the exception that proves the rule.

Lisa Todd Wexley stopping traffic on her way to the Met Gala in Valentino.Craig Blakenhorn/Max

There is Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), with her multiple Manolos and Fendis, self-medicating with shopping, returning home one day with six Bergdorf Goodman bags. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) toting her Burberry doggy poop bag (also possessed of a Burberry apron and Burberry ear muffs) and bemoaning the fact that her teenage daughter hocked her Chanel dress to fund her musical aspirations.

Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her kids off for camp in a bright green Louis Vuitton jacket and scarf. And Seema (Sarita Choudhury), the character that passes for a restrained dresser thanks to her penchant for neutrals (and the occasional animal print), loudly lamenting the theft of her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin — one of her totems of self, ripped directly from her hands.

Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her children off for camp in Louis Vuitton.Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Seema with her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin.Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin, via GC Images

There is Loewe and Pierre Cardin; Altuzarra and Dries Van Noten. There is also an effort to repurpose clothes, like Carrie’s wedding dress, in order to promote the virtues of rewearing, but it’s pretty much lost in all the rest of the muchness. There is a dedicated Instagram account on which the costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago share their finds, with 277,000 followers. @Successionfashion, by contrast, has 184,000.

All of which means what, exactly? Is the era of quiet luxury, so recently embraced by TikTok, already at an end? Have our attention spans, so famously abbreviated, moved on? Has the physics of fashion exerted its force and produced an equal and opposite reaction to an earlier action?

As if. In many ways, the fashion in “And Just Like That …” seems to protest too much. In part that’s because it seems like a regurgitation of the fun that came before, which was itself a reaction to the minimalism of the early 1990s, which itself was born in that decade’s recession.

The fact is, no matter how much lip service has been paid to quiet luxury or stealth wealth or whatever you want to call it, and how it is 2023’s “hottest new fashion trend,” it was never a recent invention. It has been around since way back when it was referred to as “shabby chic” or “connoisseurship” or “old money,” all synonyms for the kind of product that didn’t look overtly expensive but was a sign of aesthetic genealogy — the difference between new money and inherited money that fashion co-opted and regurgitated to its own ends. Just as more obviously coded consumption has been around since Louis Vuitton plunked his initials on some leather back in 1896 or since Jay Gatsby started tossing his shirts.

HBO Max

We’ve been declaring the “end of logos” and, alternately, the “rise of stealth wealth” for decades now. There are cycles when one is more ubiquitous than the other (usually having to do with economic downturns when flaunting disposable income is not a great look), but they exist in tandem. They help define each other.

Consider that during the current economic uncertainty, exactly the kind of environment that tends to fast-forward the appeal of low-key high-cost items, the most successful global brands have remained the most highly identifiable: Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès. Or that in his recent debut for Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams introduced a bag called Millionaire that costs — yup — $1 million. (It’s a yellow croc Speedy with gold and diamond hardware.)

What is more interesting is, as Carrie and the gang continue on their merry wardrobed way, how clichéd both styles now seem, how performative. Once they have trickled up to television, it’s impossible not to recognize the costume. Or the fact that whichever look you buy into, they are simply different ways of expressing wealth, in all its decorative strata. And wealth itself never goes out of fashion.

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Let's Talk About Seema in 'And Just Like That' Season Two - Vulture

And Just Like That season two owes Sarita Choudhury an apology. Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/Max

The luminous Sarita Choudhury walks into a hair salon and makes a beeline toward her character Seema’s stylist. A silk leopard-print scarf frames her sunglasses-clad face. A cheetah-print Sergio Hudson power suit comes together around her waist with a chunky camel-shaded belt that matches her strappy heels. A Fendi First Medium bag is slung over her shoulder. “Are you ready to be blown?” her stylist asks with amusement, crudely foreshadowing the cut-rate romantic narrative drama that’s about to unfold. He’ll become a mouthpiece for the story’s shoddiest impulses, arguing that Seema, a longtime client and single woman — who has just left her recent paramour after discovering he was still living with his ex-wife — has become the worst thing a woman can be: picky. Forget the rigors of modern dating she faces as a woman of Indian descent in a world primed to favor whiteness, or the apps that treat people like meat on a conveyor belt. She’s picky. “Listen to your standards,” he tells her. “You’ve sat in my chair for ten years with your red flags and standards. No wonder you’re still alone!” Music and conversation cuts to a hush. Seema is embarrassed. She moves to sever all ties with him, but she turns back to deliver the line that has gathered us here today.

