Seven episodes into the second season of And Just Like That …, it seems fair to declare its most valuable player so far. It’s not Miranda, who’s gone from making Che her personality to ditching Miriam Shor for being a disorganized writer with a messy, small apartment. (Yes, I did consider that a personal attack!) It’s not Che, whose career as a stand-up comic is over just because their crummy pilot didn’t go well. It’s also not Carrie, whose weird attitudes toward podcast suppository ad copy and conversations about pegging call into question whether she was ever actually a sex columnist.
No, the true MVP of And Just Like That … season two is Anthony Marantino, owner of Hot Fellas bakery, BFF of Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, and a character whose personality in the Sex and the City follow-up is pretty much the same as it was in Sex and the City. Consistency! It’s a great concept!
Anthony is both the funniest character on this show and the only one living in a reality that even remotely resembles the one viewers inhabit. Okay, fine: Most of us don’t have a bunch of buff men in skimpy onesies working to deliver bread for us. Still, Anthony continues to be a pragmatist who, thanks to Mario Cantone, spikes all the punch in his line deliveries and calls his friends on their increasingly erratic bullshit.
When Charlotte disinvites Anthony as her date to the Met Ball in episode one because her husband, Harry, wants to go — “He never got to go to his prom because he had Epstein-Barr,†Charlotte explains — Anthony responds appropriately: “So? I had Lyme disease for five months. Did I throw you from a speeding car?†(He eventually gets to go to the Met Ball, although we don’t get to see him at the Met Ball, which feels like a missed opportunity.)
When Charlotte’s daughter Lily forces everyone to listen to her heartfelt ballad “The Power of Privilege,†Anthony mutters, “Who is she, Lily Eilish?†which is an appropriate response to a young lady attempting to sound profound while wearing a winter beanie. Four episodes later, when Charlotte neglects to make a lunch reservation at Nobu for Lily and her boyfriend and Lily has a hissy fit (completely forgetting, apparently, that she very recently wrote an indie-pop screed against privilege), Anthony says what everyone’s thinking: “Boo-hoo. You’re 17 years old. Go to Shake Shack and call it a day.†When a character needs to be brought back down to Earth, Anthony is there to yank them out of the stratosphere and onto cold, hard ground.
The standout scene so far this season — a lunchtime conversation about jizz in episode four that easily could have appeared in Sex and the City, and I very much mean that as a compliment — basically puts Anthony in the chair that would have been occupied by Samantha. “Don’t cum-slut-shame her,†Anthony warns Carrie and Miranda after Charlotte waxes poetic about her appreciation of male ejaculate. “That is going to be your new name in my phone, though,†he tells Charlotte. Reader, I guffawed. I also 100 percent believe that every time Charlotte calls Anthony now, his iPhone simply says “Cum Slut.†And I find that beautiful.
There are times when Anthony can seem caught in the trap of playing the classic gay best friend, a person who exists to pepper his quips all over scenes that are really about other people. But in this week’s episode, Anthony gets his own storyline. He makes an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show to promote Hot Fellas, and Charlotte gets to play the supportive best friend by finding a poor, hot Italian poet in a bookstore (happens to me all the time) to serve as Anthony’s model Hot Fella for Barrymore’s cameras.
Is pretty much all of Anthony’s appearance on that talk show one phallic joke that gets extended (sorry) a little too long (sorry again)? Yes. But it’s good publicity for Anthony, the only man in New York who employs swole bread-delivery men and has the integrity to fire them for using human-growth hormones. And I am rooting for Anthony to succeed as a character with his own full life that doesn’t involve always being someone’s sidekick.
I mean, just pause for a minute and try to imagine this show without Mario Cantone. You can’t. And Just Like That … desperately needs his blunt sarcasm to offset the more frustrating parts of it. If you don’t agree, you know what, honey, just go to Shake Shack and call it a day.
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