We’re roughly a month into And Just Like That…, the long-awaited Sex and the City reboot. Eighteen years after the final episode of Sex and the City, we’ve left Paris and returned to New York. Things are looking good for the girls, besides, well, THE LOSS OF SAMANTHA JONES. Okay, okay, I think we all have had enough time to grieve her absence in this reboot, but it still stings a bit. Carrie and Big are married, Charlotte is living in her perfectly curated Upper East Side world, Miranda is starting law school at Columbia. Things are going objectively well for the three remaining ladies. And then Big literally dies on a Peloton.
Carrie grieves Big for a solid episode and a half, while in the meantime, Charlotte’s child comes out as non-binary, and Miranda develops a very clear drinking problem that makes her almost painful to watch. I feel like I had to ease my way into the first few episodes. From the fictional loss of Big to the far too real loss of Stanford (Willie Garson), it has been a readjustment from the good ol’ days of Sex and the City. Yet amid a swirl of reviews, many of them not so positive, I still found myself coming back to the show each week for a new episode, excited for more.
It has forced me to think quite a bit about who I was when I first watched Sex and the City. I was roughly sixteen years old, planning on attending school for something to do with fashion, desperate to escape the monotonous school days in Ohio with a Vivienne Westwood-filled trip to New York through my computer screen. It was an absolute aspirational flurry of a television series for a fashion-hungry kid. Every once and a while, I found myself coming back for an episode or two after I finished the series. But for the first time in four years, I revisited the show in its entirety over this past summer — Freshly twenty, somehow even more confused than I was at sixteen and living alone in New York for the first time in my life.
What has always made Sex and the City so comforting for me has been the combination of fashion and friendship. Yes, there’s love, Sex and laughs, but what always kept me so in love with the four girls was how powerful their friendships were. Oh, and the Manolo Blahniks. Sue me, but I have really enjoyed Carrie’s looks in this reboot. I think we often forget that Carrie was a risk-taker twenty years ago; the woman is at her best when she looks absolutely nuts. The tutu in the bodega, the Balenciucci bag, that stupid Lil cap with the feather! It’s ridiculous! I love it! Carrie is unironically the ideal Balenciucci customer, and no, I won’t answer any further questions regarding that topic.
Yes, there are shortcomings in And Just Like That, most notably the questionable choice of using Samantha’s open seat as a revolving door for several characters of color, rather than just giving one the spot. Ché’s character feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t even tangentially know a queer person. The hardest thing for me to watch for the first five episodes was Miranda’s journey. Then, just as I felt that I could barely handle how insufferable she had become, Miranda had a breakthrough. After her infidelity to the sweet, beloved Steve with her new flame/sneaky-link, Ché, Miranda had a come-to-Jesus moment with Carrie.
Miranda’s fall from grace was a not-so-pretty reminder of how no matter how far we come or the successes we achieve, we are still growing up, constantly just trying to make our way in a tumultuous world. Getting older is hard. It’s hard at sixteen. It’s hard at thirty. It’s hard at fifty. I don’t think anyone ever really prepares us for that, but the part where it starts to get easier is when you look to your friends, the ladies that have always been there for you. Did I just make a television show review a little too deep? Abso-f**king-lutely!
Words by Nicholson Baird.
Graphic by Emily Tobias.