‘And Just Like That,’ Carrie Bradshaw and Company Are Sexless in the City

Sandra Miska

Seventeen years after the end of the iconic HBO series “Sex and the City” and 11 years after the second film, the story of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), along with those of her pals Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis), resumes in the limited series “And Just Like That.” While Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is in a self-imposed exile in London, a colorful new cast of characters is introduced, and the new series changes format by showing perspectives of those other than the main women.

When we first meet Carrie again, she’s still living her best life with her husband John (Chris Noth), a.k.a. Mr. Big. She currently co-hosts a podcast with queer, non-binary, Latinx comic Che (Sara Ramirez) and an Asian cis straight man, Jackie (Bobby Lee). Times have changed since Carrie began writiing her column in the late ’90s, and while she was once on the cutting edge when it came to talking about sex, she is now considered relatively tame. Che (short for Cheryl) pushes her to open up more during recordings, calling her an “uptight, cisgender, female married lady.” 

After a dozen or so years, Carrie and Big still have a spicy sex life and are madly in love, but eveything comes crashing down when he unexpectedly dies from a heart attack at the end of first episode. Devastated, Carrie leans on her friends for support, not just while going through the process of arranging the funeral, but also afterwards when she is plagued by fears that he had hid stuff from her, as her suspicions are fueled by a surprising bequest to another woman in his will. Mercifully, writer and director Michael Patrick King doesn’t drag out the Big secrets storyline, and Carrie even has the opportunity to have closure with Natasha (Bridget Moynahan), Big’s ex whom they both did dirty, in episode three. By episode four, Carrie makes the decision to sell her marital home with help from Seema (Sarita Choudhury), a realtor who becomes a new friend. Blunt, never-married and dating in her fifties, Seema has a lot of the same qualities as Samantha.

Speaking of Samantha, her ghost looms over the new series, and Carrie is still haunted by how she ended things with her former friend, who skipped down not long after she fired her as her publicist. Although she ghosted her three former best friends, she does send flowers for Big’s funeral. King has seemed to have left the door open for Cattrall’s return, and her bitting humor and sexually adventurous spirit are sorely missed in “And Just Like That.” It’s fitting the title has been changed, as there’s not a lot of sex happening in the city anymore, and the only character whom we see regularly getting any is Miranda’s teen son Brady (Niall Cunningham).

While Miranda’s lovable bartender husband Steve (David Eigenberg) is still alive, the couple’s sex life is very much dead. She admits to Charlotte that the pair haven’t had sex in years, although they are still comfortable with each and their routine that includes watching streaming shows nightly. With Samantha gone and Carrie preoccupied a lot of the time, there is more of a focus on the friendship between Miranda and Charlotte in “And Just Like That,” and it is Charlotte who first takes notice of Miranda’s excessive drinking. 

In the first four episodes, Miranda’s new fondness for morning wine has yet to catch up with her as she embarks on a new chapter as a grad student. After the Trump presidency inspired her to quit her job as a corporate lawyer, she decides to return to school to get a master’s degree that would help her as she shifts her focus to human rights. There, among her younger classmates, she finds out she is not quite as woke as she thinks. It takes her a minute to navigate pronouns, and her professor, Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), calls her out for her white savior antics. Nya ends up becoming friends with Miranda, even opening up with her about her fertility struggles. The character offers one of the aforementioned fresh perspectives, and she represents a modern type of woman who was lacking in SATC, a career-driven WOC who finds herself navigating IVF with her younger husband.

Charlotte is also pushed out of her comfort zone as he juggles her responsibilities as the full-time mother of her teen daughters, musically-gifted Lily (Cathy Ang) and tomboy skater Rose (Alexa Swinton). While Lily is super girly like her mother, Rose throws her a loop when she admits that she doesn’t feel like a girl. While Charlotte’s gay best friend Anthony (Mario Cantone) tells her not to take Rose’s questioning her gender too seriously, she ends up benefiting from the perspective of Che.

The last major character who is introduced is Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker), a cool mom from Lily and Rose’s school. Charlotte goes out of her way to befriend Lisa, a documentarian, although, like Miranda, she comes to the conclusion that she’s isn’t as progressive as she thought, as she and lawyer husband Harry (Evan Handler) don’t have many Black friends, and her focus becomes on expanding her horizons. Charlotte may have sacrificed her career at a young age when she married her first husband, but her background running a gallery proves to come in handy at a dinner party thrown by Lisa.

The late Willie Garson appears in the first three episodes of “And Just Like That” as the charming Stanford, offering support to Carrie and butting heads with Charlotte over who’s a better friend. He’s still married to Anthony, now the owner of a bread business with hot delivery guys, but they’re going through a rough patch. In episode four, we learn his job managing a TikTok star has taken him out of the country, and King seemed to have originally left his ending open-ended in the hopes that he would recover from cancer and return to work. It really hits home that Garson has been taken too soon, and with him the lovable unofficial fifth member of the SATC group.

With six episodes left and a possible second season, there’s opportunity for so much more to develop, including possible new romances and adventures. While the new characters breathe new life into this world, hopefully some of the aspects that made the original series a hit, particularly the spiciness, will be taken up a notch in upcoming episodes.

“And Just Like That” episodes one and two begin streaming Dec. 9 with new episodes premiering Thursdays on HBO Max.