‘And Just Like That…’ again comes up short as it tries bringing ‘Sex’-y back

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

(CNN) — To those wide-eyed romantics who dared hope that a second season would fix all the things wrong with the first one of “And Just Like That…,” the “Sex and the City” sequel returns with its abundant flaws intact. Awkward, unconvincing and only sporadically funny, the show remains a kind of streaming Frankenstein, stitched together from a jumbled assortment of parts.

While the first season had Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) grappling with her grief arc after the sudden death of her husband, the second does feel a bit lighter, unearthing considerably less drama from her continued process of moving on.

The various subplots, meanwhile, range from flat to cringe inducing, with the worst still being the relationship between Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Che (Sara Ramirez), who enter a new phase of breakup-to-makeup crises built around the latter taping a TV pilot based on Che’s life. Miranda is the worst possible character to date a moody artist, a combination that doesn’t produce fireworks but rather a steady drip of tediousness.

The newer supporting players – Nicole Ari Parker (as Lisa), Sarita Choudhury (Seema) and Karen Pittman (Nya) – have developed a little further, but they remain thinly written, and still suffer from feeling like add-ons to their respective friends, diversifying the show but only partly filling the void left by the absence of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha.

Cattrall is destined for a season-ending cameo but is currently occupied with another series premiering the same day, Netflix’s “Glamorous,” in a supporting role that’s roughly the equivalent of Meryl Streep’s part in “The Devil Wears Prada,” playing the imperious boss of a nonbinary young influencer, Marco (Miss Benny), hired by her makeup empire. Centering on Marco’s journey, it’s skippable too, just without the quarter-century of brand equity to fuel disappointment.

As constructed, “And Just Like That…” derives its minimal kicks from throwaway sequences over the course of the seven episodes (out of 11 this season) previewed, like Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Lisa wondering where they rate on a “MILF list” distributed at their kids’ school; or the parents exulting once their pampered angels board a bus for camp. (While exploring parenthood is an obvious next phase for the series, the annoying nature of everyone’s children suggests the creative team’s heart isn’t really in it.)

Beyond Cattrall and John Corbett’s much-anticipated return, the show revels in fabulous cameos, with Gloria Steinem, Billy Dee Williams and Candice Bergen among those popping in. At the same time, building the opening episode around attending the Met Gala merely feels as tired as much of what’s on display here – in the show’s terms, like trotting out yesterday’s styles.

Executive producer Michael Patrick King and the writers devote a fair amount of time to middle-aged sex in the city, including indignities associated with aging, as a reminder that desire doesn’t end upon graduating from the “Euphoria” demographic. Yet those sequences generally have about as much depth as the montage employed to reintroduce the characters, which is to say, not very much at all.

With the benefit of hindsight, the best chance of “And Just Like That…” yielding something memorable would have been to more narrowly focus the revival as a one-and-done limited series, dealing with that intense window in Carrie’s life, surviving and coming through it with a little help from her friends.

Instead, we get the TV equivalent of one of those boorish dudes “Sex and the City” occasionally featured: A handsome one-night stand that doesn’t know when to leave.

“And Just Like That…” premieres its second season June 22 on Max, which, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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