Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are back! The Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That… has returned to Max, and Slate’s podcast The Waves is covering it every week—exclusively for Slate Plus members. Below is a bit of this week’s recap covering Episode 5 with senior producer Cheyna Roth and Slate editor-in-chief Hillary Frey.
To get the full episode, and lots more Slate Plus bonus content, go to slate.com/thewavesplus to become a Slate Plus member today.
Hillary Frey: I’d love to talk about the focus group for a minute, because—I don’t work in TV, but it’s a little implausible that overall, a positive focus group would just tank a pilot with one person’s opinion. But it’s a really important plot point actually, because it’s propelling already, right? You start to see, in this episode, this disconnect grow between Miranda and Che. And Miranda really turning into this mom. And so I struggled with that a little bit, where I was like, “This moved a little bit too fast.” We went from pilot, to focus group, to everything falling apart pretty quickly. But on the other hand, I was excited for some action, because you know what? Who knows what change this is going to propel going forward.
Cheyna Roth: Right. My hope is maybe this is finally the beginning of the end for all of this. Because, aside from Miranda not acting like herself around Che and just turning into this weird codependent character, who, by the way, I realized I hadn’t noticed it before, she’s been dyeing her hair red. In Episode 1 of Season 1 of this show, Miranda gave a speech to Charlotte about how she doesn’t need to be a spicy redhead and how she’s not going to dye her hair. And for whatever reason, maybe because my eyes glaze over whenever Miranda’s on the screen right now, I was like, “Oh my God. She’s been dyeing her hair.” It’s just full stop. She’s just totally gone over the mountains on this. I mean, we don’t even have to get rid of Che as a character. I’m happy with having Che around, a sounding board for Carrie, somebody that Carrie can interact with. But Che and Miranda together is just, like, “Please make this stop.”
I think, one thing overall with the series that I’m a little bit confused by, because it’s Sex and the City, And Just Like That…, and you and Daisy talked about in the first two episodes the sex montage at the beginning and the cringiness. I have to say, as a woman close to the age of these ladies, everywhere I go, people are talking about sex at this age, the challenges with it, because of the changes in our hormones and our bodies. And I feel like Samantha way back reckoned with some of this stuff, right, in the first series. I’d like to hear that conversation, especially with the new characters added in, about what their personal experiences are, just at a brunch, right? It doesn’t have to be a whole thing. That’s what used to happen when they would have brunch is those thorny things would come up, right? And not everything for a gag. Not a penis pump. I feel like there have been some missed opportunities there. I’d like for them to talk about vaginal hormonal suppositories, because that’s coming up when I end up in groups of women right now.
I’m so glad you mentioned that, because that was one of the things that I really enjoyed about the first season of this show was talking about menopause and things like that. And it seems like this season, it’s all about male sexual issues. You had Harry not having any semen when he came. You had penis-pump guy, but we’re not talking about, I don’t know, does Seema experience vaginal dryness? She didn’t have any lube with her vibrator. I would imagine she would probably want that. I mean, so we’re not getting into the women’s part of all of this, and the changes that they’re going through. I mean, Carrie tanked her whole podcast company because she wouldn’t say vaginal dryness and do an ad for it. What is this? Why aren’t they talking—there’s so much going on in their bodies right now and in their experiences, why aren’t they talking about this?
Thanks for validating my point of view, Cheyna.
This content was originally published here.
