And Just Like That, The Last Duel, and Netflix's price hike

Changes in perspective, plus a check-in on the state of streaming

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Jan 25, 2022

Hello!

On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss And Just Like That… and The Last Duel, two works about the lives of women.

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04:03 HBO Max’s And Just Like That… interestingly picks up the thread of cynicism that ran through Sex and the City, but it loses some of the magic of the original.

What are we to do with AJLT? Critics and fans are very mixed on it; Pelin is still having a decent time; I’m not enjoying it exactly, but maybe I can appreciate it for what it is? Which increasingly seems to be a deliberate heir to SATC’s world-wearier side beyond fairytales and glamour — as Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos puts it, a meditation on “the humiliation of life persevering”:

And Just Like That has been a show about these women dealing with their own obsolescence rather than asserting their own fabulosity. Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are constantly looking over their shoulders while worrying about whether they’re living life correctly.
[…]
And Just Like That asserts that you don’t just fade into an old happily ever after; aging means falling out of step with the world around you.

But in (seemingly intentionally) imagining that the 55-year-old versions of these characters can’t be anything but out-of-touch, floundering messes, is the show convinced that there’s no such thing as aging with dignity (or without constantly mentioning how old they are and how much their body aches)? Or is it just that these particular characters are specifically the kind of people who age that way?

Still TBD, a lot of it, but one thing’s for sure: At least this show has given us Che Diaz.

Will Kellogg @Will_Kellogg

“Hey, it’s Che Diaz!”

Meg Stalter @megstalter

Me after getting fingered in my friends kitchen while she pisses the bed:

ryan farr @rymfarr

P.S. Olivia Craighead on Che Diaz: “Che Diaz is the most accurate portrayal of a stand-up comedian I’ve seen on screen since The King of Comedy.”

30:22 The Last Duel, streaming on HBO Max, makes good use of the Rashomon effect to depict the horrendous truth of a woman’s experience at the hands of men.

(CW: This film portrays rape.)

Split into three chapters, Ridley Scott’s 14th-century epic methodically guides us through three versions of the “truth”: the one claimed by the husband, the one claimed by the rapist, and the one — which we can assume is the closest to what actually happened — claimed by the woman at the heart of it all. This device is effective and even moving, although by dint of space, the movie can’t help but skew slightly toward the stories of the men.

But overall, The Last Duel is still a pretty good watch. It doesn’t trivialize the assault of women, but grapples with how they are violated in all kinds of ways, by all kinds of men/people in their lives and society.