And Just Like That (TV Program)

The new season opener found most of the women prioritizing their men’s needs over their own. That didn’t seem likely to last.My jaw is bruised from hitting the floor when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) tells her gal pals that her boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett), asked for “no communication” while he deals with family issues — and that she is just fine with giving it to him. No communication. For five full years. And this is supposed to be love?Let’s review how we got here. At the end of Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the on-again lovers Carrie and Aidan found themselves at an impasse when Aidan’s son, Wyatt, hit hard times. Wyatt needed paternal supervision — so much so, apparently, that Aidan felt compelled to devote himself to it entirely back home in Virginia. The Gramercy palace Carrie had just purchased for the two of them became a reluctant bachelorette pad, and their love was relegated to a long-distance situationship.At that point, we knew Carrie and Aidan were going to hold onto their love connection but weren’t going to visit each other — as implausible as that seemed alone. What was less apparent until the first few moments of Season 3 was that they weren’t going to speak, period. No texting, no FaceTime, not even the occasional Instagram like. The only hellos they’re exchanging are blank postcards, which they’re each sending back and forth between Virginia and New York, and for Carrie, this is apparently enough. Right.This no-contact-but-stay-together setup was never realistic — even if we suspended every possible disbelief. It is even more absurd that Carrie plays along.It doesn’t take long for Aidan to break his own rule, though. All he needed were three beers and a good, old-fashioned “ache.” He buzz-dials Carrie out of nowhere and lures her into one-sided, rather frantic phone sex. (Carrie may have been more enthusiastic if not for the beady eyes of her kitty-cat, Shoe, who was watching from the edge of the bed. But between that, Aidan’s intoxicated grunts, and a disruptive horn-blare, she just couldn’t quite get there.)Not long after, Carrie calls up Aidan for Round 2, but the time is no good for Aidan. He is back on Wyatt patrol, lying in bed beside his sleeping son. Carrie hangs up in shame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Carrie gets an unexpected phone call. Aidan has some unexpected news.Season 2, Episode 11: ‘The Last Supper Part Two: Entrée’This sophomore season of “And Just Like That …” finishes almost exactly as it started: with everyone getting laid. We have “you love me too” sex, “moving on from my ex” sex, “giving up control” sex and “I’ll love you forever but might not see you for five years” sex. But the experiences between the lovers in the season finale are deeper, more meaningful and more evolved, much like this season — and in some ways, like this whole franchise.We know this because we were all flies on the wall at “The Last Supper” — Carrie’s final hurrah in her walk-up apartment near Barneys — where, between drink clinks and olive tastings, we got some major, albeit concise, self-reflection out of every single character. As Che puts it to Lisette during some impromptu heavy chitchat, Che is transitioning “emotionally.” But it’s clear Che isn’t the only one.Carrie did, in fact, despite my doubts, sell that apartment for good to Lisette and move to a four-bedroom Gramercy Park palace, which, at least for now, will house just her and her teeny kitty, Shoe.Aidan won’t be there, as was the plan. As we learned in last week’s episode, Aidan’s almost 15-year-old son, Wyatt, is in dire straits, and Aidan believes Wyatt needs his “constant” father nearby, in Norfolk, Va., and not in New York.But he and Carrie aren’t breaking up. They are simply entering a five-year holding pattern that Aidan promises will go by in a silent snap.This is, if you’re looking at it realistically, kind of bull. Yes, Wyatt needs steady, present parents right now, but this idea that his recovery will take precisely five years, and that they couldn’t still visit each other during that time, is contrived. Still, we know already that Season 3 is a go, and Carrie and Aidan — as much as many of us are rooting for them — need to be pried apart somehow if Carrie is to keep having new romantic adventures.It isn’t public knowledge how early the “And Just Like That …” team got the greenlight for Season 3, but it’s fair to speculate that it happened well before the renewal was announced this week. The Season 2 finale doesn’t feel final at all. Instead, it feels as if each character were on the verge of becoming richer, more seasoned