'And Just Like That' PEOPLE Review: Season 2 Is Good Enough to Make You Forget About Samantha

Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and all their pals are back in Max's 'Sex and the City' sequel series

In its first season, Max’s Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That… tried to align the original series with a new Manhattan and a new era, expanding the lineup of female characters to reflect greater racial, sexual and gender diversity. But this laudable goal created a show that often felt swollen (and longer, stretching past a half-hour) — a stylish little comedy that once slipped into a Jimmy Choo now needed an Ugg boot.

The show also had to adjust to a seismic narrative twist (the death of Chris Noth’s Mr. Big) and the strongly felt absence of Kim Cattrall’s frisky, camp Samantha — although she’ll make a cameo in this season's finale, reportedly talking with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw by telephone.

Carrie should just ghost her. Season 2 is good enough to pretty much make you forget Samantha altogether.

Related: Sarah Jessica Parker Felt 'Comfortable and Happy' Reuniting with John Corbett in 'And Just Like That...' (Exclusive)

For that matter, you wonder whether the show needs to bother bumping up the testosterone level by resurrecting Carrie’s old love Aidan (John Corbett). He shows up wearing what looks like a couture bellhop uniform.

The improvements are mostly a matter of sensible tweaks. The tangled underbrush of relationships gets a healthy thinning; the new ladies — Nicole Ari Parker’s Lisa, Sarita Choudhury’s Seema, Karen Pittman’s Nya and Sara Ramirez’s Che — are all fitted more comfortably into the narrative, and the daring, sexy, silly frivolity of the old show is back.

Related: Chris Noth Explains Why Carrie Bradshaw Didn't Call 911 for Mr. Big in 'And Just Like That...'

Seema is devastated when her Birkin bag is stolen (“I bought it so long ago there wasn’t even a wait list”); Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is delighted to make a high school student’s list of MILFs, while her daughter (Cathy Ang) wants to book a meal at Nobu before losing her virginity; and an affair collapses over a debate involving vibrators and penis pumps.

There are still pangs of grief for Big, but Parker handles them with tender humor. She’s like a stone angel above a commemorative plaque: “Even in the midst of death, lo, we make lunch plans.”

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And Just Like That... season 2 premieres on June 22 on Max.

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