I’m so excited to be watching and recapping this show! As you guys know, I loved the original series and binge watched the entire thing just so that I could watch this reboot. Now, I’m bringing you guys episode by episode recaps, lumped together in sections of 2-3 episodes per post. Enjoy!
this post contains spoilers for episodes 1 and 2 of And Just Like That
Episode 1
From the jump, we have Miranda, Carrie and Charlotte all getting brunch together. It feels very old-school Sex and the City, except for the fact that Samantha isn’t there. In real life, actress Kit Cattrall (Samantha) and Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) supposedly had a falling out, potentially around the fact that Parker was making far more money than Cattrall, that prevented her from taking place in this reboot. In the show, Samantha and Carrie had a falling out because Carrie stopped using Samantha as her publicist. Samantha fled to London and refuses to reply to any of the girl’s texts. This feels off brand, but that’s the explanation we have been given.
We find out that Brady is a teenager having sex with his girlfriend and that Charlotte has enrolled her eldest daughter, Lilly, in Piano lessons. Carrie, it appears, is the sole childless friend. Miranda, on the other hand, is the sole friend not dying her hair. She’s also going back to school to get her masters degree. It appears that similarly to her actress, Cynthia Nixon, who recently ran for NY governor, Miranda also wants to make a bigger difference in the world and get involved with more direct activism.
We get an absolutely adorable scene of Carrie and Big hanging out and cooking in their kitchen, and another equally adorable scene of Charlotte interacting with her family. Charlotte’s oldest daughter (who is ethnically Chinese and was adopted at the end of the original) appears to be happy with girly things like her mother, but the younger daughter is a bit of a tomboy and enters the scene on a skateboard with Harry.
Miranda goes to her first grad school class, instructed by Nya Wallace. She instantly assumes that the professor is not the professor because of “her braids” which she explains by saying that Wallace did not have braids on the website. She goes on a long winded rant that made me more uncomfortable than I have been watching a tv show. She states that she doesn’t care that Wallace is black, that it was the reason she signed up for the class, and that she attaches “no importance” to hair. The rest of the class look like very woke, queer young people, and they’re clearly judging her. I wanted to die on Miranda’s behalf, the second hand embarrassment was so strong.
Carrie is now working on a podcast with Che Diaz and Jackie D. Carrie is representing the “cisgender women” and Jackie D is representing the “cishet men”. Diaz is nonbinary, and they represent everyone “in between and neither”. They have a button that says WOKE MOMENT that they hit before they give a longwinded definition. I hate the button. A lot. Jackie D starts a conversation about public masturbation, and it soon becomes clear that Carrie is both uncomfortable and older than the other people on the podcast.
Nya Wallace gets on the phone with her presumably husband, and he asks her about when they should start their next round of IVF. He has a tour that people are pressuring him to go out on, and wants to know if he’ll still have time. We don’t get to explore any more of that though, because it’s time for cringe moment #2!!! As Nya walks into the subway, Miranda is also there, and comes over to reintroduce herself. This goes equally poorly, with Miranda having a huge lack of boundaries, and me still wanting to die while watching. We do find out that the Muslim ban inspired Miranda to quit her job and start fighting the problem. This would be a lot more inspiring if she wasn’t so clearly part of the problem.
Che approaches Carrie after the show and tells her that she needs to engage more in the content. Che thinks viewers (like me) will label her as the uptight one unless she steps it up (Che is right). They also point out that Carrie had a SEX COLUMN in the NINETIES so it makes no sense that she isn’t already doing better.
Carrie goes back to her house and starts to write about masturbates, but is quickly at a loss. Rather than writing, she goes to ask Big if he masturbates. He flips the question around, and she says that yes she does. Then, confusing all of us, she asks if Big can masturbate for her while she watches. He starts to, and then switches to jokes and they start making out, which honestly is highly preferable. Carrie gets ready to go to the piano recital, putting on her wedding shoes and hitting the town. Her and Big joke around and in general appear to have a perfect relationship, which I LOVE.
Charlotte tries to convince her younger daughter, Rose, to wear a dress, but Rose doesn’t want to. She says she has other things to wear, but Charlotte is convinced that everyone should be in florals. Charlotte is classic unintentionally unaccepting parent, but jokes on her because Rose wears a giant t-shirt and a hat over the dress.
At the recital, we see that Miranda and Steve are still together, and they’re all still friends with Anthony, who is dating Stanford. Despite being together, they’re fighting very publicly. Carrie and Miranda use the men’s restroom because there’s no line and commiserate over not knowing how to say the right thing. Anthony has a sourdough business!
Miranda starts drinking in the recital and Charlotte is appalled, and I love that the dynamic still exists. Lisa, a cool fellow mom that Charlotte is obsessed with, comes in and asks for some. I really like her so far so hopefully she becomes a bigger part of the friend group! Sadly, Lisa’s child is pretty horrible at the piano, and his grandmother and father are crushed. Lisa sort of saw it coming, so she’s more sad for the kid.
Lilly does amazing at the recital! Steve has hearing aids and struggles to hear anything anyone is saying, and his son makes out with his girlfriend aggressively in public right behind his parents. I don’t see a single world where this happens, but oh well. Meanwhile, Big uses his Peloton, watching a video with “Allegra” the hot girl whose workouts he enjoys. The longer this scene goes on, the more stressed I am that something bad is going to happen, and I’m right, because Big appears to be having a heart attack and can’t reach his phone to call for help.
Stanford asks to stay at Carrie’s old apartment “again” because he can’t be around Anthony. It’s not a great relationship for the gays!
Oh my god he died. I did not see that coming when I wrote the paragraph above, but I guess I should have because why else would they have been so damn happy. Big is dead, and now Carrie is alone. I guess this had to happen or there really would have been no plot to go with from here, but I’m still depressed.