versions of themselves.First and foremost, Woke Charlotte is in full effect, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Who would have imagined 25 years ago that the traditionalist Charlotte would become the most vocal feminist of them all? Taking down the patriarchy in her own home, Charlotte once again speaks for women across America in telling Harry that doing a few things around the house does not mean he is doing “it all.”In fact, he is doing the “bare minimum,” she says, of what has been expected of her and pretty much every wife and mother of the modern era (in heterosexual marriages). He deserves no applause. But she does. They say not all heroes wear capes, and in this case, our hero is wearing a disheveled gallerina dress that probably smells like booze and slaying, and that’s just fine.Miranda is taking on a new mind-set as well, addressing finally her pattern of discarding past loves and instead choosing to face that pain head-on. Carrie’s dinner party, which Carrie forced Miranda to attend (a decision I disagreed with!), turns out for the best in terms of Miranda and Che, who land on being a “good train wreck” and end up on at least amicable terms.Miranda was in a relationship with Steve far longer. She was married to him, had a child with him, shared a life and home with him. With Steve, she wants more than niceties, so she goes out to Coney Island to ask for it. Steve’s demeanor lets us know she will likely get it.But even more exciting is the fact that Miranda, too, is stepping up professionally. She is rapidly ascending at Human Rights Watch, enough to be trusted with an impromptu interview on the BBC. She is, well into middle age, finally doing work that matters to her, and I, for one, can’t wait to see more of that in Season 3.Kim Cattrall briefly reprised her “Sex and the City” character in the Season 2 finale of “And Just Like That …”MaxNya’s star is rising quickly as well, with a fast and unanimous vote to elect her into the American Law Institute. She is dismayed that she doesn’t have a man to share that joy with, and it’s easy to feel dismayed in hearing Nya say such a thing. This show is supposed to be about empowerment, right? These women don’t need men around, do they? But her lament, considering she is still grieving a divorce from a longtime love, is honest, and of course wanting a partner isn’t something to apologize for. Happily for Nya, sparks fly by the end of the episode with a Michelin-star chef (Gary Dourdan) who seems, rightly, very, very into her.Lisa, having miscarried her pregnancy in the previous episode, is free from the worry that a baby will derail all that she has worked toward. But more important, she resolves to free herself from the guilt of not having wanted it. Lisa is ready for “her time,” and she is dedicated to pursuing it. (Herbert better get that vasectomy this time.) Che, too, is moving toward whatever new version of themself is yet to come. Che is in, as Lisette calls it, a “cocoon stage.”Which is probably the best way to describe Carrie as well. Her next step is the most mysterious of all. Will this next phase of her life involve Aidan, who is technically still her boyfriend? Will she write another book? Will she become editor-at-large at Enid’s Vivante? Will she take up feeding pigeons every day in Gramercy Park? We don’t know. But we do know, as Carrie tells it, that she will be trying to move forward without expectations.Admittedly, my expectations for Season 2 were relatively low. I was hoping for a more fun, less grief-stricken story, and I got that. But over the past 11 episodes, I’m pleasantly surprised to say I got a lot more. It has been rocky along the way, but I think the show has taken meaningful steps toward inclusivity, achieving richer story lines for the newer characters while also allowing the whole cast, especially its original characters, to mature appropriately.Sure, this series is a little less fancy-free than the original. But it is challenging the ways in which we dismiss women of a certain age, forcing us instead to consider that, maybe, if we let them, women can step more and more into their power with each passing year. And as Carrie would say, that’s just fabulous.Things still taking up space in my brainI think we were all hoping Samantha (Kim Cattrall) would be more than a footnote, but the rumors were that her appearance would be only a cameo, and it was. Considering the bad blood Cattrall has said exists between her and Sarah Jessica Parker, and her insistence that she wanted nothing to do with this series, it is surprising that Cattrall appeared at all. But if this is a setup for Samantha to be more formally incorporated into Season 3, I would truly be thrilled.Aidan says he has provided a sense of normalcy and constancy for his boys over the years, but frankly, I want to hear Kathy’s side of this story. She was always jaunting off to China, but wasn’t Aidan on a work trip in Abu Dhabi the last time he bumped into Carrie? Kathy was the one who had the wherewithal to ask Carrie keep their sons out of her writing. Her protective instinct is very much there. Justice for Kathy in Season 3, please. 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An unexpected fan of “Sex and the City” reflects on the impact the series and its sequel “And Just Like That …” had on his life and, ultimately, his move to New York City. More

