The Pain That Keeps on Giving

Written by Miranda Vidak

12/26/20217 min read

Here’s an unpopular opinion: You bonded with the original Sex & The City. It’s your favorite show. You feel like a New Yorker, you felt like the city is “so you” when you watched it. You visited New York for a few days, possibly weeks, and you took a picture on Carrie’s steps. The steps are so you. You felt those steps like you belong on this pavement.

I’m not trying to take it away from you. Love it. Enjoy it. But for you, it’s just entertainment.

You had to be living in New York to fully comprehend the essence of SATC. “But I’ve been in New York a few times, I get it fully!”. No, you don’t. Traveling here for two weeks, and taking a tour of Soho and Empire State doesn’t count. You are not a part of it, you are a tourist. On the outside.

This new reboot? We denounce it. And you can finally have it.

The quality of ‘And Just Like That’ now finally matches the widespread tourist enthusiasm.

It has nothing to do with this space anymore.

SATC premiered on June 6, 1998. I landed in NYC on June 23, 1998. When I feel low or down on my luck, I remind myself — bitch, you were in New York in 1998, what more can you ask of life? You have to take my word for it: 1998 was the best year in the whole entire existence of humankind.

Every week from 1998 — 2004, you would either walk into a venue only to be thrown out because “Sex & The City is shooting a scene”, or you’d have to wrap some event up because “Sex & The City is shooting something”.

We’d spend the most amazing night in Tao, then watch the exact course of events on the next episode, also happening in Tao. We got hit on by some annoying finance guys in Spice Market only to watch the exact same conversation on one of the upcoming episodes.

You love SATC, but you can’t fully understand the effect or phenomenon of, for example — Modelizers, unless you’ve had the experience to be hit on one, in New York (or witnessed your friend get hit on by one).

The city’s obsession with models by men habituating here who would rather date an ugly tall girl than a beautiful short girl was always mind-blowing to me. Some of my male friends at that time had a girl’s height written down next to her name in their phones, and wouldn’t invite anyone below 5'10 to any party. Yes, that was an actual thing in the ’90s and early ‘00s.

I’m still slightly puzzled by it.

Sex & The City wasn’t a show for us. It was a narration and commentary of our everyday experiences. A precise pulse of the times and the place. It was current, smart, poignant, provoking, ballsy.

You’re offended by And Just Like That’?

Imagine how insulted we are.

One of the biggest puzzles of this century is the stubbornness of the SATC creators about making new material. Shitty movies. The absolute abomination of the new reboot. Everyone and their mother, sister, dog, and hamster keeps telling them we don’t want it, yet they keep making it. It comes out, we hate it. They keep making it.

How do you go from being so in touch with the times, in fact — ahead of the times, to start making parodies of the original series? You have to work exceptionally hard to be this disconnected.

First problem: Samantha.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Most New Yorkers feel Samantha is the foundation of SATC and not Carrie. It was the chatter on the streets since the pilot. The absence of Samantha is why it feels off, for starters. You can sense it in every step, every minute of each episode. It feels like a slow death. The new series is too somber, too glum. The original SATC was a vanity fair of bursting energy attacking all your senses. The this that’s missing is Samantha’s necessary comic relief. Put Samantha in and remove Carrie; the show would be better.

The infantile dialogue.

“Samantha is no longer with us”, condescending and forced explanations of her her absence to the viewer.

Miranda’s ramblings.

A black hairstyle, braids, a Muslim ban; no one with a sound mind can squeeze that much political correctness in one take for it to sound genuine and authentic. The original Miranda would punch this Miranda across the face for this twaddle.

There is absolutely no soul in New York.

I took the effort to make the most diverse town on the planet so badly versed in race issues. Throw in the motherhood speech in episode 4, another cringe-worthy gospel about … absolutely nothing at the end of those 15 sentences.

Charlotte running around town.

Trying to find a black person to join Charlotte’s dinner was single-handedly the most painful few minutes of Television ever made. I’m still in recovery from it. trying to find a black person for optics? Knocking on a black neighbor’s door, harassing this person to join dinner after she stated 5 times in a row — she can not come?

It’s irresponsible.

The creators of ‘And Just Like That’ just woke up one day and decided to throw in every single social, racial, and age issue in the pot, just to be there, just to be mentioned, without developing the storylines properly, insulting at least 4 different sets of minorities in each episode.

It’s lazy writing.

The world is changed, the world doesn’t care about the fashion show on the streets of the most fucked in the ass city by a global pandemic. Fashion can carry the show in 1998 and the early 2000s. In 2021, it simply can’t.