Eyes welling with fury, lips tight with venom about to spill, she says, “I pay you to blow me, not shrink me.”

It is surely only thanks to Choudhury’s skill and rich presence that this line even somewhat works. But as she stalks off, whatever sparkling wit Choudhury imbues into Seema’s delivery grows leaden. What’s glaring here is that Choudhury has been asked to wear Samantha Jones drag — from the animal-print power suit, a kind of look that rests entirely on the confidence of the woman inhabiting it, to this silly-ass line aiming for a sharp wittiness. And Just Like That … knows it can’t exist without the forceful sexiness and humor of Kim Cattrall, so its creators wrote a character who functions as her proxy. It’s of course a disservice to Choudhury, a performer who seems lit from within by a fire no rude hairstylist could dampen. But it’s also a disservice to a reboot that seems ashamed of its own existence, turning a story that once revolved around prickly anti-heroines into one starring soft-edged caricatures of women in middle age.

It starts and ends with the laborious humor that misunderstands what made Sex and the City so enthralling. Consider Seema’s line again: “I pay you to blow me, not shrink me.” Choudhury communicates the line with heated frustration, her broad posture aiming to take up space, refusing to be made a punch line in the performance. Cattrall similarly understood the silliness of the words her character was asked to utter and refused to look down on Samantha for saying them. She would take scraps of dialogue and draw them out into a full meal, infusing lines with a deliciously constructed sense of feminine excess and confidence. “I will not be judged by you or society,” she declared in season four, in the kind of lush cadence that flies around moneyed worlds. “I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel!” Choudhury aims for something similar, but not even her skills can make cohesive what the writers haven’t thought through — the impulse to inject a touch of titillation into the blandness of middle age. If Samantha’s lines twinkled like a new Tiffany bracelet, the lines of And Just Like That … drag along your skin like cheap fake gold that leaves your wrist the color of mildew.

It’s hard to be fully convinced by Choudhury’s line reading when I don’t buy Seema’s existence in the AJLT universe to begin with. The show’s writers grafted women of color and queer folks onto the lives of the three primary white characters — ensconced in a world of privilege, wealth, and glamour that is either wildly disinterested in or outright hostile to those on the outside — without any barbed complications. It’s a superficial evolution for audiences that have come to expect more diverse worldviews than Sex and the City ever offered. The addition of Seema and Che, along with Black characters Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) and Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), feels disingenuous — like our protagonists aren’t interacting with niggas out of any real desire to broaden their social circle, they’ve just been forced to by circumstance.

Sex and the City was never interested in feigning realism, and so the dialogue — piercing, unnatural, extravagant — felt appropriately a piece of the fantasy world we lapped up each week. And Just Like That … is desperate to reflect more of reality than it ever should, yet it maintains a death grip on its predecessor’s unreal manner of speaking. Consider the ways the writers handle the idea of Black respectability and its claustrophobic politics through Lisa’s scenes. She is stressed by the presence of her mother-in-law, who is visiting the family’s palatial home. After Lisa’s husband is refused service by a cab driver who’s clearly racially profiling, he gets rightfully pissed and hits the hood of the car — only to be seen by his mother, Eunice, and some of her rich-as-hell friends. Later, Eunice lectures her son, “We never surrender our dignity.” He is blamed for the very racism he experienced.

And the clunkers don’t stop there. When Eunice sees Lisa in a headscarf before bed, she proclaims, “Didn’t the Emancipation Proclamation free us of head wraps?” Lisa doesn’t admonish her. Moments later, she reaches for her husband instead, confessing that her mother-in-law is right: “When we go off, they win.” Where do I begin with this shit? The series wields Blackness as a cudgel against criticism of the show’s blind spots, but it doesn’t get the potent complications and pleasures of Black identity to pull off such narrative explorations. Wealthy Black folks like Lisa believe smooth propriety and classiness is a part of the social contract they’ve signed to be able to enter the rich spaces someone like Charlotte inhabits. But the writers aren’t interested in the deficiencies of characters like Seema or Lisa, save for what they can provide the actual leads of the series.