It seems maybe Carrie shouldn’t get her heart set on those spacious new Gramercy digs just yet.Season 2, Episode 10:Is Carrie going to have to buy back her old apartment yet again, after a third failed attempt to move on from that place and formally co-habitate with one of her two great loves? This is all feeling a little too familiar.Recall, if you will, “Sex and the City” Season 4, in which Carrie and Aidan break up after he buys Carrie’s original place, and she has to borrow Charlotte’s engagement ring to buy it back from him.Then, in “Sex and the City” movie No. 1, Carrie once again sells her apartment to funnel money into “heaven on Fifth” with Big, only to have him stand her up at the altar, leaving Miranda and Samantha to negotiate its repurchase from their lounge chairs in Mexico.Well, here we go again. Maybe, anyway. Although it isn’t explicitly stated, it is clear that the sale hasn’t closed on either Carrie’s new Gramercy Park place or her O.G. haunt. When Seema freaks out to Carrie over a “disaster,” Carrie immediately thinks it must be about the new apartment. It’s not, but that indicates something about the sale isn’t done.Likewise, Carrie is about to hold a swanky “Last Supper” event at her old place, so it must technically still be hers. (Also, Carrie and Seema still apparently hold the power to kick Carrie’s neighbor and buyer, Lisette, out of the place when they want to eat sushi and gossip on their own. It’s obviously not officially Lisette’s apartment yet.)All this may prove convenient if Aidan does, in fact, break our hearts one more time by deciding he simply can’t spend time in New York, or with Carrie, anymore. There’s no way Carrie is going to be stuck holding that four-bedroom bag.Carrie’s reason for worry is pretty heartbreaking. We find Aidan back in Virginia, sobbing in his car because his son Wyatt (Logan Souza) has broken several bones in a drunk-driving accident, which Aidan feels he could have prevented if he had been around. “I should have been there,” Aidan tells Carrie, weeping.It’s the most gut-punching scene in a whole series of them, from an episode that shines a light on just how unbearably hard it sometimes is to be a parent. It’s especially true if you’re a working mother.That’s a title Charlotte can finally claim for the first time, and at Kasabian Gallery, she is, as her Gen Z co-workers tell her, “slaying.” Charlotte is pouring herself into this job, staying late some nights and, for a change, is not at her family’s beck and call, at the ready to serve every meal and hand-deliver every forgotten notebook. When she makes a six-figure art sale to the singer Sam Smith, there is no way that isn’t being celebrated. So she properly parties with her work pals and stumbles home, sloshed, to her frazzled family.Charlotte may be lit, but she is with it enough to deliver a message that her family, and maybe every family across America, needs to hear: “I was a person before you. I was a person before all of you … You need to get that, OK? And get it together.”Eloquent? No. Poignant? Yes, indeed. Charlotte is done rescuing everyone in that house all day every day. This is her time.It’s exactly the “time” Lisa thought she was evolving into. She says exactly this to Herbert as she tosses and turns in bed. Her career is at its highest point. With a 10-episode deal with PBS on the horizon, she is about to step into a pinnacle moment.But she is unexpectedly pregnant, and as a mom of three already, she knows what that means. Despite Herbert’s promises to help, it simply won’t happen. The bulk of the child-rearing, and all the expectations that surround it, will fall to her because who in their right mind would expect the new city comptroller to interrupt his busy schedule to give a bottle? Despite Lisa’s work being just as worthy and as time-consuming as Herbert’s, she, just like Charlotte, will be the one called on whenever anyone in the family needs something. And babies have a lot of needs.It is worth emphasizing that Lisa apparently asked