At long last, Samantha Jones came … back to the “Sex and the City” extended universe. It was short, it was sweet and it left viewers craving for more. And, in true Samantha fashion, it reportedly took a “s---load of money” and a fabulous Pat Field outfit to make it happen.
(Some spoilers below.)
It was reported in May that Kim Cattrall would reprise her iconic role as the sexually liberated PR maven Samantha Jones for an episode of “And Just Like That.” In the first season of Max’s "SATC" spinoff, Jones manifested only as a text, the result of Cattrall’s years of rumored, then public feuding with her former castmates (particularly Sarah Jessica Parker) and showrunner Michael Patrick King. But a disembodied Samantha is a paltry replacement for Cattrall’s Samantha, a woman so committed to her friends that she once declared that “men, babies — doesn’t matter. We’re soulmates.”
Fans were left to watch each and every episode of the much-derided spinoff’s second season in anticipation of when and how Samantha might turn up. About a minute and 40 seconds into Thursday’s season finale, we got our answer. As Carrie Bradshaw is preparing for her “last supper,” a proper send-off to her one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, she gets an unexpected call from her old pal Samantha.
Sam — wearing a fabulous silver metallic coat and coral-red silk dress paired with a lime green clutch and a giant cocktail ring — is in a car leaving Heathrow Airport. She is calling to tell Carrie that her plan for a surprise appearance at the last supper has been foiled by fog and a maxed-out airline crew (art imitates life!). She’s “f---ing furious” at this turn of events and asks Carrie to put her on speakerphone so she can thank the “fabulous flat” for everything it’s given over the years. And just like that, Samantha is gone as abruptly as she arrived, signing off with a “ta, cheerio,” a well-placed Annabelle Bronstein joke, and a tender kiss to the phone (improvised by Cattrall herself).
Predictably, many fans were underwhelmed by what felt like a drive-by, with no real purpose other than to gesture at the cultural juggernaut that “Sex and the City” once was — and starkly remind us that “And Just Like That” has none of its sharp commentary or relevance.
Some thought the exchange was forced and out of character: Would Samantha really let a flight delay stop her from showing up for her friend? Would she really book it to New York for an apartment send-off but not Big’s funeral? The scene was inconsequential to the plot (of the season and the show) in which Samantha has hardly been mentioned. The cameo was a tease, impactful only in that it reminded those of us watching why Samantha’s absence from “And Just Like That” has left such a void in the show’s social dynamics. As Alexis Soloski put it in The New York Times, the scene “smacked less of comic or dramatic necessity than of a hostage proof of life video.”
Some love affairs, no matter how great, are not built to last.
Cattrall is a talented actor, and in her capable hands, Samantha managed both to establish an archetype and fully realize a flesh-and-blood, human woman. Her character was arguably the best friend of the original four (a mantle taken up by Charlotte in the spinoff); the one to call out her peers’ selfishness as well as to offer a judgment-free zone when her besties screwed up (see Carrie’s season three affair with Mr. Big).
Samantha was also refreshingly unapologetic, one of the few women on television who truly seemed to love her life without a romantic partner there to define her worth. (Sarita Choudhury’s Seema Patel is the spinoff’s closest analog, but she definitively isn’t unbothered by her lack of “great loves.”) Samantha treasured great sex, made pleasure a priority, reveled in experimentation inside and outside the bedroom — after all, she was a “trisexual.” As my friend Lizzy said to me, Samantha represented “banging for banging’s sake!” In a culture that expects straight women to temper their own sexual desires while simultaneously holding them accountable for men’s, Samantha provided “Sex and the City” fans with an updated template of personal liberation.
But some love affairs, no matter how great, are not built to last. If Samantha had made it to the last supper, when asked for the one word to describe what she was ready to let go of, she might have said “this.” For Samantha Jones, real life overwhelmed the fiction. We know too much about Cattrall’s disdain for Parker and King, too much about how “past the finish line playing Samantha Jones” was for Cattrall after filming the second "SATC" movie. It’s not surprising that she wouldn’t agree to more than one afternoon of solo filming, followed by a martini.
Indisputably, Samantha loves Carrie. But she loves herself more. So she saved herself the headache of a transatlantic flight — and still managed to get all of us talking about her.
Ta and cheerio, you fabulous fictional woman.
