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For fans of the beloved and groundbreaking series, Sex and the City, the announcement of a reboot 20 years later felt like a flicker of light in the darkness of the last two years. However, the HBO Max limited series And Just Like That is as stressful and painful to watch as it is to live during these trying times. Welcome to the show full of Karens instead of Carries.
When Sex and the City premiered in 1998, it was considered revolutionary. A show following four single women in their 30s and 40s living in New York City and trying to navigate their careers, relationships, and sex hadn't been done before. It’s a show that felt important, that reflected the value of female friendship and never settling for less than you deserve. The show tackled modern social topics, such as female sexuality and being a woman in the workplace. For many female fans, the show inspired them to take more power in their sex lives and relationships. For instance, one sex shop in San Francisco reported that they had a crowd of women lined up around their store to buy the Rabbit vibrator the morning after the episode aired in which Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) raves about the toy. The store sold out of the Rabbit in a day.
My friend Skye Miller was so inspired by the show and its styling that he pursued a career in fashion. Personally, the show inspired me to seriously consider becoming a professional writer. I wanted to be these women, breaking the glass ceiling with a successful career, great hair, and amazing sex. While I often try to channel my inner Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) when writing, I’ve never completely understood how anyone can say that they are a Miranda, a Carrie, a Samantha (Kim Cattrell), or a Charlotte (Kristin Davis). Each character is every woman, all with something to offer, all with their own struggles, strengths, and weaknesses. Carrie is spontaneous and hopelessly romantic. Miranda is ambitious and impressive. Samantha is sexy, fun, and driven. Charlotte is caring and meticulous. These characters were not only relatable and dynamic, but they were powerful.
Unfortunately, the new series reboot, And Just Like That, portrays these beloved female characters no longer as every woman, but as one caricature in particular - a Karen. Rather than writing a show in which these characters age with grace, the show shines a spotlight on their age by portraying them as old, decrepit, and completely out of touch. When once they were some of the most modern women portrayed on television, now in their mid-50s, they are portrayed as prehistoric - and fans are pissed.
Following years of staying in and wearing sweatpants during this pandemic, I feverishly anticipated seeing the gang back together (even if Kim Cattrell couldn't be bothered). I wanted high fashion and frolicking in the streets of New York. I wanted funny female banter over lunch. I wanted captivating romance and hot steamy sex. I also wanted to see how the show would navigate and celebrate what it’s like to be an aging woman in modern-day society. What viewers got instead was death and disappointment after two years of just that.
After watching season after season of Carrie and her determined search for love, especially with her truest and most complicated love, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), seeing her happy would have been a pleasant sight. Instead, in the first episode (Hello It’s Me) no less, we see the man we watched her fight for all these years die of a heart attack after riding a Peloton bike. Upon finding him lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, Carrie runs to Big, holding him and sobbing rather than picking up the phone and making an emergency call that could’ve potentially saved his life. Not only were we ripped apart emotionally, but it was also executed unrealistically. Not to mention, it was also a horrifying and anxiety-provoking slow few minutes of television to watch. I actually yelled and screamed at the television begging Carrie to do something.
The death of Mr. Big is not the only disaster that viewers will face within the first episode. While the series now focuses on how Carrie will move forward after the death of her husband, we also follow Miranda's move forward in her career. Miranda, who is going back to school to get her master's in human rights studies, wants to leave the world of corporate law and do something more fulfilling. Miranda tells her friends over lunch that she’s nervous to go back to school “in this climate” because she’s so worried about saying the wrong thing. To our horror, she does exactly that. Actually, she says a lot of really wrong things.
Before arriving at class, Miranda stops at a bar to get a drink and quell her nerves. While it’s normal for anyone to be nervous for the first day of school, it is surprising to see this badass, confident career woman now so meek and unsure of herself. Many of the character developments in the reboot series feel off-brand but Miranda’s especially so. Upon arriving at class, Miranda confuses her professor for a fellow student because of the professor's appearance - specifically, her blackness and her braids. In an attempt to dig herself out of the racist hole she’s just dug, Miranda begins word vomiting for more cringe-worthy minutes trying to convince the class that she LOVES black people and is DEFINITELY not racist. Basically, Miranda acts as if she has never seen or met a black person before.
