While the Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That... has on balance been a sorely needed delight in a winter of Omicron stress and general malaise, there’s one glaring omission from the original that’s hard to get over: the curious absence of one Samantha Jones, PR maven and all-around good-time gal. Of course, this absence can simply be explained by the fact that Kim Cattrall, the actress who played Jones for six seasons and two movies, declined to come back for AJLT, but her presence was – and is – missed nonetheless.
On the most recent episode of And Just Like That, Samantha’s departure from the show’s central quartet was illuminated in a new way, as Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie texted Samantha about accidentally mentioning her by name when she told a crude story on a podcast while on pain medication. (Who can relate?) Samantha responds in her inimitable fashion, even waxing nostalgic(ish) about their long friendship:
I’m usually not a fan of text conversations onscreen – at best, they seem gimmicky, and at worst, actively cloying – but watching Carrie text Samantha “I miss you,” only to be hit with the oh-so-painful “typing” bubble and its ensuing disappearance, finally felt like a worthy tribute to the joy and heart that Samantha brought to the show. More than that, it reminded me of all the text friendships that have alternately buoyed and frustrated me throughout my life, particularly over the past few years of the pandemic.
A few months ago, I moved to Austin, Texas, just under 2,000 miles from my loosely assembled group of five best friends in New York City, and I can honestly say that I don’t know where any of us would be without the modern convenience of texting. Of course, not every best-friend text is the same – I might deal exclusively in memes with one friend while sending Russian-novel-length missives about new crushes to another – but even though it might not make sense to, say, my grandmother, I never feel closer to my friends than when we’re firing off barrages of texts across state lines.
Phone calls require time, something none of us have enough of, and as we approach Year 3 of the pandemic, I can safely say we’ve all succumbed to Zoom fatigue. Texts, on the other hand, are a low-effort way of keeping in touch and sharing the minutiae of our days with each other. As Frances complains to her best friend, Sophie, about Sophie’s new fiancé in the film Frances Ha, “It’s just that if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you’ll only tell one person about it, and that’ll be Patch, and I’ll never hear about it.” Constant texting with my best friends allows me to hear about the funny thing that happened on the way to the proverbial deli to my heart’s delight, and makes me feel like I’m a real presence in their lives, even from far away.
I’m proud to say that, as of now, none of my friends have declined to appear in the post-New-York-exodus reboot of our friendship, but seeing Samantha clearly think on a response to Carrie – then abandon it – hit too close to home, as a veteran of the disappearing chat bubble. Plenty of romantic interests have ghosted me thusly (not to brag), but it’s different when it comes from a friend, someone you always expected to be able to hangover-text “oh my god i’m dying need breakfast tacos” without second-guessing yourself. I don’t know whether Samantha’s reappearance via text was a one-off, or something we can expect more of, but either way: I’m a fan. Now, if we could only get her to stop leaving Carrie on read...
