Analysis: And Just Like That... An Intergenerational Reboot?
At the top of the year, I found myself binge rewatching old shows and/or movie series… with some new shows sprinkled in between. I would watch em for the nostalgia, as a distraction, and/or just as a coping mechanism for my anxiety...not expecting that I would go into deep analysis of nearly every series I watched. I mean if the point was to burn little to no mental calories by re-watching something, I was clearly doing it wrong.
Entourage.
Sons of Anarchy.
Oz.
The Wire.
Gossip Girl.
And that's just naming some of the shows.
Reconciling how these shows/movies made me feel as a young adult when I first watched em with how they resonated with me now as a thirty something wife & mother… it was kind of a mind trip.
I had the urge to write about all of these thoughts on the blog as part of a monthly series but… life… and instead kept my thoughts to myself, my text chats, and occasionally on IG stories. I ended up only ever writing one analysis... about the Netflix original Marriage or Mortgage, which was neither old, a series, nor scripted... but I digress.
So why are we here today...
One show that I watched A LOT in my twenties, that I could not bring myself to binge watch again, though, was Sex & The City (SATC). I own the entire DVD box set - the collector's gift set - with all sorts of bonus DVDs, and yet it's been probably close to a decade since I last watched the show. Earlier this year I rewatched the movies - in the middle of my tv show binge - and by the end of em, it was painfully clear to me that I no longer connected with these characters & their stories... more so, it made me wonder if I ever did or if I was just too young, inexperienced, and naive to know any better.
Realizing (and admitting) this to myself was a lot harder than I'd anticipated because as a native New Yorker who lived in the city as a young adult, you couldn't tell me that the SATC lifestyle wasn't goals.
I thought myself to be a hybrid between Carrie & Samantha, and carried (no pun intended) that self imposed identity around with me like it was a designer badge of honor. After watching the movies, though, I couldn't remember for the life of me why these women's lives were ever anything I wanted to emulate.
The behaviors and patterns were toxic, transactional, and, in many cases, very painful to watch. And yet, I remained a loyal fan of this show long after the series ended.
Now let's fast forward to the present because I still have a whole analysis to give you...
I am not a fan of reboots... like AT ALL. They tend to taint the legacy of a great show & create a disconnect between whatever new fangled version they create and the original audience that loved the show in the first place. Reboots, as of late, haven't been about nostalgia... so much as it's been about trying to recreate a formula that once worked to hopefully also recreate those profits.
I said what I said.
So why would I possibly care about a SATC "reboot" especially after deciding that these stories weren't in alignment with who I am now?
For the first time in a very long time - because it has been done, no matter how infrequent - a reboot was being created with an original cast honoring what would've been their natural life progressions, and bringing the original audience along for the ride, versus focusing on just attracting a new audience.
Gossip GIrl, for example, was rebooted for a modern day audience, with not nearyy an original cast member in sight. It may be the same storyline, but it's certainly not the same stories. SATC continuing to grow up with its audience - with me - meant that maybe I could possibly reconnect with these characters again in a way that aligns with who I am today. And I also held out hope that it would also rectify some of the tone deaf missteps the show made when it was at the height of its popularity... some, not all.
All of that to say... I was all in out of pure curiosity.
And then I watched… deep audible exhale
If I had to sum up my initial first thoughts to the first two episodes in one sentence it would be "this is not what we asked for."
The biggest missed opportunity, for me, was that they let the characters age but didn't do so with any character continuity. SATC has always been a destination for NYC voyeurism - I mean it's right there in the name... we come for the sex and the city. Now that the collective "we" are in our mid to late 30s and up, like the ladies were in the original series, we're seeing the world through a different lens. Throughout various scenes of the show, I kept saying to myself, "I've grown up... so why haven't you" because it really felt like they were all placed in age preservation chambers for the past decade+ and then they were let out to do the show.
Why is Miranda, someone who had dated a black man, was a corporate shark, and arguably the most cutthroat of the bunch now an excessive progressive who's so woke, she's asleep?
Why is Charlotte, who has finally achieved her singular life ambition of wifedom & motherhood, still panini pressed over societal appearances & validation?
Why is Carrie, who built an entire career on talking about sex, stumbling & tripping over her words at the mere mention of masturbation... while being on a podcast about sex & sexuality?
Why is Samantha, who was (according to The Carrie Diaries) Carrie's first friend in the quartet, the eldest & most ride or die, and a long time successful publicist, now being reduced to someone incapable of separating her friendships from her client list & being written out of the entire country?
The details didn't quite add up for who we'd come to know these women to be.
The character continuity - or lack of, as I said - would've made a huge difference in the way the first two episodes played out. And yet, where they lacked actually continuity, they placed a lot of emphasis on unnecessary nods to the past.. i.e. Carrie's infamous blue shoes that have now been ruined in the shower as she rocked the love of her life to death in his final moments.
This isn't what we asked for... and it most certainly isn't what we needed.
