There were so many injustices done to beloved characters throughout And Just Like That… (even the ones that aren’t hastily “offed” in the way Stanford Blatch [Willie Garson] is), but, obviously, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) was the one done the dirtiest. More than likely an intentional form of spite on the part of Michael Patrick King as a result of Cattrall’s openly spewed contempt for the notion of ever playing Samantha again. Plus, both King and Sarah Jessica Parker have now freely stated there wouldn’t be a place for Samantha on And Just Like That… even if she suddenly got brain damage and wanted one. News flash—yet again—she’ll never be fucking interested. She couldn’t have possibly made that any clearer…on multiple occasions. And so, as though to use her own lack of interest in dredging up this character any further, it was as if the writers of the latest “iteration” (if one can call it that) of Sex and the City decided to bring her into the equation as often as they could—and the only way they viably knew how: through texts.
This is a running “motif” throughout the ten-episode “arc,” starting with Carrie texting Samantha a “Thank you” for the floral arrangement toward the end of episode two, “Little Black Dress,” and Samantha offering no immediate reply. The flowers in and of themselves were already a grand statement not worthy of further commentary on her part. And, as for the audience’s introduction to Samantha being palpably missing from the quartet, it takes someone slightly esoteric from their past—Bitsy Von Muffling (Julie Halston)—to ask the awkward-to-them question, “Where’s Samantha?” when she encounters them at a restaurant. “Oh, um, she’s no longer with us,” Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is the first to chime in. Because of their age—and the fact that COVID has just happened—Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has to clarify, when Bitsy gives a shocked look, “No, no, no, she didn’t die.” Charlotte corrects, “I’m so sorry, I just meant…she’s not with us.” Carrie tries to wrap this up more quickly by declaring, “She’s in London.” “She moved to the U.K.—for work,” Miranda specifies. Bitsy seems pleased, remarking, “Smart. Sexy sirens in their sixties are still viable over there.” Whatever the fuck that means. But it certainly doesn’t get the show off to a great start in terms of acknowledging ageism as it pertains very specifically to a woman continuing to embrace her sexuality. For that kind of thing, one would be better off dissecting the discourses that get set off by Madonna’s Instagram posts than watching And Just Like That…
The only character who might have brought any kind of avant-garde storyline with regard to addressing the fact that women are—gasp!—still sexual in their sixties would have been Samantha. Because clearly, Carrie and Charlotte don’t have the wherewithal to truly “experiment,” with everything being placed on Miranda’s shoulders for “titillating” content as she reexamines her own sexual preferences through Carrie’s “podcast boss,” a comedian named Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez). This being just one of many storyline/character instances exhibiting the show’s desire to “check a box” for all the right 2021-era wokenesses. But there’s so little genuineness behind that wokeness that it lends the show an even more contrived and superfluous aura.
One that Cattrall was right to predict when explaining, “I feel that the show was the best when it was the series and the bonus was the two movies.” That latter statement being overly kind, considering their content—especially that of Sex and the City 2. And yet, the cast and Michael Patrick King couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone as they approached Cattrall in 2016 to discuss the idea of another movie. When she said no, reports swirled that she was acting like a “diva,” making demands for more money, more screen time, etc. And yet, during an interview with the odious Piers Morgan in 2017, she cleared it all up quite bluntly when she said, “December 2016, I said no” to Sex and the City 3 (eventually mutating into And Just Like That…). And that would be the last time she would bother to formally say no, as she further explained, “This is about a clear decision, an empowered decision in my life to end one chapter and start another.”
Thus, the subtitle of And Just Like That…—“a new chapter of Sex and the City”—comes across as something very much like shade. But Cattrall has no regrets about “releasing” Samantha, noting in the same interview, “It’s a great part. I played it past the finish line and then some… And another actress should play it. Maybe they could make [her] African American! Or a Hispanic Samantha Jones! Or bring in another character.”
The cast and crew seemed to hear her loud and clear, not only with Seema (Sarita Choudhury) as the “Samantha stand-in” who turned out to be Indian rather than Black or Hispanic, but also additional characters including Che, Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) and Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman). All clearly aimed not only at washing out some of SATC’s original whiteness, but also at showing Cattrall they’re “just fine” without her. For it only takes about four extra characters to fill the void she left behind.
After their encounter with Bitsy in episode one, Carrie walks the streets with Miranda, who admits, “You know, it is kind of like she’s dead. Samantha. We never even talk about her.” Carrie agrees, serving up an annoyingly obvious moment of expository dialogue in response: “Well, what is there to say? I told her that because of, you know, what the book business is now, it just didn’t make sense for me to keep her on as a publicist. She said, ‘Fine’ and then fired me as a friend.” An excuse for her absence that is so fucking flaccid, it almost hurts to imagine how many people it actually took in the writer’s room to “come up with” it.
Miranda tries to lend more plausibility to her abrupt ghosting with, “You know Samantha, her pride got damaged.” But even after it was damaged during the incident in the season five episode, “Cover Girl,” wherein Carrie judged her for giving the Worldwide Express guy a blow job, Samantha still came around once she iconically asserted, “I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel.” And nothing as innocuous as being “fired” as Carrie’s publicist would get her to discard the friendship. She wasn’t exactly poor for fuck’s sake, or hard-up for Carrie’s nominal percentage amid her many other clients. Ones who likely appreciated her taste as opposed to not so subtly indicating it was tacky.
