Kim Cattrall made a much-anticipated, if brief, appearance in the Season 2 finale of the “Sex and the City” sequel series, which debuted early Thursday morning on Max.
By Alexis Soloski
Momentous things happened in the “And Just Like That …” Season 2 finale: Carrie took off her bra. And for 75 fruitless seconds, Samantha Jones returned.
Over two seasons on Max, “And Just Like That …,” a continuation of the seismic 1990s HBO comedy “Sex and the City,” has struggled to find its footing, much like a newborn colt shaking off an Ambien dose. The original series was a Cointreau-laced confection, set in a fantasy Manhattan of taxicabs, Jimmy Choos and hunky, inadequate men. (Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie went to bed with plenty of them, though owing to a nudity rider, the actress nearly always kept her torso covered.)
The first season of this new show, which finds its characters nearly 20 years older, attempted to leaven that exuberance with a little more reality — death, addiction, hip replacement. But “Sex and the City” was never built to bear much reality. And the reboot, with its extended friend group, has rarely captured the loopy pleasures of the original.
Part of the problem was the loss of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, at least until the season finale, when she appeared in a much anticipated but ultimately inert cameo, a scene that smacked less of comic or dramatic necessity than of a hostage proof of life video.
As the original series reached its 2004 close, rumors swirled of acrimony between Parker and Cattrall. Both women denied the gossip, but over time those denials softened. There were abrasive Instagram messages and pointed interview comments, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to learn that “And Just Like That …” would not include Samantha. The show explained her absence by saying that Carrie had fired her as a personal publicist, citing a downturn in the publishing industry, and then Samantha had fired her as a friend and moved to London.
That rang false; Samantha had always put her friends first. As she said to all the women in the second film, her final “Sex and the City” appearance until this week’s cameo: “Men, babies — doesn’t matter. We’re soul mates.”
Her absence has been deeply felt in the current series, a loss more profound than the death of Chris Noth’s Peloton-felled Mr. Big at the beginning of Season 1. None of the new friends who have been so carefully assigned to the three originals — Carrie, Kristin Davis’s Charlotte and Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda — have conjured a fraction of Samantha’s joyful, libidinal energy. (Sarita Choudhury’s carnivorous real estate agent Seema comes the closest, but Seema seems burdened by her love life, a problem Samantha, in her very short skirts, mostly skirted.)
The writers must have known this. While the first season began with Big’s death, it closed with the attempted repair of Carrie and Samantha’s relationship. In Paris, having scattered Big’s ashes, she texts Samantha (there had been another text exchange earlier in the season) and asks to meet for a cocktail. “How’s tomorrow night?” Samantha replies.
And at the close of the second season, Samantha finally came back, though not really. A very brief scene at the top of the episode showed her in a car, ostensibly speeding away from Heathrow Airport. (According to the New York Post, Cattrall actually shot in a parking garage at Silvercup Studio in Queens, out of sight of her former cast members.)
In a brief phone conversation, she tells Carrie that owing to a flight delay, she will not, in fact, make a surprise appearance at a dinner celebrating Carrie’s last night in her old apartment. Samantha then asks to be put on speaker phone to pay her respects to the place. The call ends with Samantha still 3,500 miles away. Maybe that was the only London-to-New York flight, ever? In sum: Hello, I will not be arriving. Please let me talk to a room. Goodbye.
Even knowing that Cattrall’s cameo would be quick, it felt bizarrely superfluous. Carrie probably delivered more lines to her kitten over the course of an episode that also included a senseless rupture with her briefly on-again boyfriend Aidan — played by John Corbett, the season’s other big returning star — and a sex scene sans lingerie. (Maybe people really can change!) At least she and the kitten were in the same frame.
The open secret of “Sex and the City” was that it was never really about the sex. And with the exception of sleekly interchangeable brunch spots and nightclubs, it was not about the city either. Throughout the seasons, men and bistros came and went, most often within a single 22-minute episode. What endured were the friendships among the women, with Carrie at the chatty center. Though the characters were a study in high-heeled contrasts, they sustained one another through loss, grief and weird hookups. The final episode of “Sex and the City” saw each of the women coupled up, but the essential romance of the show was always sororal.
Each of the characters had an archetype to inhabit: flighty Carrie, career-minded Miranda, marriage-minded Charlotte, libertine Samantha. Samantha was a caricature of licentiousness, but Cattrall’s enthusiasm for the role — the husky voice, the double-dare-you smile, the symphony of sex noises — made her irreplaceable. Crucially, she liked her life. She often seemed to be the only woman in New York consistently having any fun, which made her irresistible. The finale’s drive-by Cattrall, dressed by Patricia Field in gold and red, didn’t remotely replace that.
In a way, this listless cameo points up the new show’s sobering, unglamorous moral lessons: that middle age, no matter how well appareled, has its forfeitures and costs; that friendships may not retain the same luster after marriage and children; that the past, like the fashions of a few seasons ago, can never be wholly returned to.
So pour one out, preferably a Cosmopolitan, for what was. Just don’t let it hit your Manolos — does anyone still wear those? — on the way down.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media. More about Alexis Soloski
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