I feel satisfied that – as an old and loyal fan of the franchise – I am tuned in to And Just Like That. The new stage of Sex and The City sounds different, it sounds sad, it sounds lost, but aren’t we all? If there was something that put the series on track, it was Carrie’s narration guiding us through the dramas, sewing the theme of each episode to end with a concluding “and just like that”. In the new phase, they leave us alone to understand the themes and sew on our own what we catch or not from what they are showing us. Would we be Brady crying that we want to be treated like babies even as adults?

In the first season, the theme was grief, and not per episode, but all. Carrie loses Big, who has always guided her existence and needs to prove herself strong, move on with life, and deny to everyone that without him, she was left without direction. An independent woman does not have her existence defined by a man, only that in the case of this story, it was a bit like that (so much so that there are old critics about Carrie’s ‘happy’ ending with Big in Sex and The City and others, like me, who found his personality change in the movies strange). And I know that in binary times one does not capture or accept paradoxes, but the beauty of Sex and The City was in this issue as well. All this to get us to the third episode of season two back to the beginning. Literally.

Entitled “Faux-vid’, in an allusion to the temporary lie that Carrie uses about being with Covid (faux, from fake), it could also allude to the fake life, of the facade, that she leads as if she had overcome her grief. And Carrie’s arc has been to expose the pressure people have about not giving others space to suffer. Nor does she want to, as she hates to victimize herself, but the pain of loss is still present. Something he has to face when having to record the audio of his new book – about Big’s death – and relive all the moments, including the shower scene, in which he addresses his paralysis and the feeling that the world has stopped. The scene is beautiful, it’s well-edited, with accurate audio of falling water, and it’s heartwarming. Carrie still needs to find her voice again, they try to correct her pronunciation and even try to steal the necklace that identifies her, but luckily they can’t. In her time, at her pace, she is coming back.

The series is now merging the cast, bringing a connection between the new characters and even giving more space to Anthony and it’s getting better. Lisa and Charlotte’s dramas are surreal and childish, as they humorously point out. Miranda and Che face problems adjusting their personalities as well. Miranda loves her new persona, wanting to mark that the past is really behind her, but still not meeting what Che needs and is looking for at the moment. The comedian has an incredible project to have her own series, but, strangely, it is being written by someone else and is clashing and suffering from the result. She doesn’t have the space to be supportive and Miranda still has Brady, her own issues. The crisis between them is obvious, but it is unlikely to cause a separation.

I miss Carrie’s narration, which comes in a few moments in the first few episodes and is abandoned entirely now. Your voice is the soul of the franchise, I hope it recovers and that it guides us, possibly, to a third phase? To see. Next week Aidan returns to the scene. There’s nothing better than a trip back in time to recover the formula.

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