The penultimate episode of the 'Sex and the City' reboot is filled with lots of laughs and plenty of heart too.
Spoilers ahead! If you have not finished this week's episode of And Just Like That, bookmark this for later or proceed with caution.
Finally, just in time for next week's finale of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, the show is offering fans a glimmer of its original glory. In Thursday's episode, there are laugh-out-loud moments, heartfelt discussions, and one of Carrie Bradshaw's shoes is put in peril. It's starting to feel like a fresh take on an old friend.
Though each of the women -- even the newbies -- get their own moments, this episode is once again centered around the complicated relationship between Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez).
After Miranda rushed off to Cleveland to surprise Che at their show last episode, we were sure chaos would await her. But it seems Miranda's "rom-com"-esque trip went off without a hitch. The issues in the relationship between the two are a bit more nuanced than that.
The pair goes out to dinner and when two excited fans ask for Che's photo, Miranda describes herself as "the girlfriend," a title that Che doesn't seem too comfortable with.
It gets even more awkward when Miranda shows up unannounced at Che's apartment with cookies saying possibly the most horrific line of the entire series thus far, "I was craving me some Che."
When Che says they want to be alone, Miranda is immediately flustered, rushing down the stairs and declaring, "I shouldn't have come, so f**king stupid. Who am I, Meg Ryan?"
When Che tells Miranda this isn't going to work, the newly separated lawyer has a full breakdown.
"Please let me finish my thought," Che says. "This isn't going to work if you lock us into those f**king limited relationship tropes. Guys do this and girlfriends do this. This isn't cosplay. I'm not a guy. You're not my girlfriend. And we're not dating. We are getting to know each other, you and me."
Che also tells a frazzled Miranda that she is the only person they are sleeping with right now, calming her clearly shot nerves.
But Miranda isn't the only one freaking out over Che. Miranda's estranged husband, Steve Brady (David Eigenberg), isn't quite as chill about his wife leaving him for a non-binary lover as Miranda initially assumed. When he shows up to help paint the local women's center and is partnered with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), he immediately begins to pepper her with questions about his estranged wife.
"How long did you know about it, about her and this Che?" Steve asks a very uncomfortable Carrie.
When it's clear that Carrie can't stand being put in the middle, Steve continues, saying, "No need to get uncomfortable, I'm just trying to get some information here. This whole thing all came up on me pretty damn fast. Can you help me out here?"
Steve continues to press Carrie, asking if Miranda ever expressed that she interested in being with women.
"All I know is what she said to me," Carrie says. "That it's not about being with women, it's about being with Che. So, that's all I can say."
Steve's persistence causes Carrie to step back in her platform heels (that are totally an appropriate accessory choice for a day of manual labor) right into a container of paint. When she goes to wash the paint off her shoes, she accidentally drops Big's wedding ring, which she has been wearing, down the drain of the sink. Steve rescues it, and shares that he never intends to take off his own wedding ring.
"I don't care what Miranda does, till death do us part," Steve says. "Never coming off."
Steve's confession leads Carrie to consider her own struggles with whether to take off her wedding ring after her husband, Big's (Chris Noth), death. She initially canceled her date with the widowed teacher Peter (Jon Tenney) -- you remember Pukey Peter, right? -- saying she couldn't handle moving on, but after seeing Steve so stuck in his ways, Carrie ends the episode texting Peter, asking for another date.
Though all the women have a lot going on this episode, it's Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) who provides the most laughs. She agrees to help her oldest daughter, Lily, with putting in a tampon, a task her daughter has previously been too afraid to tackle, and chaos ensues.
After lots of over-the-top teenage angst surrounding this new development, Lily asks her mother to pull out her tampon in an outdoor porta potty, prompting this line: "Lily, I love you madly, but I draw the line at pulling out your tampon string."
Charlotte, who thought she had finally hit menopause and was no longer having periods, then happens to have her own visit from Aunt Flow while wearing a white jumpsuit. The moment is reminiscent of when the ever-prim socialite "Pookipsy'd in her pants" in the 2008 Sex and the City film. The scene expertly deals with the topic of aging while incorporating the original series' sense of humor.
With next week's finale on the horizon, there's no telling where these women might end up, but if they keep heading in this direction, we're definitely on board for a season 2!
The season finale of And Just Like That airs Thursday, Feb. 3 on HBO Max.
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