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<\/p>\nKim Cattrall made a much-anticipated, if brief, appearance in the Season 2 finale of the \u201cSex and the City\u201d sequel series, which debuted early Thursday morning on Max.<\/p>\n
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By <\/span>Alexis Soloski<\/span><\/p>\n Momentous things happened in the \u201cAnd Just Like That \u2026\u201d Season 2 finale: Carrie took off her bra. And for 75 fruitless seconds, Samantha Jones returned.<\/p>\n Over two seasons on Max, \u201cAnd Just Like That \u2026,\u201d a continuation of the seismic 1990s HBO comedy \u201cSex and the City,\u201d 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\u2019s Carrie went to bed with plenty of them, though owing to a nudity rider, the actress nearly always kept her torso covered.)<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 death, addiction, hip replacement. But \u201cSex and the City\u201d was never built to bear much reality. And the reboot, with its extended friend group, has rarely captured the loopy pleasures of the original.<\/p>\n Part of the problem was the loss of Kim Cattrall\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t much of a surprise to learn that \u201cAnd Just Like That \u2026\u201d 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<\/em> as a friend and moved to London.<\/p>\n That rang false; Samantha had always put her friends first. As she said to all the women in the second film, her final \u201cSex and the City\u201d appearance until this week\u2019s cameo: \u201cMen, babies \u2014 doesn\u2019t matter. We\u2019re soul mates.\u201d<\/p>\n Her absence has been deeply felt in the current series, a loss more profound than the death of Chris Noth\u2019s 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 \u2014 Carrie, Kristin Davis\u2019s Charlotte and Cynthia Nixon\u2019s Miranda \u2014 have conjured a fraction of Samantha\u2019s joyful, libidinal energy. (Sarita Choudhury\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n The writers must have known this. While the first season began with Big\u2019s death, it closed with the attempted repair of Carrie and Samantha\u2019s relationship. In Paris, having scattered Big\u2019s ashes, she texts Samantha (there had been another text exchange earlier in the season) and asks to meet for a cocktail. \u201cHow\u2019s tomorrow night?\u201d Samantha replies.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Even knowing that Cattrall\u2019s 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 \u2014 played by John Corbett, the season\u2019s other big returning star \u2014 and a sex scene sans lingerie. (Maybe people really can change!) At least she and the kitten were in the same frame.<\/p>\n The open secret of \u201cSex and the City\u201d 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 \u201cSex and the City\u201d saw each of the women coupled up, but the essential romance of the show was always sororal.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s enthusiasm for the role \u2014 the husky voice, the double-dare-you smile, the symphony of sex noises \u2014 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\u2019s drive-by Cattrall, dressed by Patricia Field in gold and red, didn\u2019t remotely replace that.<\/p>\n In a way, this listless cameo points up the new show\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n So pour one out, preferably a Cosmopolitan, for what was. Just don\u2019t let it hit your Manolos \u2014 does anyone still wear those? \u2014 on the way down.<\/p>\n