Herbert to get a vasectomy eight years ago, after their last child was born, but he didn’t. He says he thought Lisa might change her mind about wanting another baby. He thought he knew better than she did. He was wrong.Lighthearted as this show has mostly been in its sophomore season, it must be stated that the commentary laced throughout this episode about the patriarchal oppression faced by even wealthy, connected and variously privileged women at home feels especially pointed in the year of “Barbie.” I’ll be thinking about that all week. Along with these …Things still taking up space in my brainUsually, it’s the older people in relationships who think they have things to teach their younger partners, but in the case of Anthony and Giuseppe, the reverse is true. After a lifetime of playing a very specific role in bed, Anthony might soon be trying out something new.And speaking of trying new things, the trajectory that Stanford’s life has apparently taken is absolutely wild. I’m all for honoring the memory of Willie Garson, who so heartwarmingly and hilariously played Stanford before dying at age 57 during the production of Season 1. But I refuse to believe that the man who gleefully sipped Flirtinis and called himself Rick9+ in cybersex chat rooms became a monk. No.After that horrible stand-up set in which Che absolutely eviscerated Miranda and the integrity of their relationship, Carrie should have uninvited Che from the “Last Supper” dinner party. Sure, Che is a comedian, and Miranda wasn’t supposed to be at Che’s show. She wasn’t supposed to hear any of that. But she was, and she did, and Carrie shouldn’t expect one of her dearest friends to then sit across a table and break bread with someone who was willing to rip her to shreds in public.Buying that stroller for her estranged husband’s new baby is not the own Nya thinks it is. (And Miranda clearly knows that.)No matter how rich a character is, I will never find it believable when someone willingly destroys her own cellphone, as Charlotte does when she thoughtlessly flings hers into a pitcher of margaritas and then cracks up about it. Human beings in the real world just don’t do that.I couldn’t help but notice that the reason Steve now has a new little restaurant by the shore is because he was sitting on a bench in Coney Island wondering, “Where did my baby go?” If you know, you know. More

Lisa has big news. So does Carrie. OK, so do a bunch of characters.The first time Carrie started dating Aidan, back in Season 3 of “Sex and the City,” she found herself routinely waking up with a gasp in the middle of the night. Something felt off. Something felt wrong. But after scouring for whatever unchecked item on her to-do list was giving her this anxiety, she found that, in fact, she “hadn’t so much as missed a teeth cleaning.”It was Aidan who was messing with her head. Carrie couldn’t relax because, for the first time, she was in a relationship where no one was, well, messing with her head. Unlike Big, who was the king of, as Carrie named it, the “seductive withholding dance,” Aidan was a good man, and he was good to her.“It’s smooth sailing,” Carrie said of their relationship. “Nothing but calm seas, blue horizons as far as I can see.”Fast forward to the present, when Carrie and Aidan are once again coupled up after a two-decade hiatus. Just like before, it’s smooth sailing. Everything is working. They just fit.But this time around, while Carrie has never felt more certain that she is in the right relationship with the right man at the right time, it’s others who are having anxiety about it.It began with Miranda, who in last week’s episode asked Carrie if she should “take a beat.” Carrie and Aidan went from zero to cohabitating at warp speed, and Miranda couldn’t help but worry.Even though Carrie assures Miranda that the past isn’t repeating itself, you can still see the look of concern cross Miranda’s face, as well as Charlotte’s, when Carrie shows her friends the giant new apartment she is angling to buy in Gramercy Park. It has plenty of room for Aidan and his three sons, and most important, it is not her old place, in which Aidan won’t set foot. She tells her friends she is ready to sell it.“Are you really that sure, Carrie?” Charlotte asks with distress on her face. But once again, Carrie sings her song. She is sure. She is ready. She is happy.But the doubters keep on coming. Later, it is Aidan’s ex-wife, Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt), who presents as a harbinger of heartbreak. “I know your history with Aidan,” Kathy says bluntly to Carrie. “You can’t hurt him again.”