Throw in the black people, throw in a white person whitesplaining things to a black person, instead of just listening. Throw in a nonbinary Podcast host, throw in a kid who doesn’t identify with her sex; these are all very important conversations if you actually created plotlines tackling these problems instead of just listing them.

They are not there with a purpose, they are there just to check off all the non-diversity and non-inclusive backlash the series always faced.

It’s not just lazy, but offensive.

Age.

This part drove me batshit crazy. Charlotte mentioned she’s 55. Harry mentioned he’s a 58-year-old Jew. Steve mentioned his hearing aid and said he’s an oldtimer. Miranda mentioned she’s 55 on the steps. Big mentioned he’s old. Carrie mentioned her age.

We get it. The writers made sure we understood - they are old. By mentioning it 7 million times, seemingly wanting to appear open, and unbothered - it read the exact opposite than that.

Why?

Going from such a vibrant happy show, full of energy, to this depressed, lazy piece of work that made me want to slit my wrists 5 times, how can you possibly rewatch this show after shooting dailies, if you are a show-runner and think this is good to air? Who ok’d this abomination?

They are making 55 sound and look like one foot in the grave; David Duchovny was 54 and still swinging his dick by the time ‘Californication’ was in the last season, fucked everything on and off the set without a miss in his step.

Harry Goldenblatt is the only light in this monstrosity, as he was in the original show, which only attests to his superior quality as an actor. He looks like he got lost on the way to the supermarket and ended up among this depressing, senseless group.

I keep waiting for him to break the 4th wall, say fuck this — and break out in Charlie Runkle.

The Big Issue.

Where do I start? How long you’ve got?

The masturbating and moaning scene, courtesy of Big“Oh Carrie, my Carrie”, shortened my life for a few years. These two as a couple are the weirdest odd-looking combo ever put on screen, then and now. I could never understand what people saw in this coupling.

Big’s death is the best plotline in the show. The only one that makes sense. They did not intend it, and they’ve done it knowing his sexual assault charges/rumors are about to be public, but it played perfectly into the plot line. Big was a dead weight the story needed to get rid of.

His death in the series represents the ending of the type of guy he represents. And he needs to disappear, pronto, and never come back. Both in character and in real life.

I’m glad we came to the full circle.

Why?

Candace Bushnell wrote the character of Mr. Big based on Donald Trump. The New York realtor, cigar and whiskey-guzzling womanizer. He even resembles him in body type. In the original show, he is practically an OG fuckboy, a gaslighter, a messy dinosaur of a man who will invite you to the pool and trick you into coming up to his penthouse and force himself on you.

That was the character who Carrie fixed a bit around the edges. But the man? Isn’t this the exact scenario of his sexual assault charges?

A troubling pattern of behavior: at the age of 50, he reportedly called a 25-year-old woman to join him at the pool, manipulated her into his apartment on the pretext of a phone call, only to allegedly assault her upon her entering through the door; he kissed her, pulled her in, bent her over the chair and allegedly raped her.

A similar scenario unfolded at the age of 60, with another 25-year-old. This time, he extended an invitation for dinner, selecting a venue where he knew the kitchen would be closed, leaving her with no choice but to settle for drinks at the bar. Naturally, she became inebriated on an empty stomach, and he allegedly escorted her to his apartment, with his standard —“Let’s go to my apt I have the best collection of whiskey”. Brings her home, kisses her, does not read the body cues she is not willing, bends her again, and allegedly rapes her.

His text message to this young woman, after forcing himself on her knowing their encounter wasn’t consensual, shows why I always disliked this particular type of man — out of touch, ancient, misogynistic: “Sorry about that night if you maybe felt different but we had fun, didn’t we?”.

Zoe Lister-Jones, one of the other girls that came out accusing him of an assault, put it in words beautifully:

“Chris Noth capitalized on the fantasy that women believed Mr. Big represented. And those fantasies often create environments where emotional confusion thrives. Perhaps Mr. Big’s death is the communal grief we must all face in mourning that fantasy, in releasing that male archetype we as women have been fed through popular culture, and confronting its dark and pervasive underbelly.”

THE COMMUNAL GRIEF.

His death in the show was poetic. His death signaled the ending of this type of man, both in character and in real life. The reboot series and our collective negative sentiment about it is a fitting showcase of how much we evolved over the years — we expect more from our partners, spouses, friends, and from our television.

A responsibility.