The first two episodes of And just like that Season 2 is available to stream on Max on June 22, 2023.
Most conversations about TV shows these days, especially prestigious projects, are about who is going to win. Every episode aired is either good or bad for a character. These characters’ actions and dialogue are considered good or bad for their success, while their opponents’ actions and dialogue work against them (by being more good or worse for their own success, of course). At the end of the season or series, someone clearly comes out on top.
Blame it on Game of Thrones, the series about fire-breathing dragons and tyrants determined to sit on thrones of swords. It’s Succession’s fault too, because nobody could really stop the three Nepo babies from fighting over who gets to play at dad’s media company. There’s also “Big Little Lies” and “White Lotus,” shows that aren’t specifically about triumphing to the top, but have nonetheless been analyzed in that way.
Our obsession with someone winning seemingly every TV show is why I’ve been waiting for the last, longest year of my life for the one show immune to that kind of babble: the glorious series And Just Like That (AJLT ).
Better known as the “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That” imagines a bawdy, opulent fantasy world in which three-quarters of our original protagonists – Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) – played a role, everyone has already won. They all married well. They all have lots of money. Even if their spouses die, they cheat on the love of their life, or they feel like terrible moms, they all win! From this point of view, it is much easier to laugh at the failures in life.
No one is asking you to feel sorry for these extremely wealthy women, because they certainly don’t feel that sorry for them themselves. They will cry into their money and eventually everything will be fine. In this world even funerals are fabulous.
Once you realize that this show is bombastic escapism — and lets go of any latent notions that human existence is a thing to be won or lost or given to one side of power — “ And Just Like That” all the funnier. And Just Like That has learned from an inconsistent first season, what made the original series so popular and what fans really want from a revival.
What Went Wrong in And Just Like That Season One
And it took a while for the first season of Just Like That to find its rhythm. In the early episodes, it feels like they’re doing damage control for the omissions of Sex and the City. As groundbreaking as the original series was, a major criticism of the revival was that the series lacked variety. Though the original four women lived in what they believed to be the largest city in the world, their New York was achingly Caucasian. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) were written as fabulous, kind, progressive, and outgoing people (Charlotte, a strict Episcopalian and a proud WASP converted to Judaism last season!), so it’s kind of shocking about the town that they love, and the people they share them with would be so uniformly the same.
Finally there’s some brunch in And Just Like That Season 2!
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The awkwardness of “Sex and the City” on topics like “race” might not have been malicious, but it appears to have been the result of a lack of diversity in the writing space. In the late 1990s and early 1990s, many people, including white television writers, did not have the consciousness or language to talk about representation, gender, or race as we do today. Until 2021, when AJLT premiered, it would be deliberately ignorant to portray a “realistic” version of New York City without reflecting the diversity of the people who live there and making it the greatest city on earth.
The producers and writers behind AJLT seemed to take this criticism to heart, introducing characters like Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker), Seema Patel (Sareeta Choudhury), Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), and Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) before New Friends. But the show didn’t seem to know how to make them human. Che was essentially a collection of blue-linked Wikipedia entries on queer, non-binary, and podcasters, while Lisa Todd Wexley, a stylish, ultra-rich mom, needed Charlotte to teach her black friends about black art to teach. Nya’s first moments on screen were witnessing Miranda misrepresenting someone and talking awkwardly about black women’s hair.
Making the original female protagonists so repugnant in terms of race and gender felt more like an editorial comment on the conversation about the lack of diversity in “Sex and the City” and not like a show promoting the women we fall into have fallen in love, picks up again. Would Miranda, a progressive lawyer who has lived her entire life in New York City, really speak like that to a black woman?
Coupled with heavy storylines like Big’s death and Miranda’s infidelity, AJLT got off to a murky start. However, as the season progressed, it eventually evolved into a hilarious dark comedy about aging.
This season’s writers have made a conscious effort to address race and gender in a way that feels more organic than having a character take three minutes to explain that they’re going to be talking about race and gender. Those moments aren’t always successful, but it’s an improvement.
AJLT season 2 also benefits tremendously from not having to explain who these new people are, why they exist, and how they connect to the original protagonists. Now these characters are allowed to be real friends and real people – well, as real as the people in AJLT. Seema has an irrational list of warning signs but is still dating a man who lives with his ex-wife. Lisa Todd Wexley has an annoying mother-in-law and an extremely horny husband. Nya has a rancid marriage that she needs to get out of. Perhaps true equality in the SATC universe is that the women of color share the same nagging personal issues as Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and even Samantha (who will reportedly make a cameo appearance despite Cattrall’s feud with Parker). After all, they’re allowed to just go to brunch and complain about it.