“Of course you’ll hurt me,” Aidan tells Carrie when he finds out about that conversation. And he will hurt her, and things will get messy, but they will work it out. Aidan is just as sure as Carrie. Everything seems to be going right.So, if the aim of this episode is to convince us, the audience, not to worry that Carrie and Aidan won’t make it work this time — and yet that our doubts are well-founded — well, it’s working.And I hope that the writers, executives and everyone else involved at Max understand that if Aidan and Carrie fall apart in the final two episodes of this season, after all this building of trust — between them, and between them and us — that some of us (me!) will sink into a hole and perish.Meanwhile, not everyone else is so self-assured in matters of the heart. For starters, Anthony has been having dinner, but not sex, with Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi), the young Italian poet who recently ended his brief stint as a Hot Fella.Maybe it’s his pending divorce from Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson), or maybe it’s just that he can’t figure out what would make a fox like Giuseppe want someone like him. But for whatever reason, Anthony just can’t seem to relax and embrace it. It isn’t until Anthony confronts Giuseppe about what he believes is an obvious scheme to get a green card that he finds out Giuseppe already has dual citizenship. He really does just want to shag. Within moments, they do.Nya, however, has absolutely no issue showing a younger man around her bedroom. She is reveling in hot, casual sex until a gut-punch of an Instagram post crosses her feed: a photo of her ex-husband, hugging a woman we can assume is the hat-wearing songwriter Nya caught him with before. And she is pregnant.Nya, who ultimately ended things with Andre over not wanting to have his child, immediately kicks out her beau — don’t worry, he’s cool with it — so that she can stew over this alone.It’s not the only unexpected pregnancy we get in this episode. Lisa, who has become borderline narcoleptic, falls asleep in her closet and nearly misses Herbert’s big campaign speech at his event at the Goldenblatts’. Lisa tells Herbert, just as he is about to make his remarks, that she is pregnant. It’s a plot twist that neither Herbert — nor, most likely, any of us — saw coming.Maybe the most surprising and delightful development in the episode, though, is the coupling of young Brady Hobbes and Lily Goldenblatt. Is it just a spring fling, or could this be the start of “Sex and the City: The Next Generation”? Mostly I hope not, but considering this franchise clearly has no intention of stopping, you never know.Things still taking up space in my brainAs infallible as Aidan is to me, personally, I have to ding him on this: He absolutely refuses to enter Carrie’s apartment, but when she tells him she is selling it, he tells her, “You don’t have to sell it for me.” Obviously she does?I’m calling it right now: Seema is going to be engaged by the end of this season. It has already been established that some part of her aches to have at least one great love. It should also be noted that she has written off her new beau, Ravi (Armin Amiri), as not being “marriage material.” That’s meant to throw us off the scent, I think. More

Carrie and Aidan play house. Miranda and Charlotte get back to work.Season 2, Episode 8:Who could have guessed that Che would be the hero we needed to finally ask, out loud, the burning question so many of us have had for Carrie and Aidan for the last 20 years or so?“I mean come on,” Che says to them innocently enough. “Why did this not work out the first time?”It’s a question Carrie hasn’t been able to get out of her head since that fateful Valentine’s Day dinner in last week’s episode. When this week’s kicks off, we find out Carrie and Aidan have been fully back on, spending night after night in hotels, living on $26 room service omelets.It’s not just that they’re dating again. As Carrie tells it to Miranda, she and Aidan are connected in a way now that feels beyond what they ever had. Could it be, Carrie wonders as she walks down the street — clad in some strange jammies-and-slippers get-up with a baby blankie coat to match — that some toxic attachment to Big never allowed her to truly let Aidan in. Maybe she missed out. Maybe, she tells Miranda, Big was a “big mistake.”It kind of makes sense, then, that Carrie and Aidan find themselves playing house, gaming out a life that could have been.Of course, Aidan lives in a Virginia farmhouse with his three sons and an undisclosed number of chickens, but when he’s in New York, he and Carrie essentially live together. They rent out Che’s apartment, saving Che from a string of unruly Airbnb-ers, and when Carrie and Aidan discover that Che has little to no