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Well before season two of And Just Like That … even debuted, the news of Samantha’s imminent return was out in the world. The show’s remaining stars from Sex and the City proceeded with caution, giving expectation-lowering quotes to publications. “It seems like this very large thing, but it’s not really a very large thing,” Kristin Davis told Entertainment Weekly. And it’s true, the scene is about a minute long, comes near the beginning of the finale, and doesn’t trade in grand emotions, instead opting for a cute conversation between friends. Samantha tells Carrie she was planning on surprising her by showing up for one night for Carrie’s apartment’s going-away party, Carrie is sad (but not distraught) that Samantha can’t make it, and Samantha says good-bye to the apartment. It’s all very nice.
But the truth that anyone who cares about this show knows is that it actually is a very large thing. Samantha Jones is one of the most beloved TV characters of all time, and her presence has been a gaping hole in the fabric of AJLT. The show has tried to fill it in various ways, with Seema taking on the role of the wry and closed-off girlfriend, Anthony taking on what would be Samantha’s jokes at brunch, and Charlotte’s more prudish tendencies getting scaled back without her foil to push against her. In some ways, it’s worked — season two of AJLT is stronger than the first — but Samantha’s ghost lingers. And when the show acknowledges that, it’s to its benefit. But with this cameo, AJLT set itself up for the worst of both worlds: unable to add Samantha back into the show and incapable of acknowledging the impact of her absence.
The cameo feels especially undermining in light of the best scene of AJLT’s second season, a fight outside the salon in which Seema sees Carrie getting back with Aiden and retreats from their friendship. Seema tells Carrie she won’t be going to the Hamptons with her and that she needs some space, and Carrie fights back, refusing Seema’s clearly set boundary. Samantha haunts this scene. Season one of AJLT set up that Carrie and Samantha fell out, then coaxed out a tentative reunion via text (the show’s only option given Kim Cattrall’s unwillingness to actually return), but never tried to claim that their friendship was fully back to where it was. Carrie and Seema’s conversation in season two is strongly informed by Carrie’s lost friendship and the show’s choice to add Seema as a clear Samantha surrogate: Seema can see Carrie’s willingness to submerge herself into a relationship at the cost of her friendships and rejects it, and Carrie can’t respect Seema’s boundary because she previously lost a friend who was supposed to be lifelong. For once, Samantha’s absence was not just a hole, but a hole with dramatic worth. The show took it seriously and benefitted by exploring how it would affect Carrie’s relationships now. It was the first time that the loss of Samantha amounted to more than just a subtextual wink at the audience about Cattrall not wanting to return and instead felt like the show exploring how losing friendships is a part of growing older.
The finale’s cameo does a remarkable job of returning Carrie and Samantha back to their roots. They seem like friends who have not missed a beat. Clearly, that was the intention in order to invoke maximum wistfulness. To Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker’s credit, the two play it extremely well — it truly is like they never missed a beat. But that’s a problem. Carrie and Samantha had a monster breakup, then had a text reunion (which was not felt dramatically due to Cattrall’s absence), and are now back to normal? For fans of SATC, it’s nice to see Cattrall back in Samantha mode, but dramatically, it’s unhelpful. Cattrall will still be gone next season, and now she’ll be gone in a context where the show has established Samantha as having both the willingness and ability to come back to New York for a quick pop-in whenever she would like. Meanwhile, in the real world, Cattrall has firmly stated that she will not be returning. It does a disservice to not only Samantha but to the show itself to only briefly reunite Carrie and Samantha. Their friendship is repaired, but the show still doesn’t have the ability to show that friendship beyond texts, and now, it doesn’t have the ability to show how the loss of Samantha affected Carrie, either.
Jennifer Senior wrote in the Atlantic in 2022, “People may say that friendship betrayals aren’t as bad as romantic betrayals if they’re presented with hypothetical scenarios on a questionnaire. But that’s not how they experience friendship betrayals in real life.” It’s true. During that scene with Seema, it felt like AJLT was ready to take on the weight of Carrie and Samantha’s breakup and to give it the space and time it deserved. Now, it’s running away from that without the ability to follow through on their reunion. And just like that, there’s another opportunity missed.
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