Herbert Wexley (Christopher Jackson) and Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) feel like real people in season two.
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As casual as brunch sounds, there’s always been the magic of Carrie and her best friends: a group of friends who eat, drink and let off steam. It’s always been the main type of relationship on the show. Including these new characters in the reservation—and making their presence at the table feel natural and fun—is a canonically powerful, inclusive gesture. Besides, it’s a pleasure to look at.
Kristin Davis’ Charlotte steals the show in season two of And Just Like That
What’s incredibly brilliant about Sex and The City is how it crystallized its four main characters into obvious archetypes – the cynic, the romantic, the bombshell, and the ego – while still somehow making them feel human and lovable. This went so far that people found themselves in these characters.
To this day, “I’m a ____ (insert Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, or Samantha)” functions as a kind of abbreviation. Mirandas are practical, cynical, and independent. Samanthas are breezy, bold and sexy. Charlottes are romantic, serious and loyal. Porters are impulsive and thoughtful; Chronic protagonists. Identifying as one of those women was a way to talk about the show, but also a way to talk about yourself, how you see the world, and what qualities we like and dislike in others and in ourselves.
And Just Like That has abandoned that dynamic, largely because many of the characters are no longer in The City. Samantha Jones still lives in London. At the end of season one, Miranda Hobbes moved to Los Angeles to be with Che. Even Stanford Blatch is gone as actor Willie Garson passed away in 2021 and his character fled to a greener world before his marriage. Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, the last of Carrie’s original girlfriends, takes on the various modes of Comic Relief and Voice of Reason by default – at least until the newcomers make it into the rotation.
Charlotte from Kristin Davis steals the entire second season.
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While Carrie is learning to be a wealthy widow — digging up and putting on Vivienne Westwood’s wedding dress, her now-dead husband once left her down the aisle — and Miranda travels around LA to follow emotional bulldozer Che, Charlotte is the one true winner of the second part of the season.
Davis, understanding how silly and funny these moments should be, brings panache and lightness to the show. It seems to her like she knows that the first season was lacking in camp and silliness, and she has made it her mission to correct that in every scene she appears in.
“How big is his cock?” Charlotte asks in the first episode, questioning Carrie about a friend’s welfare situation. It’s a line any Sex and the City fan can hear from Cattrall, and Davis responds to the shock by delivering it with convincing sincerity. If no one is there for Samantha, Charlotte explains, she will. Saying she can also channel Miranda’s nagging tone, she then does, “If you sleep with someone at work, you give up your power, Carrie.”
Rather than lecturing on black art or struggling with her child coming out as non-binary, the writers gave Charlotte some easier fights this season. She deals with issues like whether or not to worry about husband Harry’s dry ejaculation (which apparently is a thing when you’re an older man who hasn’t done Kegels). Because Charlotte loves cum — in a celebratory way that she likens to fireworks on the Fourth of July — and the lack of it makes her feel like she’s at a beauty pageant sans confetti. In true Charlotte fashion, she makes an appointment with the best urologist in New York City and, of course, talks it over with Carrie and the rest of her friend group.
The question of whether Charlotte gets turned on by cum is an open question for most viewers and allows her buddies to chime in. Miranda thinks that’s a bit strange. Carrie says Miranda only finds it weird because Miranda isn’t into cis men anymore. Carrie also explains that she’s never given sperm much thought before, but is happy to know that Charlotte appreciates the pageantry. Anthony just wants everyone to know that he is still capable of ejaculation.
Charlotte has a dog named Richard Burton in the second season of And Just Like That. Her dog in Sex and the City was named Elizabeth Taylor.
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These friends fighting each other over it will remind you of the rhythm and daring of the original series. It’s often during the show’s moments that the women are most quoted as talking openly about sex.
The main criticism at the end of the original series “Sex and the City” is that the series never reconciled its claim that friendship is more valuable and fulfilling than men. All four protagonists were ultimately connected, and the bond they formed with each other ultimately came second. Finding her happy life with men was not in line with the series’ credo. And Just Like That gives this idea a second chance and shows us how important it is that these women exist in each other’s lives – if only to make life a little easier to laugh about.