It’s ‘Sex and the City,’ With Much Less of Each

In many ways, “And Just Like That” resembles a couple first drawn together by sexual attraction who now, 20 years later, realize that they’re hardly ever having sex any more. In the case of relationships, that’s not usually a positive sign; with this streaming series from HBO, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.As you’ve probably heard, “And Just Like That” is a sequel series to one of the great comedy shows of our time, “Sex and the City,” a personal favorite. Yet, when “And Just Like That” first dropped at the end of last year, I hesitated to watch it. I had my reasons. For one thing, while seasons one through four of the original show were practically perfect, the series lagged seriously in season five. It did finally rally and get great again in the latter half of the sixth and final season, in those episodes with the love triangle between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), her on-again, off-again boyfriend “Big” (Chris Noth), and, surprise, Mikhail Baryshnikov as a romantic rival. (Other than that, the only reason to watch the final two seasons was the dependably hysterical Mario Cantone.)Yet if season five was so bad as to make me stop watching, the two theatrical spinoff movies were even worse — “Downton Abbey” fans, I feel your pain. As the end credits to “Sex and The City 2” rolled by, I didn’t just vacate the theater, I snuck out the back door wearing an overcoat and dark glasses, hoping no one would recognize me.Despite that, I still might have been more eager to watch “And Just Like That” when it streamed between last December and February had not the big spoiler alert come through: My two favorite characters from the series were not going to be in the new show. To further parse the spoiler, “Big” is only in the first episode, and “Samantha Jones” (Kim Cattrall) not at all. These two were most of the reason that guys like me watched the show: Regardless of whether we admitted it to ourselves, we all wanted to be Big, and we wanted to watch the sexual adventures and misadventures that Samantha always seemed to get herself involved in. She was both the oldest and by far the sexiest of the four women at the core of the show. Big and Samantha were also the only two who truly lived up to the “sex” portion of the series title. Furthermore, some of the male audience was delighted by Samantha’s habit of shedding her clothes in front of the cameras every few episodes.This explains why it was a good idea for the creators of the new series to change the title: Without Big and Samantha, the show is not “Sex and the City.” Virtually no one is having sex — except for Miranda and Steve’s son Brady (Niall Cunningham), who’s so promiscuous that I keep suspecting he’s somehow actually the secret child of the absent Samantha. More surprisingly, the show is barely about New York; there are few recognizable landmarks, and the whole enterprise hardly seems to be as metro-specific as the original show. (Then again, New York itself is hardly the city it was three years ago.) If “Sex and The City” is no longer the show that captures the immediate metropolitan moment — which is to say, the semi-post-pandemic moment — that honor must go to “Only Murders in the Building,” another exceptional streaming comedy that could have been easily titled, “Murder and the City.”But so what? Yes, that was most assuredly the reason most of us were enticed to watch the original series to begin with; but “And Just Like That” is not really about sex or the city. Over the years we have grown so fond of the characters that we want to see what happens next. Miranda (the wonderful Cynthia Nixon, whom I’d vote for anytime) is actually much more sympathetic and lovable in her 50s than her 30s, as a frustrated wife, mother, and lawyer trying to negotiate World 2.0 — and now saddled with a drinking problem. Twenty years ago, the optimism and naivety of Charlotte (Kristin Davis) were merely adorable; now they’re much more poignant, and are cornerstone components of a brilliantly well fleshed out character.Show “developer” Michael Patrick King also deserves credit for not trying to come up with a fourth best bud to replace Samantha. Commendably, the show features a variety of new female characters who serve as foils and friends of the three main ladies. Sometimes it seems that HBO is forcing the diversity angle in that they’re all non-white — perhaps to compensate for the way the four original ladies were all nothing but white — but who’s complaining? Mr. King and his writers have come up with a supporting cast of all very strong and worthy characters, most notably Vanessa Williams as kind of the power mom of the gods, Sarah Ramirez (who was swell in “Spamalot” on Broadway) as a Latino lesbian comic, and Sarita Choudhury as a high-powered realtor working even harder at finding a mate for herself than a buyer for Carrie’s apartment.Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long for the second season. Fingers crossed that Samantha makes a cameo appearance, or that Big returns via a flashback, or something. I’ll be watching. And just like that, they made me a fan all over again.

It’s ‘Sex and the City,’ With Much Less of Each

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