Spoilers below.
The second episode of And Just Like That… season 2 contains a lot of endings that open the way for change. To start, Carrie’s Sex and the City podcast hits a wall when her innate prudery stops her from saying the word “suppository” on air, even though this commercial for vaginal wellness seems to be the only thing holding off cancelation. As her boss Chloe says, this isn’t the podcast heyday of 2021, and she needs to take what she can get.
Seema, on the other hand, is celebrating an ending after breaking up with her most promising boyfriend in a while, Zed, since discovering he still lives with his ex-wife. But when she dishes to her hairstylist Juan Jose, he loudly calls her out for being “too picky” in front of a salon full of Upper East Side ladies. Seema storms out humiliated and it leaves her wondering if maybe she’s the real problem in her relationships.
Over at Charlotte and Harry’s place, Lily is demanding some transformational support after watching her younger sibling Rock come into their identity last season. In what might be the most preposterous plot point so far, Charlotte refuses to buy Lily a keyboard to make her own music, insisting she stick to the Steinway. It’s hard to believe that the York-Goldenblatt children have ever been denied anything that cost less than $5k for their personal development, but Lily is told she has to find the money on her own if she wants to be an artist.
Kristin Davis
Being a creative person, Lily sells her designer clothes painstakingly accrued by Charlotte over the years to The Real Deal clothing re-sellers. Included in the batch is a significant Chanel number that Charlotte makes it her mission to get returned with an apology. Inevitably, she fails, and after hearing Lily’s song about the prison of privilege, she wonders if she failed with her daughter, too.
Carrie wisely asks: Is Lily rejecting everything Charlotte has given her, or is she just out-growing it?
In Los Angeles, Che’s TV show continues to come between them and sex with Miranda, the latter of whom has found she doesn’t have much to fill her days without it. Miranda heads to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and gets roped into a beach clean-up with a tattooed AA member. Out on the beach, she loses her phone in a pile of garbage and can’t call an Uber home after being abandoned by her new friend. The terror of missing dinner with Tony Danza pushes her to approach some helpful surfers, but the difficulty of contacting Che makes Miranda realize she doesn’t know them at all. Especially when Che sends their heretofore unmentioned husband, Lyle, to pick her up. Another red flag is flying.
Nya is also experiencing some endings after Andre Rashad admits he’s been thinking about boinking the Heidi woman she saw in his hotel room, but he hasn’t quite yet. The implicit threat gets more concrete when he adds that his marriage to Nya will stay strong if she’s willing to consider a surrogate. Otherwise, Heidi is coming over to check out the minibar. Fed up with the ultimatums around child-rearing, Nya stars de-Andreing her house in a rampage.
Lisa is still balancing her dynamic life as a filmmaker, wife, and the perfect mom, but in the eyes of her mother-in-law Eunice, she’ll always be doing something wrong. And guess who’s coming to visit? Conversations about natural hair and propriety imply Eunice’s very conservative POV, which is not in line with how Lisa usually talks to her children about their identity. The episode makes a point about how the Wexleys may be extraordinarily rich, but Lisa’s husband Herbert still can’t hail a cab on Park Avenue as a Black man. He and his mother clash over how he handles everyday racist aggressions, and Lisa finds herself surprised to be agreeing with Eunice for once. She will be happy to see her leave, however.
Tony Danza and Sara Ramírez
Speaking of identity, Che’s solo dinner with Tony Danza starts them questioning their own. Tony is an Italian-American who has been cast as a Mexican-American to play Che’s father, and he’s already getting pushback online. He pitches a re-arrangement of Che’s family history so they can stay Mexican and he can stay Italian, and Che sees their own story getting further diluted. What should they hold onto for the sake of authenticity?
Doing a classic backslide, Seema makes amends with both Juan Jose and her ex-boyfriend, but only one of those men never fails her. During a conciliatory dinner with Zed, he asks her for $100,000 investment for a private club. She was already suspicious he was a mooch and as always, Seema is right. Goodbye, Zed.
Carrie also says goodbye to her lover this episode, getting dumped by Franklyn shortly after learning they’re both out of the job and that he’s catching feelings. When the network tells you to talk about vaginal wellness, you talk about it.
But, when a door closes, a window opens—into love, perhaps?
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.