houseware to speak of, they all but clean out a Williams Sonoma (or Crate and Barrel or wherever they are) to fill that void, looking as happy as any couple picking out items for their wedding registry.Naturally, Carrie and Aidan quickly become a “we.” It’s a little too quick for Seema, who dodges Carrie’s invitation to join her and Aidan for dinner. It’s not just jealousy that Carrie has a new boyfriend and Seema doesn’t. The real hurt she feels, as Seema confesses to Carrie over a melodramatic cigarette on Madison Avenue in the rain, is that Carrie has experienced great love — not once, but twice. The harsh truth for Seema is that she may never get that chance. And if she winds up third-wheeling in the Hamptons house she and Carrie are supposed to share this summer, that feeling is going to weigh on her a little too heavily.The Hampton plans are nixed, and Seema insists that she needs space. Carrie lets her go, even though she doesn’t want to.While Carrie and Aidan are rapidly advancing their relationship, both Miranda and Charlotte are taking off in their careers. Although Miranda is merely an intern at Human Rights Watch, she is thrilled about her new position — she’s finally free from corporate law and instead engaged in actual do-gooding. Her fellow interns, who are much younger but have been at the organization longer, are less thrilled when Miranda becomes the supervisor’s pet and is immediately selected for the coveted role of note-taker while they’re stuck slaving over citations. They quickly ice out Miranda like a couple of high school mean girls.Charlotte, on the other hand, has an entirely different, more enlightening experience with the younger set at work.Leading up to her first day at Kasabian Gallery, Charlotte finds herself obsessed with an extra few tummy pounds that simply will not do underneath her perfect new gallerina dress. She consumes nothing but bone broth all week and double bags herself in shapewear, but the “pooch,” which is nearly nonexistent, remains.Charlotte shows up to work, sucked and tucked, covering her midsection with her coat as if she were hiding a pregnancy. But when a 20-something co-worker, who is larger than Charlotte but confidently baring her midriff, swoops down the stairs and tells Charlotte her dress is fierce, Charlotte shakes off all the drama she internalized during the heroin chic era.It’s an abrupt about-face, which is kind of jarring, but as a Xennial who bore witness to Y2K’s relentless body shaming, I can attest, at least anecdotally, that Gen Z is truly an inspiration to older women everywhere in their unabashed embrace of all body sizes and their devil-may-care attitude toward which women are “allowed” to wear certain garments. Even though the crop-top queen Britney Spears ruled our youthful years, few millennial and Gen X women had the stick-slender body type at the time “required” to sport that look. Today, girls bare whatever bellies they’ve got. And as becomes clear immediately to Charlotte, that attitude is helping women of all ages to finally exhale.The best revelation of the episode, though, comes toward the end, when Carrie stops wondering about all of her past missteps and instead starts understanding them.Back in Che’s kitchen, between sips of beer, a quiet pause lingers over Che’s question: Why did things go so wrong between Carrie and Aidan? To Carrie, the answer simple.“Because I made a mistake,” Carrie says, clearly, and with conviction. But the look she gives Aidan right after says even more. Carrie isn’t referring only to the affair she had with Big, which broke up her and Aidan the first time. Nor is she talking only about the cold feet she got during their engagement, which split them up the second time — though certainly those events appear to be huge regrets.Carrie knows now that choosing Big over Aidan, at all, was a colossal blunder, and that the last couple of decades could have been far happier and more fulfilling if she had chosen a life with Aidan instead.And honestly, hallelujah. A significant portion of the fan base (me!) agrees and has never really gotten over it.Carrie and Aidan embrace, and I couldn’t help but wonder … can’t we just end the series right here?Things still taking up space in my brain:It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that when Carrie tells Seema she can’t have space because space between friends just leads to more space, she is talking about Samantha. Luckily, Seema doesn’t abscond to London and finds the strength to show up to the “we” dinner, with a smile to boot.If Carrie and Aidan fizzle out by the season finale, I truly don’t know if I can take it. Big got 20-some years. The Aidan stans are owed our longer arc. More