'And Just Like That ...' reckons with its past

Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in &quot;And Just Like That ...&quot;

(Image credit: Craig Blakenhorn/Max)

published 3 July 2023

When it first premiered in 2021, "And Just Like That …," the widely-anticipated reboot of "Sex and The City," fell flat on its face. Sure, viewers still tuned in, but what they watched was, by most if not all accounts, a frustratingly poor attempt at righting the cultural wrongs of the original franchise, even if it meant sacrificing key tenets of its heroines' personalities. Does the second season, which premiered on Max on June 22, right the ship?

Season 1 sins

Let's start with the first season's most glaringly obvious pain point: nonbinary comedian and "talking infographic" Che Diaz, who unexpectedly captures the pragmatic heart of Miranda Hobbes despite acting like "an assembly of blue-linked Wikipedia entries on 'queer,' 'non-binary,' and 'podcaster.'" For many fans and critics, season one Che operated like a caricature of queerness, an unexamined and somewhat unexplained token plaything that sends Miranda on a characteristically-atypical journey of adultery. Yes, their introduction felt like "an attempt from the writers to acknowledge the original 'Sex and the City's very rigid approach to the gender binary," Vulture's Jackson McHenry wrote in early 2022. But in execution, the character came off as though a "smarmy far-right pundit was satirizing or parodying" conversations about "gender, sex, and queerness" and "the left's wokeness addiction," The Daily Beast's Kevin Fallon mused last summer.

Then there was the issue of race, which was once again overcorrected before being refracted through the plot lines of the series' white characters. In addition to Che, writers added Seema Patel, a luxurious real estate agent of South Asian descent; Nya Wallace, a patient and lauded law professor; and Lisa Todd Wexley, a documentarian that's as cool as she is beautiful. Still, these "new faces weren't given enough runway of their own," Helena Andrews-Dyer wrote in The Washington Post. How a character exists in the "Sex and the City" universe is just as important as the fact of their existence, and "throwing a Black, Latinx or nonbinary character into the ring without their own gloves isn't exactly fair."

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And of course, underneath it all, season one was just a bit … bad. Its intentions were clear, McHenry wrote in his latest review for Vulture, but watching it "was like seeing someone accidentally twist their own ankle." The show's original characters became "joyless, clumsy Karens" in service of "penance" for the original's "perceived ills," which saw them each paired "with a new character of color," Sophie Gilbert added in The Atlantic. "Coupled with heavy storylines like Big's death and Miranda's infidelity," mused Vox's Alex Abad-Santos, ['And Just Like That …'] had a bleak start."

As it turns out, all the show "really needed was time," Daily Beast entertainment critic Coleman Spilde wrote in his season two review. With its latest installment, "And Just Like That …" "skips down the list of everything that was off, underwritten, or just plain inconceivably bad" about season one and corrects "them one by one." It also feels a bit more "aware of the joke, of what it's subjecting its characters to, and of the existing conversation around the show," said McHenry.

On the race and gender front, the writers "have made a conscious effort" to tackle the subjects "in a way that feels more organic, said Abad-Santos. "Those moments aren't always successful, but it's an improvement." Indeed, the season's second episode "addresses racism more directly than perhaps any episode of 'And Just Like That' or the original 'Sex and the City' ever has, even if it's still not saying much," The Daily Beast's Laura Bradley added in a separate piece.

Even Che, a self-described narcissist and the most despised character on the internet, manages to actually come alive this go-around. As we watch them get to know Miranda, and vice versa, it becomes clear that Che is "a classic 'SATC'-style sh-thead boyfriend," just "wrapped up in a fresh package," Robyn Bahr mused for The Hollywood Reporter. "You call Che a monster; I call them the most three-dimensional new character in the Sex universe."

But that's not to say that everyone was impressed. "Awkward, unconvincing and only sporadically funny," said CNN's Brian Lowry, "the show remains a kind of streaming Frankenstein, stitched together from a jumbled assortment of parts." And while "there's always pleasure in the reunion of beloved TV characters," added Nick Hilton, chief TV critic at The Independent, the series still seems "uncertain about its place in the world."

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.