Not only is the scene stressful to watch, but it also feels like the show is attempting to make up for lost time and former mistakes regarding a lack of diversity in casting. It also feels like the writers are trying to teach their audience how to be woke, which I’m not sure their audience needs. Would Miranda, an educated, compassionate, and determined character really flail this hard? As BBC critic Caryn James wrote in a review of the series, “It’s hard to believe Miranda got that stupid.” Not only does the show portray Miranda as a Karen from the get-go, but we also come to learn that she’s a homewrecking alcoholic. For a character who has always been on top of her shit, this is not only disappointing but also unbelievable.
The first episode sets up the series accurately, as the cringyness and disappointment continue and there is little to no improvement in the writing or the overall plot. Carrie struggles to find any emotion in the wake of Big’s death - instead, she stores his ashes in a shoebox that she stuffs into her closet. She moves out of their beautiful apartment and trades it in for a cold and all-white minimalist loft instead. Instead of writing, Carrie now works as a co-host on a podcast called XY and Me, although we aren't really sure why. The podcast’s main host, Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), is proudly queer and nonbinary with a successful comedic career. The podcast is supposed to be about sex and gender roles, but this seems unclear. What is clear is that Che has a “Woke” button, yes, a literal button that they push throughout the show recording to educate and explain a woke moment to listeners. In an article in Harper’s Bazaar, critic Louis Staples wrote that this representation of LGBTQ+ people is “borderline insulting” as it characterizes queer people as “the tyrannical judges of what’s acceptable to say these days” which supports the conservative opinion “that LGBTQ+ people are desperate to police everyone’s speech.” While Che is very quick to make sure that everyone else is politically correct, they are less interested in respecting the choices of others.
After recording one of their podcasts, Che tells Carrie that she should “step her pussy up” (whatever that means) to stay on the show, as Che doesn’t feel that Carrie is sharing enough details regarding her sexual history with the listeners. However, forcing Carrie into doing so (despite her clear discomfort) by putting her job on the line also feels wrong. On the other hand, when has Carrie Bradshaw ever blushed on the topic of sex? Many of the choices in the reboot make little sense, which makes me wonder, have the AJLT writers ever watched an episode of the original series?
Honestly, it is beginning to feel like the entire series is a big woke button that is being pushed over and over and over again. It’s as if the show is trying to tackle every cultural issue in today’s social commentary, and in doing so, they don’t have the room to flesh out anything that feels substantial. It feels like the writers went down a woke checklist and marked each area off but with little to no effort in making these plot points meaningful. The problem, as Variety critic Daniel D’Addario put it, is that the reboot is “taking on a new project grander that the SATC toolbox can meaningfully address.” This makes for a watch that oftentimes feels random and at other points, quite dull.
The episodes drag on with little to no improvement. In episode 5, Miranda begins having an affair with Che after they hook up in Carrie’s kitchen. This moment apparently changes Miranda’s life forever, as she insists to her friends that she is supposed to be with Che and that her marriage to Steve is over. The decision is a surprising and rash one. For a character that was always the sage and sharp member of the friend group, I wondered if perhaps the writers were setting Miranda up for a full-on late mid-life crisis. It would be exciting to see a steamy queer sex scene on television if it felt like an authentic one. The scene, along with many others, and the events that follow feel tone-deaf instead. If you remember how hard Steve had to fight for Miranda, especially when trying to win her back after he cheats on her with a one-night stand, it’s difficult to believe that Miranda would have a complete lack of respect for her husband and fall helplessly, and (somewhat embarrassingly) obsessively, in love with someone else.
While spiraling Miranda gets a lot of the screen time, Charlotte is also navigating new challenges. Charlotte’s daughter Rose (Alexa Swinton) tells her mother she doesn’t feel like a girl, much to Charlotte’s dismay, as all she wants is for her daughter to wear flowery designer dresses. But after this scene, we don’t hear much about this character aside from Charlotte telling her friends that Rose would now like to be called Rock. Charlotte has a new friend at the children’s school, a fellow PTA mom named Lisa Todd Wexley (Nichole Ari Parker) who Charlotte embarrassingly refers to as LTW as if she is RBG. It’s clear that Charlotte thinks that her new friend is very cool, which she is. However, it also feels like Charlotte is also just excited to have her first black friend.
