- Details
- Published: Monday, 17 January 2022 15:46
- Written by Lupe R Haas
Audiences lived vicariously through Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte when Sex and the City premiered on HBO in 1998 and ran for six seasons. The sexcapades, love life and outrageous fashion moments were the talk around the water cooler every week. Many certainly saw it as a fantasy and women saw themselves in one of the four women. There's no doubt the show largely ignored the diverse world around them, but for most, the series was sort of a getaway from our everyday humdrum lives.
And Just Like That looks to rectify that by bringing in the reality of the last four years. Michael Patrick King and the series' writers seem to think that the best way to address the lack of diversity was to make the characters self-aware of their bubble. Have the ladies been hiding out in their penthouses since 2010 unaware that they are in an exclusive clique? Do we really need an introduction to the new characters based on the color of their skin or gender? The show was groundbreaking in representing gay and lesbian characters so the characters weren't entirely clueless.
The Sex and the City reboot offers less glamour and more white guilt. Charlotte realizes she has no black friends and befriends a fellow parent (Nicole Ari Parker) from her daughter's school and Miranda makes an idiot of herself when she realizes her university professor (Karen Pittman) is a black woman with dreads. Miranda then takes it upon herself to be Nya's white savior and displays awkwardness around the professor at every turn. She did date Blair Underwood in the original series so this is out of character.
The same goes for the introduction of the gender-fluid character, Che (Sara Ramirez), an in-your-face personality that's quite intimidating. Or Charlotte's daughter who's beginning to explore her gender choices. Both Miranda and Charlotte seem very ignorant about the issues surrounding gender identity. It's true most people like myself don't understand the changing social landscape when it comes to gender identity but the character's interactions are more cringeworthy than educational. The characters come off as grannies questioning the transformation of the younger generation.
Speaking of golden girls, the 50s something ladies make themselves out to be really, really old with mention of their age at every turn. We don't tune in to the new series to hear them whine about their age. The characters on The Golden Girls didn't complain as much as these ladies who ironically are the same age.
Carrie and Miranda go overboard acting like senior citizens. In episode 6, Carrie gets a hip replacement and calls it the "old back disease." Miranda points out she stands as a 55-year-old sitting on the steps of the university. You can't be fabulous when you're complaining about age. Sure getting older is tough but we don't watch television like Sex and the City reboot to be reminded of that. We want the fantasy. Perhaps the creators behind the Sex and the City reboot should take a page from that other iconic show, The Golden Girls.
And Just Like That is a huge disappointment to many fans, firstly because Kim Cattrall's Samantha is sorely missed and no new character comes even close, and the character's blatant ignorance of the world around them is baffling. The HBO Max show currently has a rotten rating at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes with the critics being a bit more generous at 60%.
The writers and producers behind And Just Like That are missing the point of why audiences want to tune in. However, the series name change should've been an indication that we wouldn't be getting the same kind of fun fantasy.