And Just Like That...I recapped Season 2

how my 2022 predictions stacked up against reality.

Back in the spring of 2022, I shared my predictions for where And Just Like That…would go with season 2. Now that season 2 has wrapped and season 3 has officially been announced, it’s time to check in on what I said then and how I feel now.

• The prediction: Season 2 premiere: Samantha’s funeral, giving us one last legendary Samantha Jones event. Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda finally reckon with the reality that their friend who illuminated and embraced their most hedonistic, sex-positive, and honest selves is gone forever. Cameos from Smith Jerrod, Friar Fuck, Richard, and a very smug Laney Berlin.

• The reality: As a Samantha rising, this is the prediction I’m happiest to have gotten completely wrong. Not only did we get some longed-for Samantha time, but we also got the return of the myth, the legend, THEE Annabelle Bronstein. Unfortunately, that taste of honey’s going to have to satisfy us for the rest of AJLT’s run, but what a taste it was. SN: It is hilarious to me that Samantha Jones, who literally leaps into cabs when her friends are involved in situations she dislikes (when Carrie was walking Aidan’s sick dog; when Miranda was exhausted by a newborn Brady), will happily jump on a 6-plus-hour flight any time Carrie says she’s moving out of that apartment. See also: the first movie.

• The winner: Samantha Jones, as ever
  

• The prediction: Che Díaz dumps Miranda, because a monogamous relationship doesn't fit Che’s increasingly rigid brand as a freewheeling pansexual imp. Miranda has spent the episode trying to find any L.A. food that scratches her nostalgic itch for New York, but nothing has really satisfied it. Cameo by Miranda’s tv writer friend Lew, who has a new bizarre eating disorder that serves as an outlet for his stress at being the showrunner for Che’s sitcom.

• The reality: We really got way more Che time than I anticipated or wanted, didn’t we? I have complained at length about Che already, so for here I’ll just say: what a shame it is that a charisma factory and smoke show like Sara Ramirez was wasted on such a diabolically wrongheaded character.

• The winner: Miranda, for finally getting Che *mostly* out of her orbit

• The prediction: Black Twitter drags Carrie’s Love Someone with Delilah-ass podcast when Carrie uses AAVE as part of a Classic Carrie joke. Miranda has a strict No Twitter rule—“it’s like inviting all the idiots I hate into my house to scream their misinformed opinions at me.” The mounting scandal forces LTW to distance herself from Charlotte for a while, for the sake of her husband’s political career.

• The reality: Carrie’s podcast wound up getting cancelled for an even stupider reason—apparently Carrie refusing to do one (1) ad about vaginal dryness tanked the entire podcast network—so she spent most of the season blissfully jobless and generally unaware of Black people who aren’t her friends’ friends.
  LTW’s husband Herbert did kick off his political career in a run for alderman, which seems to be the only local office that TV writers know about. The Walkers also got a curiously retro plot line towards the end of the season, with LTW unexpectedly getting pregnant, refusing to even say the word ‘abortion’ while discussing her deep ambivalence about having another child, and then suddenly miscarrying. This whole arc upset me for numerous reasons, one of which is that I HATE how often writers will use miscarriage as an escape route from any kind of active choice for their characters who aren’t happy about being pregnant. It’s cowardly (let your characters own their decisions, even if some people won’t like it!) and cavalier (miscarriage is simply too emotionally weighty a reality for you to trivialize it into a plot device!).

• The winner: Carrie, who officially became a lady of leisure this season
  

• The prediction: As her adolescent children start to grow more distant from her, Charlotte decides to turn her energy into opening her own gallery. After she spends a frenzied week trying to decide which outfit to wear at her grand opening event, Charlotte confesses to Harry that she’s terrified of putting herself out there as something other than a mother, a role that has defined her for 15 years. Harry reminds her that she’s still the same passionate, articulate, and self-possessed woman he fell in love with, but now with 15 years’ more life experience.