While we did need the show to be in alignment with the current times, we are also aware that it's a fictional drama series - NYC voyerism, as I said. There was no need for the show to address COVID, sexual identities, or racial equity... and most certainly not all at once! As a cultural "phenom" we didn't need it to talk about the "hard stuff" because that's not the kind of show it's ever been; and in their attempt to do so, it showed why they're so bad at it. For example... we see the show trying to be more inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ community, so that it's no longer dominated by the faces of voices of gay white men - yay! - however, instead of naturally introducing us to these new characters & their stories, they forced onto us in a way that read more like a platitude than a real effort to be inclusive & in alignment with societal concerns. The way they introduced Sara Ramirez's character (Che Diaz) screamed "see... we get it!" The same goes for when we were introduced to Nicole Ari Parker's & Karen Pittman's characters (Lisa Todd Wexley and Dr. Nya Wallace, respectively). Why do they have to be the WOC who are now forced to deal with white awkwardness? Why did Nicole's character have to be dubbed "black Charlotte" especially since there was (a) nothing funny about that joke and (b) nothing about to the scene, besides her presence with Charlotte I guess, to make that statement even true or necessary. And why did Karen's character need to be the one subjected to Miranda's new found woke-ness? Why's that now her burden to bear on top of her apparently having fertility issues...an issue that is truly relatable to many women across the country. Hopefully we see em do better when introducing Sarita Choudhury’s character, as who looks like she’ll be part of Carrie’s storyline throughout the show.
P.S. I am not thrilled with how they’re all “attached” to each one of the main characters, like a “friend” on a reality show, but I digress.
P.P.S. shout out to Karen Pittman who has also been killing it on The Morning Show.
There was a lot of unnecessary, unprovoked, unrequited - just all the un's lol - awkwardness throughout the show because they underdeveloped moments of the show that could've contributed to it's legacy while overreaching with themes that we didn't need, want, or ask for.
They say art mimics reality and vice versa, in a way that's very cyclical. I said very early on that the show was tone deaf, and having actually lived since watching the original series, I get how, in many ways, it wasn't actually all that great... and was maybe in many ways just reflective of a very shitty point in time. BUT I say that as who I am NOW... in 2021... as a wife & mother, as a WOC, as a content creator, as a NYC to west coast transplant, as a someone living through a pandemic, as a witness to a racial reckoning, and as so much more that had/s nothing to do with why I was watching the show back in the day.
Lest we forget this is a show that debuted over 20 years ago!
I think I came on at season 6 in real time - I didn't have cable before that - and that's still a lifetime ago. I would hope I'm not still that same girl.
My hope, as the show progresses & I continue watching (because I will) is that the first two episodes are when they got the writing kinks out. They had performance anxiety & nerves surrounding the return & so they fumbled the comeback. Fine. They can afford to do that because we're a loyal generation of viewers. True SATC fans may be annoyed at the way Big lost his life... we may be suffering from second hand embarrassment every time Miranda opens her mouth... we may want to shake Charlotte & tell her to grow up...we may not understand why Steve needs to be deaf... and we may have so many more questions that'll likely go unanswered for a while... we won't however give up after just two episodes. They've earned at least 4 from us.
Now that they've decided to make Carrie a widow, maybe we'll see a return to Carrie who actually lives. Seeing her be so uncomfortable on the podcast gave me some insight into the kind of writer she was all those years prior - clearly just documenting the lived experiences of those around her versus tapping into her own - so I am hoping to see her blossom into an actual creator & storyteller... especially as she's clearly gonna be navigating the social media space. I foresee a lot of tension with Charlotte & Rose, which I hope we'll give us a meaningful look into the mother-daughter relationship, especially juxtaposed up against the very different relationship Miranda has with Brady. As a wife & a mom, it'll be interesting to see these women tackle the issues that arise for them with those titles. The last time we saw them with these kids, they were babies & now they're teens. They raised whole humans. I'd like to see the fruit of that labor in a way that isn't reduced to loud sex, lavish recitals, and contention over wardrobe choices.
My point being...
The show can be salvaged.
Will I ever forgive them for the way they explained away Samantha's absence from their lives? No.
Will I ever understand why Carrie didn't call 9-1-1 in time to potentially save Big? No.
Will I ever forget how painful it was to watch Miranda talk or watch Charlotte cry? I really hope so.
But I will keep watching because I do think there's hope. The cast line up - with a cast that is a lot more colorful than it has ever been - is a recipe for success if done correctly. It's highly likely we overhyped the original series because we didn't know any better - we hadn't lived - and now that we have, our expectations are just a touch higher. I tell myself the writers of the first episodes aren't the writers of the the entire season & things will get better... they have to get better.
I mean, they can't get worse... can they?
Were you ever a fan of the original SATC... the show, the books, whatevs? Are you watching the reboot? Where do you land on what it was for our generation & what it is now? Let's talk about it.
