It looks like they’ve decided to put the sex back in the city. The first two episodes of And Just Like That… season two strutted their way onto Max on Thursday, June 22. It feels like a bit of a return to form as Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte get back to their old tricks—namely, having sex. On this season of Vanity Fair’s TV podcast Still Watching, hosts Richard Lawson, Chris Murphy, and new cohost Hillary Busis sit around the brunch table to dish about the fresh and flirty new season. “Everybody is finally having sex in the city,” says Busis. “There’s nudity, there’s explicit content. It felt like a hearkening back to the original.”
In “Met Cute,” the first episode of And Just Like That… season two, the ladies are not only having sex—they’re also preparing for the Met Gala. Carrie has a fashion emergency and winds up repurposing the wedding gown she wore when Big (Chris Noth) jilted her in the first Sex and the City movie. “We are past grief season,” says Busis. “We are going into a brighter future where we’re not just going to watch a woman break down.”
Elsewhere in the episode, we see Carrie enjoying casual Thursday sex with her podcast producer, Franklyn (Ivan Hernandez). But it gets complicated when Franklyn tries to take their relationship to the next level—and Carrie decides to pass, not ready for anything more serious than no-strings hookups. By episode two, “The Real Deal,” it’s clear Carrie and Franklyn’s relationship is not meant to be, especially after their podcast studio shutters—in part because Carrie refused to read an ad promoting vaginal wellness. By the end of the second episode, Carrie is free and single, without a man or a podcast to hold her down.
The whole gang is back!
Across the country in Los Angeles, Miranda and Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) are taking their relationship to the next level, with Che sharing their insecurity about being told to diet for their pilot and Miranda confessing that she wasn’t sure whether their relationship was only about sex. But an unforeseen variable emerges after Miranda gets stranded on a beach in Malibu and is picked up by none other than Che’s husband, Lyle (Oliver Hudson)—“a big thing to leave out” for the terminally woke Che Diaz, Lawson notes.
Meanwhile, Charlotte has a pair of crises. In episode one, she’s torn between bringing her husband (Evan Handler) or her best friend Anthony (Mario Cantone) as her Met Gala date. In episode two, she’s incensed when her daughter, Lily, sells her clothes online in order to buy an electric keyboard. Really, though, what’s eating at her is the bittersweet realisation that Lily is growing up. “I think Charlotte did kind of think that once she got the kids and the husband and the Park Avenue classic six, that there would be an end-credits role, and that would be life,” says Lawson, “And she’s now like, No, there’s stuff past this.”
But And Just Like That… is not only about the sex lives and interiority of OGs Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda. Season two of the Sex and the City revival has wisely made more space for its three newer supporting characters: Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker), and Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), with each of the women getting their own story line in each episode. “This season, they really established that ‘No, all six of these ladies are leads,’” says Murphy. “They all have their own story lines, their own points of view.”
Nya deals with her estranged and potentially cheating husband, Andre Rashad (LeRoy McClain), as she contends with being the only woman on the series currently not having sex in any city. Lisa is gifted her very own Bunny-style mother-in-law from hell in Eunice Wexley (Pat Bowie), a Black matriarch who deeply believes in respectability politics. The impulsive Seema fires both her hair dresser and her boyfriend, Zed, after finding too many red flags in both of them.
Busis, Lawson, and Murphy are also joined this episode by Vanity Fair editor in chief Radhika Jones, who breaks down her enduring love for the women of Sex and the City. “I just wanna know what happens to Carrie. If it’s Monday, I just want to know what she does on Tuesday,” says Jones. “I don’t think I’ll ever turn it off because I just would rather be with them on whatever access I can get.”
This article originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
