“Sex and the City” returns with “And Just Like That” without missing a beat, except, well someone is missing a beat. There’s a death, although I’ll let you figure that one out.
Let’s get to the elephant in the room, because these people do right away. Samantha, aka Kim Cattrall, is gone, and the explanation is that she’s moved to London. And consequently, Miranda tells Carrie, “it’s like she’s dead.” She is not, but it’s hammered home that Samantha is older than the rest of them– mid 60s– and that she has dumped Carrie as friend.
“She fired me as a friend,” Carrie says, explaining that since Samantha has moved to London Carrie stopped using her as a publicist. The result is that Samantha isn’t taking her calls and hasn’t spoken to Charlotte or Miranda, either. You see it’s her fault she’s not on the show. Got that?
Anyway, on to other things. Carrie and Mr. Big are very happy and live in a spectacular apartment. Can that last? There are 10 episodes. Charlotte and Miranda are still married to their husbands. Steve, Miranda’s husband, has hearing loss, and Miranda has a burgeoning problem as well. Charlotte is dealing with teen girls. Miranda has a carrot topped son who’s sex-crazy. (The actor they hired looks like he could be the real life son of Cynthia Nixon’s partner, Christine Marinoni. He’s not. But the casting is spot on.)
And then, just like that, the girls seem to know Black people. A few of them are introduced, all very stylish and well off, just like them. One of them is played by Christopher Wallace of “Hamilton” fame. Another is played by Sara Ramirez of “Grey’s Anatomy,” a fluid “they” who has a podcast about sex for which Carrie works and is paid. (People are paid to do podcasts?) And this is interesting because the podcast is far more explicit and graphic than anything Carrie has written about and she’s uncomfortable with it. You’ll see why. Later she brings this dilemma home to Mr. Big and we get to see Chris Noth do something we should not. Ahem.
“And Just Like That” will upset some fans but in the end it’s very well written by Michael Patrick King who knows his subjects and characters well. In the old days when HBO invited me to these premieres they’d show two episodes and I never really saw the rest of any season. So I might watch next week to see the fallout from this premiere, but then I think that’s enough for me of this Really Big Shoe. After six seasons and two movies I wasn’t actually curious what happened to all these people. And now that I’ve seen it, I know I was right. I was happy to leave them where they were. Since there are no ratings on HBO Max we’ll never know how the fans really felt except on social media where I expect their voices will be heard for better or worse.
“And Just Like That” is playing on HBO Max, which you have if you also have HBO.