Nonetheless, we’re meant to buy into the charade, with Carrie going on, “I kept leaving her voicemails asking her to please call me back so we could talk about this and fix it. Look, I understand that she was upset, but I thought I was more to her than an ATM.” Miranda, the lawyer, defends, “She was embarrassed.” “So embarrassed she took a job and moved to London?” Carrie asks, as though she’s as irritated and incredulous as the viewers who know Samantha best. And even though Samantha was better friends with Carrie than Miranda and Charlotte, there would be no reason to include them on her shit list if she was merely “upset” with Carrie for ousting her as a publicist, with Miranda adding, “We texted and called, but we never heard back.” All Miranda can say in another pathetic attempt to make Samantha’s disappearance seem tenable to the audience is: “So weird.” Carrie, continuing, as usual, to victimize herself, concurs, “I know. I always thought the four of us would be friends forever.”
Evidently, however, all it takes is a catastrophic event (though not catastrophic for the benefit of the series evading having to worry about killing off a main character anyway after he was accused of being a sexual predator) like a death to get Samantha to vaguely emerge from behind her iron curtain. So it is that, in the abovementioned second episode, Samantha is made to communicate in written form with “Love, Samantha” scrawled generically on a card from “Aisling Flowers” (how British). Because she’s sent a giant floral arrangement to be placed atop Big’s coffin (RIP to Chris Noth’s career as well). Doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m hurting for money all because you decided not to be my client anymore!”
Carrie’s occasional “mentions” of Samantha become more full-fledged in the fifth episode, “Tragically Hip,” after the “Samantha replacement,” Seema, via the excuse of being the real estate agent you actually want to hang out with after the sale, has already entered the picture in episode four, “Some of My Best Friends.” The “homage” transpires when, for the sake of sounding relevant in a “controversial” way for her podcast contribution, she chimes in, whilst on painkillers, “You cannot say ‘boundaries’ and ‘girlfriends’ in the same sentence… My friend, Samantha Jones, pulled my diaphragm out for me with her bare hand because it got stuck.” This “friendly” maneuver referencing the season two episode, “The Cheating Curve.”
Name-checking Samantha so overtly in a public way prompts Charlotte to suggest that Carrie warn her about the “salacious” mention. Thus, Carrie, by the end of the episode, sits down to pick up where the largely one-sided text thread left off (with Samantha once responding “Of course” to Carrie’s “Thank you” for the flowers). She writes, “Hi. Long story short. I wanted to let you know, I mentioned that you pulled out my diaphragm on podcast.” No real context, just the narcissistic assumption on Carrie’s part that Samantha is well-aware of her ex-bestie being on some shitty podcast. Which is completely antithetical to how the writers of the show want to portray Sam: as someone petty enough to end a friendship over what Carrie claims she did. But this time, Samantha responds like her old self with, “One of my finest hours.” And just like that… she officially becomes the so-called “text friend.” Except, that would imply there’s even half as much reciprocity on her side. It seems, to any logical viewer, that she’s simply trying to be as polite as possible as she honors an old friendship for the sake of momentary capitulations to nostalgia and “old times’ sake” (after all, think about a time when someone from your past has reached out to you via text and you’ve succumbed to responding out of a combination of guilt and wondering if the dynamic could still be the same after so many years passed).
Even the flower gesture comes across as an obligatory nod to their once-great friendship. Proof to the audience—rather than to herself—that she isn’t a completely callous shithead, as the writers ultimately want to paint her. “Hope that’s okay,” Carrie persists re: the diaphragm story. Samantha assures, “Of course. I love that your vagina is getting air time.” Once again, when Samantha gives an inch, Carrie takes a mile, seizing the chance to say, “I miss you.” This gets Samantha to stop typing her thought bubble real quick as she decides it’s best not to say anything at all. She doesn’t want to encourage this bia any further.
Yet, with Carrie never seeming to take a hint about when she’s not wanted (this includes bullying Aidan [John Corbett] back into a relationship with her and then dumping him anyway), she accordingly continues to act as though the two are BFFs when she texts Samantha from the Pont des Arts after scattering Big’s ashes (an illegal and affronting choice that is so Emily in Paris in terms of triteness and lack of consideration for how it makes all Americans look like entitled nitwits). This occurs in what one can only pray will be the last episode of the series, “Seeing the Light,” and not just a season finale. But before the ashes are scattered, Carrie leads up to her big ask of Samantha at the end of the episode by establishing more familiarity with her through the admission, “I kissed a man.” She responds, “The first of many. How was it?” Carrie laments, “It wasn’t Big.” Sam offers the dad joke, “So, it was small.” Here Carrie takes another leap by inquiring, “Want to talk?” Rather than ghosting again by way of ceasing her thought bubble altogether, she writes back immediately, “Soon.”
Once more, this makes little sense considering how the falling out was described at the beginning, as though Samantha, like Kim Cattrall, never had any intention of making a cameo in their lives again. But apparently, all these scant texts were just foreplay for Carrie’s one big question, “I’m in Paris, want to meet for a cocktail?” “How’s tomorrow night?” “FABULOUS.” The real clincher on making the Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) meets Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) connection couldn’t be more tailored short of adding ABSOLUTELY to the front of that word.
In any event, those who really know the Samantha of this epoch are aware that, no, she does not want to meet for a cocktail in Paris. And after being portrayed in this jank-ass way, to boot, there is no fucking amount of money that could get Samantha to scuttle on over from London for a drink with this Janus-faced slore. So here’s to the Samantha And Just Like That… unwittingly created, living her best life as a new-fangled Edina/Patsy from AbFab, free of Carrie’s needy, narcissistic bullshit.
