‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2 Puts the Sex Back in ‘Sex and the City’
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In an upcoming episode of Max’s Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That…, Kristin Davis’ Charlotte pauses to take stock of her life in the wake of several personal setbacks. “What happened?” she asks with some dismay, before declaring, “I have got to get back to me.”
If this is not an intentional mission statement for the second season of a show whose first season wasn’t warmly received, it’s at least an unconscious one. Like Charlotte, And Just Like That… seems determined to get back to itself — or, rather, to feel more like old-school Sex and the City, just with older versions of Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte. It’s a notable improvement on Season One, while also demonstrating that it’s easier to say you want to turn back the clock than it is to actually do it.
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Season Two opens with a montage of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte, and new pals Che (Sara Ramirez), Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker), and Seema (Sarita Choudhury) all preparing for sex with their respective partners. (In the case of Miranda and Che, that’s each other.) Karen Pittman’s Nya is alone, thanks to an estrangement from her husband, but opening up with everyone else making love sends a signal that showrunner Michael Patrick King and company intend to put some sex back into their city. Though Carrie is still grieving the loss of Mr. Big a year after his ridiculous death-by-Peloton, she is also putting herself out there, starting with a weekly friends-with-benefits arrangement with Franklyn (Ivan Hernandez), who produced her old podcast with Che and now her new one that is conveniently also titled Sex and the City.
King and his collaborators seem to have taken some of the criticisms of the first season to heart. Even beyond Carrie slowly moving on from Big, the tone is lighter. There is more effort put into incorporating the four new characters, both in combination with the three returning leads and on their own. Che, who turned into a particular target of mockery in the first season, is given more vulnerability and more dimensionality. There’s even a meta scene where Che observes a focus group test of their ABC pilot, and is dismayed when a genderqueer participant complains that their sitcom character is like a boomer parody of what a non-binary person would be like.
So the good intentions are there. And on the whole, Season Two feels less inherently ridiculous and self-indulgent than Season One. (Or for that matter, than the second movie.) But the execution is still often rough. Many stories have the shape of something the original show might have done, but rarely with the thoughtfulness of SATC at its best. And some plots will make your eyes roll so far back into your heads that you will thankfully not be able to watch the next three or four scenes.
Though Kim Cattrall’s Samantha is reportedly cameoing later in the season, the early episodes try to approximate her overwhelming sex positivity without her. In the premiere, for instance, Carrie asks Charlotte to not be herself while discussing Carrie’s no-strings relationship with Franklyn. “How big is his dick?” Charlotte asks a stunned Carrie, before adding, “If I’m not allowed to be me, I’m going to be Samantha.” Seema hits it off with a handsome liquor sales rep, but isn’t thrilled that he needs to use a penis pump before sleeping with her. When Charlotte’s husband Harry (Evan Handler) has an orgasm without ejaculating, she puts him through a rigorous Kegel exercise regimen. And on and on.
The big stumbling block to this material is actually a very old one: alleged sex expert Carrie Bradshaw finds any and all discussion of sex and/or the human body to be deeply distasteful. In one episode, she’s mortified when Franklyn asks her to record an ad for a vaginal rejuvenation company. (Inevitably, this leads to her declaring, “I think my vagina needs to write its own monologue.”) When the subject of pegging comes up in a conversation, Carrie jokes about wanting to leave the room. Even the Kegel subplot finds Carrie acting the most prudish(*), though Sarah Jessica Parker does have to say the word “jizz” many times in less than 20 seconds. So there’s that.
(*) The scene is also in stark contrast to the classic Sex and the City scene where Charlotte stormed out of brunch immediately after Samantha announced that she was “dating a guy with the funkiest-tasting spunk.” An acknowledgment of that, even if it was noting how much less uptight she’s gotten on the subject, might have been nice.
The work with the expanded ensemble is also hit-or-miss. Che is definitely less of a smug caricature this time around, even if what little we hear of their comedy is still hacky. (Did you know that people in Los Angeles drive anywhere? If not, Che Diaz’s act might just surprise you!) Their relationship with Miranda has genuine push and pull, and some messy spillover into Miranda’s attempt to make nice with Steve (David Eigenberg) and Brady (Niall Cunningham). Nya disappears for long stretches, though, and only Seema feels fully and comfortably integrated into the ensemble, in part because she’s filling the Samantha role as the member of the group who never apologizes for speaking her mind or going after whatever she wants. A lot of time is spent on Lisa’s family with husband Herbert (Chris Jackson), but in a way that often makes it seem as if they are on a spinoff that never managed to separate itself from the main show. There are also odd moments pairing up friends-of-friends who have no direct relationship, like Seema and Mario Cantone’s Anthony(*) getting stood up at lunch by Carrie. And when John Corbett’s Aidan returns to Carrie’s orbit, she only consults Charlotte and Miranda, making clear that there remain tiers of importance within this friend group.
(*) For those wondering, Anthony’s husband Stanford is referred to as still being alive and staying in Japan, having ghosted Anthony, Carrie, and everyone else in his life last season, which was the production’s clumsy attempt to deal with actor Willie Garson’s sudden death during filming of Season One. It was an unfortunate spot for everyone to be in, since they couldn’t exactly kill both Carrie’s husband and her best male friend in the same season, but it means one of the show’s kinder characters is blowing off everyone who cares about him.
Carrie’s outfits are still ridiculous — as you can see in the photo at the top of this review, she goes to a second-hand boutique dressed like a gas station mechanic, while carrying both a small purse and a pigeon-shaped chewing gum dispenser — but that’s part of the deal. There are some real groaners, though, like Charlotte and Lisa getting much too excited to find themselves appearing on a MILF list that’s been going around their kids’ school. And there’s an unironic variation on the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme that may be the single stupidest thing in the history of this franchise, and that includes the ladies’ trip to Abu Dhabi in the second film.
Mostly, though, it’s now passable, rising up to the level of nostalgic mediocrity to which most of the recent boom of TV revivals seem to aspire. If you enjoyed Season One specifically for how strangely terrible it could be, this may be a disappointment. If you’re just looking to reconnect with your old friends in something that feels vaguely like the good old days, it’s much closer to the mark.
When Carrie’s new podcast is imperiled, she tells Franklyn, “I’m still fighting to save Sex and the City,” before admitting that its time may have passed. And Just Like That… at no point feels vital in the way the old show so often did. But it also resembles the vintage adventures a bit more than seemed possible a year ago.
The first two episodes of And Just Like That… Season two begin streaming June 22 on Max, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen the first seven out of 10 episodes.
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