Conveniently, each of the leading ladies has a new best friend of color in the reboot. Carrie becomes friends with Seema (Sarita Choudhury), a luxury realtor that helps her find her new place. Seema, a woman of Indian descent, even invites Carrie to her family's party, encouraging Carrie to wear a traditional lehenga, stating “It’s not appropriation, it’s appreciation.” Miranda somehow convinces the black professor she so tremendously offended on that first day of class, Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) to become her friend despite it all. Assigning each character a new best friend that is not white seems like a move to make the show more inclusive. Instead, these characters feel thrown into the plot, as we have no idea why they would want to be friends with these white bitches. As James Poniewozik, chief television critic of The New York Times wrote, these new characters “don’t yet pass the racial Bechdel test; they exist only in relation to the central trio, serving to challenge or affirm them while reassuring them and us that they’re trying hard and mean well.” Perhaps this effort would feel more considerate if we felt that the trio was approaching these friendships aware of their privilege and whiteness.
Instead, they lack any awareness about anything at all. In one episode, Charlotte plans a dinner party and invites LTW but later panics, as she realizes that LTW and her husband will be the only black people in attendance. To solve this, she decides to invite a black couple that lives in their building that she hardly knows. When Charlotte attends a similar party at LTW’s home, she coaches her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), to bring up black authors to make sure that they appear cultured. She arrives to find that she and Harry are the only white people at the party, which makes her previous efforts embarrassing. As James also stated in her critique, “Charlotte seems far more aware of Lisa's race than Lisa does, which makes Charlotte look unsophisticated and Lisa one-dimensional.” Later, Charlotte also confronts Miranda, accusing her of having a drinking problem although we have never seen Miranda have more than a drink or two.
Not only are the characters’ lives falling apart, but they are physically falling apart as well. After limping around for a week, Carrie gets hip surgery. When joining her friend Anthony (Mario Cantone) to his plastic surgery consultation, the surgeon assumes Carrie is the one there for the appointment implying that she looks like she could use it. Carrie begins considering getting plastic surgery herself, as the surgeon proceeds to tell her everything that is wrong with her aging face. Charlotte criticizes Miranda’s gray hair and continually reminds Harry to schedule a colonoscopy. Later, the gang is shocked to hear that Charlotte still gives Harry blow jobs. The cast of The Golden Girls feels fresher than this crowd. The agist plot points are so exhausting, I may go gray myself. Are we in the spry streets of New York City or the geriatric ward? The characters are in their 50s, not their 80s.
What does this representation say to women in their 50s? That it’s all over for them? Curious, I asked my own mother who is 52, and had watched the original series but gave up on continuing the reboot. “I just didn’t find it interesting. I have more exciting things to watch” she told me over the phone this week as she tended to her robust tower garden. When I asked her how she felt about how the show represented women her age, she scoffed, “I don’t really get it, I mean they are my age, but they are making them seem like a bunch of grannies. Age is just a number and it’s all about how you live your life. I’m more active, successful, happy, and secure now than I was in my 20s.” While I may be biased, my mom’s a pretty inspiring woman. She’s an amazing mother, an incredible chef, and a dedicated healthcare worker. She runs miles on her Peloton treadmill every day, drinks copious amounts of red wine, hosts huge parties, and wears whatever the hell she wants. As she said, “Your age is whatever you make of it.”