Seema’s line reading speaks to an essential problem with her characterization: She is presented as a levelheaded adult, searching for a partner who brings as much to the table as she does. Why would she flip out upon learning that her French lover lives in the same building as his ex-wife? He has his own floor in a three-story private residence. Wouldn’t a woman like Seema find his ability to balance his past and his present admirable? This is where showrunner Michael Patrick King and his writers tip their hand. They do not understand the particulars of dating as a woman of color in middle age, nor what an ambitious, independent woman of color looks like outside of a picky caricature. Sex and the City was a series dictated by the frothy pleasures of its archetypal, dangerously self-involved main characters, fascinatingly dynamic in their faults. In failing to write the AJLT characters as the flawed humans the original series so brilliantly captured, the show becomes an ouroboros, the very encapsulation of the ungenerous critiques lobbed at the original series: that it’s white women’s fluff with nothing novel to say and no lasting pleasures to provide.

“Hold My Purse” is a weekly column that examines the line readings in And Just Like That … and will run after each episode of season two.

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As You Like It review age-blind anti-production pulls the rug on Arden - The Guardian

This age-blind production of giddy “young” lovers lost in Shakespeare’s pastoral idyll pulls the rug from under us in more ways than one. Rosalind (Geraldine James) and Orlando (Malcolm Sinclair) speak of their youth and perform its romantic enchantments but represent an autumnal kind of love as well. We do not see much of Arden, to which they are banished, either, because the drama emphatically undercuts the theatrical illusions so central to the forest’s magic.

Much of it makes for warm, charming comedy with the most bewitching of casts who perform the verse with great fluidity, although the pace revs up too slowly despite a trimming of the text.

This ensemble, we are told, first performed the play back in 1978. Now they have reconvened though they are a few actors down: one, who has “passed on”, is represented, respectfully, by an overcoat on stage.

“All the world’s a stage,” the play tells us, but in an inventive twist, Omar Elerian directs a production in which the machinery of the stage becomes the play’s world. A rehearsal room (designed by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita) serves as the set with a large piece of rigging lowering a band from the ceiling in one surprise turn. The lighting fixtures are lowered too to become seats for characters while a crew assisting with line prompts is visible, scripts in hand, and they pose as trees or logs after Rosalind and Celia are banished to Arden.

It is all very clever – perhaps too clever – with age blindness used to explore the theme of memory but the metafictive nature of the play slightly overpowering its exploration.

There is awkward laughter around age: the fight scenes are deliberately creaky and the forgeting of lines is played for laughs. Some subtle clowning elements are wonderful such as a spot-lit dance by Touchstone (James Hayes) and yokel, William (Ewart James Walters). Touchstone’s arch asides are another highlight and he looks slightly like Stan Laurel in his comic moments.

But some of the metafiction feels too self-consciously cutesy and there are a few strained digressions, including one on Christopher Marlowe’s death.

What is never played for laughs is the central romance, which is performed brilliantly. James, at 72, captures the innocent excitement of first love while Sinclair is utterly lovable as Orlando, full of charmingly comic tics but earnest in his love.

The most famous lines of the play are said by Christopher Saul, a last minute fill-in for Oliver Cotton in the role of Jaques, who sometimes works from a script but performs the Seven Ages of Man speech from memory and it is a heroic albeit slightly halting effort.

Maureen Beattie’s Celia is wonderfully droll, Robin Soans is striking in his double role as banished duke (Senior) and his tyrant brother (Frederick). James Walters distinguishes himself in ancillary roles while Hayes’s riffs verge on mini standup routines. The greatest achievement here is in fact making Shakespeare seem like comic improv at times.

It is only in the play’s final moments when the back wall lifts to reveal the forest of Arden, hidden but present all along.

This glimpse is tantalising, containing all the magic we have expected to see, but its withholding has a quiet counterintuitive rationalism too.

As You Like It is at Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 5 August.

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Friday, June 30, 2023

Five Things I Liked (Or Didn't Like) This Week June 30 - Fangraphs

Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, June 30

And Just Like That Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: Carrie Fakes Covid and Che's Big Scene - ELLE

Thursday, June 29, 2023

'And Just Like That' Episode 3 Recap: Somehow Che Diaz Is Even Worse - The Daily Beast

Read more of our And Just Like That coverage HERE.

And Just Like That Style: Episode 3 - The New York Times

'And Just Like That ' Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: Faux-vid 19 - The New York Times

'And Just Like That' Recap Season 2 Ep. 3: 'Chapter Three' - Vulture

And Just Like That

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Does 'And Just Like That ' Signal the End of Stealth Wealth? - The New York Times

Let's Talk About Seema in 'And Just Like That' Season Two - Vulture

As You Like It review age-blind anti-production pulls the rug on Arden - The Guardian

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