And Just Like That… Season 2 Episode 9 is titled “There Goes the Neighborhood” as an obvious reference to Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) decision to swap her long-time brownstone apartment for a luxury duplex in Gramercy Park. However, there’s another development in this week’s episode of the Max hit that might hit closer to the phrase’s true meaning of things going downhill fast for everyone in a community. You could say it’s a living nightmare for two of our long-time Sex and the City faves…
**Spoilers for And Just Like That… Season 2 Episode 9 “There Goes the Neighborhood,” now streaming on Max**
In And Just Like That… Season 2 Episode 9, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is worried that her college-aged son Brady (Niall Cunningham) has lost all direction. She naively thinks the solution could be pairing him platonically with Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) over-achieving teenaged daughter Lily (Cathy Ang). Charlotte bribes Lily to hangout with Brady with the promise of free fries. However when Miranda drops by her old Brooklyn house to shower, she sees Lily — wearing nothing but one of Brady’s t-shirts and a look of panicked guilt — pop in and out of her son’s room. It seems that Miranda’s son and Charlotte’s daughter had sex, sending both women spiraling.
According to the Max’s official And Just Like That… Writer’s Room Podcast, the show’s scribes decided that the comedy of the situation came from the mothers not knowing for sure what had happened. That said, the plan always was for Brady and Lily to be a couple.
“Originally, way, way back, we thought that Lily and Brady would be a couple,” And Just Like That… writer and EP Elisa Zuritsky dished on the pod. “I think originally, it was going to be out in the open that they had slept together.”
“And I think it was only while we got into the deep writing and thinking about it that we realized it’s so much funnier [if we just don’t really know].”
Michael Patrick King put it this way: “You can think they went all the way or they just talked like Charlotte. It depends on which character you are in your head.”
However, it’s pretty obvious that something happened between Lily and Brady. Something that now bonds the youths and made a pants-less Lily freak out a little.
Brady and Lily have certainly been keeping their mothers busy this season. Miranda had to cut her California getaway with Che (Sara Ramírez) short when Brady’s girlfriend dumped him abroad. Since then, Brady’s been listless, only able to help out in the kitchens of Steve’s (David Eigenberg) bar Scout. Lily, on the other hand, showed her first signs of rebellion in And Just Like That… Season 2. After selling her couture wardrobe behind Charlotte’s back to fund her emo music, Lily tasked her mom with trudging through a bomb cyclone for condoms so she could safely loose her virginity. Just a few weeks ago, Lily’s friends also drugged Charlotte by accident with space cake! Needless to say, both Brady and Lily are at the age where they are making mistakes while searching for themselves. Case in point: (probably) hooking up with each other.
What’s fascinating about this And Just Like That… storyline is that so far it’s causing way more drama between their mothers than the actual parties involved. Lily and Brady seem chill in the aftermath of their supposed hookup. We see them laugh over something on their phones and leave a fundraising party for pizza. The tension comes from Charlotte’s worries that eventually this tryst will end in a mess and she’ll have to take sides against Miranda and Miranda’s dogged insistence on getting to the bottom of what happened. The story seems to resolve itself — for this week at least — when Charlotte admits that she had a lot of sex as a teen her mother never knew about and she turned out fine. She tells a skeptical Miranda that she’s fine with not knowing what Lily is or isn’t getting up to with Brady. It’s not her business. (ONCE AGAIN CHARLOTTE IS THE SEASON MVP!)
Of course, the situation is potentially more complicated than the usual teen romance. First, because the focus of And Just Like That… is on the adults, Brady and Lily come across as kids rather than the sultry, sexually active teenagers of, say, Gossip Girl. (Which is ironic, because going off of their ages in the original Sex and the City, they should both be over 18 years old at this time and just two years apart.) It creates a vibe that Carrie sums up best when she learns the news: it’s like watching your favorite stuffed animals hook up. Nevertheless, the fact is…as Charlotte realizes…they are well within their rights to have consensual sex without their parents’ knowledge.
What might still be sticky, though, is what happens next. Will Brady and Lily’s hookup lead to a longer-term love story? Or is it just a one-night stand? If Brady and Lily do get serious, it could lead to further drama between the parents, per Charlotte’s worries. But in the grand scheme of things, I can’t see Brady and Lily’s potential romance ripping Charlotte and Miranda apart. Could it cause brief spats? Sure. Is it incredibly awkward? OH YES. It’s definitely a nightmare for the long-time fans. But we’ll have to wait and see how And Just Like That... deals with this development in future episodes before we can weigh in on how we truly feel about Brady and Lily…
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