This is the kind of attitude I would expect the characters of AJLT to have. It would have been a nice sentiment to show that these women are just as fabulous as they were in their 30s while still showing that they have changed and evolved with age. Instead, Miranda, as my friend Skye stated, “is a shell of herself”, Carrie prioritizes spending money on treatments and procedures to look young, and Charlotte is still trying to be the cool girl at school. These characters that embodied confidence are now constantly unsure of themselves. Not only are they physically falling apart, but they are also portrayed as so old that they are helplessly oblivious as to how to function in the modern world. Who is the intended audience of this series? Is the show, for a lack of a better explanation, for the show itself? If the writers’ intention is to make up for the show's previous pitfalls regarding a lack of diversity, they’re doing a poor job. They completely missed the boat on a positive representation of middle-aged women and rather stuck their toes in the water of every other possible social issue. It feels as if the writers are attempting to teach viewers about today’s woke culture without actually understanding any of it themselves. The result is problematic.
For instance, if the show is attempting to win brownie points with the LGBTQ+ community, they may have done more harm than good. “As a gay man, I loved how characters like Anthony and Sandford were depicted in the original series. They were gay and they were fabulous, and we didn’t need them to explain, label, or hit us over the head with it for us to get it,” Skye Miller, fan of the OG series, said during a recent chat. “It just was what it was, and these characters felt authentic and real.” When I asked Skye how he felt about the new queer characters added to the reboot, his reaction was strong, especially to the depiction of Che Diaz. “I think Che is literally a caricature of a queer nonbinary person. Che is not a likable character either. I think this kind of portrayal is the reason why we have a lot of hatred toward the LGBTQ+ community. We’re not here to smack you over the head with our sexuality or sexual orientation. When members of the community are portrayed like Che, as if how they identify is literally all they are and all they have to offer a plot, it’s sad. We need more powerful LGBTQ+ characters in television, and they had the opportunity to show this experience authentically, but they completely blew it.”, Skye added.
The internet will tell you similarly. A simple Google search of the character's name led me to a link from the NY Post titled, “Why Che Diaz from ‘And Just Like That’ is TV’s Most Hated Character”. The article by Lauren Samer states, “The writers tailor Che not for queer audiences but for women in their 50s who still can’t wrap their heads around they/them pronouns. They’re not a character, but a prop.” Memes are currently circulating poking fun at Che and their woke button, playing the sound and their voice-over on a loop to heighten the obnoxious quality of it all. In an attempt to be woke, this kind of thoughtless representation of queer and nonbinary folk does more harm than good.
After the past few years of collective anxiety, seeing how Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte have grown perhaps wiser, stronger, or more resilient through the years would have not only been enjoyable, but relatable, as we’ve all grown a little more resilient, a little stronger. Creating a more diverse cast with new characters could have been great, had the writers done a better job at making sure that they felt essential to the plot and were receiving authentic representation. Instead, the show is disappointing for fans, and offensive to just about anyone watching. The only people that can relate to this dumpster fire are the Karens of this world, who likely are not watching the reboot of Sex in the City anyway. If there’s anything the original series taught us, it’s that it’s not necessarily what you’re wearing, but how you wear it - and in the reboot, these characters are not wearing it well.
While I once watched these women and dreamed of being them, now I only hope I don’t become them.
Sources:
BBC. (n.d.). TV review: And just like that... is 'awkward' and 'clumsy'. BBC Culture. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211209-tv-review-and-just-like-that-is-awkward-and-clumsy
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D'Addario, D. (2021, December 9). 'and just like that' doesn't yet have the 'sex and the city' spirit: TV review. Variety. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://variety.com/2021/tv/reviews/and-just-like-that-satc-review-1235129553/
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Miller, Skye. Interview. By Sommer Downs. 20 January 2022.
Parker, S. J., Cattrall, K., Davis, K., Nixon, C., Noth, C., Bushnell, C., & HBO Video (Firm). (2001). Sex and the city. New York.
Poniewozik, J. (2021, December 9). Review: 'and just like that,' it all went wrong. The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/arts/television/review-and-just-like-that.html
Sarner, L. (2022, January 13). Why everyone is mocking Che Diaz from 'and just like that'. New York Post. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://nypost.com/2022/01/13/why-che-diaz-from-and-just-like-that-is-tvs-most-hated-character/
Staples, L. (2022, January 28). The re-queering of 'sex and the city'. Harper's BAZAAR. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a38887399/and-just-like-that-queer-evolution-essay/
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