• The reality: This was my happiest and most successful prediction! I really wish Charlotte’s triumphant return to the art world had happened earlier in the season, because I reached my saturation point with her monstrous children long ago. But, better late than never! I also wish Charlotte’s week-long fretting about her First Day outfit had included less disordered eating and condescending fatphobia. But, Gen X gonna Gen X! And I’m thrilled that Charlotte’s belief in her abilities on the job didn’t come from a Harry pep talk, but from her colleagues celebrating her for being great at her job. Welcome back, Charlotte!

• The winner: Richard Burton, for being the only family member Charlotte will tolerate when she’s angry

  

  Also, it’s meant to be a bit cringe when she says it, but if you’re wearing vintage Mugler to work you absolutely are slaying, no question.

• The prediction: Miranda starts wearing little lawyer suits again, and gets major attention from the Park Slope lesbians. Seeing promos for Che Díaz’s new show stops being so painful as she realizes her new power as a hot single queer woman. Meanwhile, Seema discovers that her boyfriend is an international man of mystery whose previous aliases include Tony from Prada.

• The reality: I’ll give myself half credit on this one. The little lawyer looks are back, baybee! Miranda also crushed the outerwear game with coat after magnificent coat; pulled two queer women in her quintessential “I didn’t realize this person was into me!” way; and got a “rush to the airport” scene about her job, rather than a bummer of a love interest. I finally feel good about pulling my “We Should All Be Mirandas” t-shirt back out of storage.
  As for the Seema stuff…Seema has become a most bewildering character. On the one hand, I appreciate her for being genuinely complicated—prickly, self-centered, warm, thoughtful, ostentatiously fabulous, and quick to judge as a way to protect herself. On the other hand, her dialogue is rarely up to the task of supporting her dimensions and contradictions, even though actress Sarita Choudhury absolutely is. And why they keep saddling this poor woman with men who even she can’t spark with remains a painful mystery.
  And as for the Tony from Prada stuff: who could have known that he was merely a harbinger of a deluge of former SATC actors returning to play completely different roles?

• The winner of The Justin Theroux Award for Best Double Dipping in the SATCEU: André De Shields, who can put this award on a shelf with his Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.

  

  Going from Charlotte’s tap dance instructor to dean of Columbia Law or whatever in just 20 years is truly remarkable.

• The prediction: Carrie finds herself addicted to the drama of secretly dating her podcast producer. A chance encounter with Aidan sends her spiraling about her somewhat self-sabotaging romantic patterns, and questioning whether the zsa zsa zsu is worth all the stress.

• The reality: Finally, the prediction that I’m saddest to have gotten completely wrong. Obviously not because of the podcast producer, though he turned out to be an absolute void of a character who couldn’t even compel Carrie to see him more than once a week. But because of the Aidan of it all.
  I’ll put aside the implicit despair in the idea that a 50-something-year-old widow’s only chance at romance is with someone she already dated, twice, in her 30s. I’ll put aside that I’ve disliked Aidan since his passive-aggressive and manipulative turn in SATC season 4. (Yes, Carrie was awful to him, and a lot. She brings out the worst in him. But he had a choice—date her or hate her—and he chose both and blamed her for the fallout.) I’ll even put aside his absolutely ridiculous refusal to enter her apartment until she bought a massive new place to house him and his indifferent children (more passive-aggression).
  The thing that I cannot put aside, because it offends me to my very core, is how Aidan’s return into her love life prompted Carrie to wonder aloud, “Was Big a big mistake?” It offends me as a fan, because the idea that the central romance of the SATCEU—the one they wanted me to root for all these years, and the one I mourned when they finally killed Big off—was actually a waste of my time and energy, is very rude. But perhaps more importantly, the idea that a 13-year marriage that ended with one spouse dying could ever be written off as just a mistake runs perpendicular to my personal worldview. The good that came from marrying Big “instead of” Aidan doesn’t disappear because Big died, or because she’s with Aidan again. And it’s especially galling when held up next to the scene where Carrie tells Aidan that, no matter what happens, their relationship will not have been a mistake. It feels pointedly disrespectful to the memory of a spouse who certainly wasn’t perfect, but who didn’t deserve to be recast in such a mean-spirited way.

There’s so much more to say about this bizarre and bewitching show, but I’m exhausted at present. For now, I’m annoyed to say that I can’t rule out diving back into this mess for season 3.