And Just Like That, Season 2

By Joanna Langfield

You can’t say this season doesn’t start off with a bang. Just like that, we get to watch as most of those iconic ladies have some super steamy sex. Which, after all, is a rather on brand reminder the origins of all this were a book and series that wasn’t called Sex and the City for nothing.

Picking up a bit after where the disastrous first chapter of this sequel began, we now get to tag along as Cynthia Nixon explores the facets of Miranda’s newfound sexuality, Kristin Davis wonders if being supermom is enough and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie begins to peek out of her sudden widowhood’s depression. The wonderful actors Sara Ramirez, Karen Pittman, Sarita Choudhury, Mario Cantone and Nicole Ari Parker add color. Yes, take that as you will. These actors bring a necessary vibrancy to the ever-spinning original wheel but also its pretty hard to ignore the fact that each is a person of color, orientation and, in Ramirez’s case, non- binary. The fact that their casting feels very deliberate is not their fault and shouldn’t detract from their work. But yeah, it kind of does.

But they aren’t the only ones laden with PC yokes. Everybody has their load to bear, whether it’s of sexual, societal or “that’s what life can do to you”. Some of the episodes are, happily, poignant and still, occasionally, funny. Some feel as if they are just trying too hard.

In the episodes sent to critics, we do not get to see Samantha rejoin the group. But we do get to enjoy Aiden Quinn come back the man Carrie never forgot. (Neither did some of the rest of us) Yes, there are life lessons. There’s also lots of lunching, fabulous apartments and even better clothes. And sex. In a city that sure looks pretty swell.