Every once in a while, Carrie Bradshaw would meet a certain type of guy on “Sex and the City.” He would be sweet but not devastating, and the chemistry between them would be undeniable but not entirely rosy. He stayed on for an episode or two, providing the show’s most goblin-y humor. He then kindly left the stage on the left while Carrie and the girls chatted about him over brunch. In season two, And Just Like That is finally bringing these guys back.
Last season we got Peter – a character that’s mostly remembered for vomiting projectiles next to Carrie after a date and not much else. And earlier this season, there was Carrie’s podcast producer, Franklin, who was unfortunately fired along with her and the rest of the team when she refused to speak about vaginal dryness on the show. (It still baffles me—literally, why?) We finally got a taste of Sex and the City this week when an app developer named George Campbell (Peter Hermann) almost bumped into Carrie on a bike path would have run over. That’s love in Manhattan, baby!
Critics have already proclaimed that And Just Like That season two feels a lot more like Sex and the City, and this week seems to be the beginning of that transformation. Carrie dresses up as Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown for Charlotte’s Halloween fundraiser before strolling to a hotel bar with her friends Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) and Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) to pick up boys. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Harry (Evan Handler) appear in The Americans cosplay, while Miranda (Cynthia Nixon, who also directs this episode) dons a clown’s nose to satirize “the weird disaster that is my life.” Is there more “Sex and the City”?
Indeed it is. Poor Seema is having a rough night with a hot contender whose erectile dysfunction requires a penis pump. From the staging to the yellow lighting to the fast back-and-forth, everything screams “Samantha Jones” — especially later, when Seema finds out that her good-natured tolerance of that jerk’s penis pump doesn’t seem to have earned her the privilege of using her vibrator may. “Sir,” she asks, “when I wake up and your freshly washed penis pump is drying in my dish rack, do you seriously have the guts to say something about my device?” Honestly? Get him.
Of course, Seema calls Carrie to discuss all of this – and that’s when Carrie stops on a bike path just as a cyclist skids towards her and falls at her feet.
Some of Sarah Jessica Parker’s best comedic moments come when Carrie gets at odds with the city — whether it’s tripping over wet concrete in stiletto heels or yelling, “You’re so busy!” at a rude passerby on the street . This scene belongs in this pantheon. Carrie has been slowly moving away from “Mr. Big” goodbye, but this episode feels like she (and Sarah Jessica Parker) is finally enjoying “And Just Like That” again.
In One New York Minute, Carrie babbles from an emergency center she once saw the Olsen twins go to and leads her cranky biker there. Then she helps him fill out his forms. And then she comes over to his (very weird, airplane hangar-like) apartment with soup to help him put the finishing touches on his app.
While Carrie romances the tech brother, Charlotte relives a glimpse of the past when Rock comes home from the skate park with a Ralph Lauren rep’s business card. Harry, intoxicated by a paranoid hype about The Americans, doesn’t want Rock anywhere near it. (“Teenage model? Next stop: rehab!”) Unfortunately, he never had a chance; Charlotte, once a teenage model for Ralph, is obsessed with the idea of Rock taking over her job. Also, how can Harry say no when Rock promises to use the gig money to plant trees in Israel?
This season of And Just Like That has honored Charlotte and Harry with great comedic material, and this week builds on that foundation. While Charlotte joins Rock on set, Harry shows up in his American wig to snoop around. It turns out he doesn’t like being the restrictive parent. But soon Charlotte convinces him to leave before Rock sees him and “all trust” is broken. As funny as Kristin Davis and Evan Handler have always been this season, it’s heartening to see that Charlotte and Harry are coming into their own as the show’s most communicative couple.
Kristin Davis and Alexa Swinton.
Craig Blankenhorn/Max
At the other end of the spectrum are apparently Miranda and Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), who just don’t want to admit that their situation is doomed to fail.
Now that Miranda is back in New York and Che has an apartment in Manhattan, things have gotten a little more complicated. Che is a night owl and Miranda is a morning person, and neither of them can stop ramming their legs into the chair while sneaking in and out of bed. Che doesn’t exactly understand Miranda’s trouble getting out in the morning, but on the other hand, why does Miranda catch the 5am train from Hudson Yards to Brooklyn every morning to make breakfast for her ex and her son, two grown men? (She’s convinced they’d “starve” if she didn’t, but if that’s really the case… maybe she should let it!)
Miranda and Che’s issues seem to run deeper than sleep schedules. Che’s sitcom has been vetted, and while audiences seem to love Tony Danza, the same can’t be said of the series’ star. The bad feedback only seems to deepen the rift in understanding between Che and Miranda. When Miranda insists they will succeed because there is “no one else like you,” Che scoffs. Is that really the truth, they seem to be wondering, or has Miranda just never met anyone like her? “It took me 46 years to figure out who I am,” Che tells Miranda, “and an hour of focus groups to fucking destroy me.”
Now they want space. That’s a good thing, because Miranda is moving in with her friend Nya anyway. But also… why is she doing this? Does the former Manhattan DA really not have enough money to rent her own apartment until Steve moves out? Miranda jokes that while they’re divorcing, she and Nya can be like “an angry Laverne and Shirley.” Maybe she just wants someone she can actually talk to. Still, it’s hard to understand why she chose to cement her flop era by living in a place that requires a single bed.
At least one person ends up breaking up this week. Carrie and George may never have “dated,” but she ends things rather quickly when it becomes clear that his business partner Paul will never give him an hour’s rest. Ironically, the breakup could be the “Sex and the City” part of the entire episode. At one point, Paul calls as George and Carrie want to have sex, which sends Paul into a work frenzy while Carrie crawls across the floor on all fours to get her shoes and escapes without having to speak to Paul.
Parker acts up the physical comedy as Carrie peeks over the edge of the phone George is FaceTime on and then sneaks around it, crawling on all fours to retrieve her shoes from under the bed and exit the room undetected. Leaving the bedroom, she searches for Paul in his maze of white hallways, but cannot find him.
It’s at these moments that “And Just Like That” feels most like “Sex and the City.” Episode writers Samantha Irby and Lucas Froehlich perfectly capture Carrie’s flirtatious style early in the episode as she walks George through his admission forms in the ER, and by staging Carrie and George in different locations during the breakup, they enhance the dialogue comedy by giving Parker and Hermann are forced to yell everything during the museum setting.
Karen Pittman, Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sarita Choudhury.
Max
From that idiosyncratic breakup, to the upbeat song that follows, to the closing line — a game about “getting back on your bike” — this episode felt like a time machine, and not just because we kind of felt like summer have removed by October. From the script to the direction to the charismatic performances, it looks like Carrie and her friends might be able to get their groove back. (We hope for Miranda.)
Stay obsessed! Subscribe to the Daily Beast’s Obsessed newsletter and follow us on Facebook. TwitterInstagram and Tiktok.