Episode 2
We open the episode with Brady and his girlfriend having sex very loudly with his parents home. I want to emphasize that I think this is incredibly realistic, and even kids raised in a very sex positive household would not want their parents to hear them having sex. Only Miranda can actually hear them though, because Steve is basically deaf, which seems to be a very annoying characteristic since he can’t hear… anything.
Carrie calls Miranda to come comfort her, and the two spend the night together. Carrie is understandably distraught, and we get a throwback mental scene to emphasize this. This is so sad! Especially if you’re me and just finished the original series yesterday and therefore only got to believe in true long lasting love for a whole 20 hours.
Anthony and Stanford make up, and as someone who hasn’t watched the second Sex & the City movie, I am wildly uncomfortable. This matchup is what happens when you decide to only have 2 gay people with speaking lines in the initial franchise.
Carrie and Charlotte search for a place to host the wake, and Charlotte breaks down because she feels like it’s all her fault. And although she’s not to blame, it sort of is her fault because if she wasn’t so pushy about the concert thing maybe she would have been there to take Big to the hospital.
Meanwhile, Miranda is making an absolute fool of herself yet AGAIN. Nya Wallace can’t find her library card to get in, and Miranda steps up to try to “vouch” for Nya to get her into the library. The entire situation is Miranda pretending to have white allyship and “call out” racism when in fact it’s just (as Nya points out) white saviorship. I want to die at all of Miranda’s scenes and I also really want Nya to have a few scenes where I’m not half hiding under my pillow from second hand embarrassment, because she’s very hot and deserves to be seen.
Apparently Charlotte invited Lisa over for lunch BBD (before Big’s death) and forgot to cancel, so Lisa shows up. Charlotte, a mess as always, breaks down in her arms. Flash over to Steve and Miranda’s place, and Steve is complaining that the Peloton is the reason Big died. On the bright side, this provides a cute opportunity for Steve and Miranda to show why they’re still together and in a functioning relationship.
Carrie apparently found a chic space to host the wake, to which she says “thank god for these lesbians”. So, shoutout lesbians! Unfortunately, they put flowers on the casket, and Carrie is irate. The lesbians love the flowers, and it turns out they’re from London-exiled Samantha, so the flowers stay. Honestly this entire episode is devastatingly sad and I don’t understand why they’re doing this to us. Che Diaz shows up to support Carrie and shares that they were a bouncer at a Dyke Bike club. Very cool!
Miranda gets a bourbon even though they aren’t serving alcohol until after the service. This is notably the third time we have seen Miranda drinking alone so far on this show. We can only hope that her inevitable alcoholism storyline is handled better the Finley’s on Gen Q. Miranda gives a speech at the wake, and it’s all so sad and emotional I want to cry. We found out that Carrie wrote the speech for Miranda to read. Big’s brother (I didn’t know he existed) says that Big was the happiest he had ever been, thanks to Carrie. We get a super cute montage video of Big as a child, but we spend most of our time on long shots of Carrie and others crying.
Susan Sharon is there and says that she’s “over” everything that happened. Carrie has no idea what happened. The woman who married the gay guy who wasn’t gay “understands” because the not gay guy died. She says nobody else can understand. Brady and Che smoke weed in the hallway, which was highly irresponsible for Che to give pot to a teenager, but before any of us can worry about that, Miranda comes over to be an asshole. Rather than getting mad at her actual son, she starts screaming at Che and telling them that they’re an irresponsible “funeral pot pusher” who needs to fuck off. Brady felt “sad and needed a hit”, but Miranda lays down the punishments. Honestly Brady is disrespectful and clearly doesn’t respect his mother’s authority, but Miranda could probably be a little bit more chill.
Only a few seconds later, Miranda realizes that the person she was screaming at was Carrie’s boss, and that makes things VERY awkward. Che says they didn’t realize it was bad for a kid to be smoking weed, and Miranda apologizes, and they sort of awkwardly make up. Che thinks Miranda is a papa bear, and Miranda giggles and drinks. They’re cute together and I sense something brewing here! They’re very flirty and cute together!
This episode is really sad and if I hadn’t cried all day yesterday, I would most certainly be crying all through this episode today. Carrie texts Samantha to thank her for the flowers, and we see that Samantha hasn’t replied to any texts. Honestly I hate that they made Samantha such a bad friend because it’s just not realistic.
Miranda runs into Nya once again on the subway. A kid dressed as a Chuckie doll tries to steal Nya’s bag, and Miranda hits him on the head with her book, rescuing Nya’s stuff. Miranda goes “I wasn’t sure if that was a white savior moment” which it obviously wasn’t, and the two have some witty banter. I kind of wish someone other than Miranda could interact with Che and Nya because the two of them are cool and Miranda is so not.
For some reason Carrie got Big’s ashes delivered to her house. Stanford and Miranda show up, and then Charlotte arrives unannounced. Carrie makes Stanford hide because she doesn’t want Charlotte to know that she’s been too emotional for Carrie to handle. He’s a horrible hider, and Charlotte finds out. She thinks Carrie is mad at her, and Carrie finally breaks. She’s not mad because of Charlotte, she’s mad at herself for not going to the Hamptons like she wanted to.
To be honest this episode was weird and pseudo-emotional mixed with lighthearted moments, and I hated it. I don’t think this show does emotional very well, and it isn’t a particularly good start to the show. If they were going to kill Big, they should have given him a couple episodes so that we could remember that we love them together before killing him off and leaving Carrie alone. I think there are definitely bright spots and great new character additions so I will be watching the rest, but I hope it gets better!
Write Through the Night 