Peloton and Ryan Reynolds got a certain actor to help undo the And Just Like That... damage

[The following contains spoilers for HBO Max’s And Just Like That…, but come on. If you’ve been on the internet at all in the last week you definitely know what we’re talking about here.]

So Peloton is really pissed about what happened on HBO Max’s Sex And The City revival And Just Like That…, huh? For those who somehow missed it, the show’s debut episode ended with the death of Chris Noth’s character, Mr. Big, who had a heart attack while riding his Peloton bike.

The company known for strapping screens to exercise bikes and weirdly toxic ad campaigns (more on that in a bit) released a statement the next day that basically said “nuh-uh, riding a Peloton makes you healthy!” and revealed that HBO Max had actually fibbed a bit when it got permission to use a Peloton on the show—just another step in its campaign to keep the death a secret, like how Chris Noth actually attended his character’s funeral so the public wouldn’t catch on.

That seemed like it would be the end of it, because who cares about Peloton’s feelings, but it turns out that Peloton really cares about Peloton’s feelings. It cares so much, in fact, that the company spent the last couple days working with Ryan Reynolds’ production company Maximum Effort to create an And Just Like That… parody ad featuring none other than Chris Noth. The clip is nothing special, but it ends with Reynolds himself doing a speedy voiceover in which he lists all of the health benefits of riding a Peloton—so “nuh-uh, riding a Peloton makes you healthy,” in other words.

It’s a little silly and a little desperate, but the weirdest wrinkle might be that this is not the first time Reynolds and Peloton have crossed paths. Waaay back in 2019, when Peloton’s gross ad campaign about a husband buying his wife a Peloton and then watching as she spent a miserable year working out became a meme, Reynolds got the woman from the commercial (an actor named Monica Ruiz) to star in a parody ad for his Aviation Gin company.

So, when faced with another PR disaster—the likes of which we haven’t seen since the slow cooker lobby had to say “they don’t really explode!”—Peloton asked for help from a former enemy. Does Ryan Reynolds need money that bad? Is Aviation Gin not moving like it used to? Hell, does Chris Noth need money that bad? Was he just free this weekend and thought it would be a good way to maybe get a free Peloton?

We just hope that the next person to come after Peloton thinks twice. Nobody wants to face a blistering response like “Peloton is good for you, actually.”