[imagesource: HBO Max]

And Just Like That…, the latest chapter of Sex and the City, is a complete flop.

Shame, it looks like Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda should have sat this one out like Samantha (Kim Cattrall) did when the idea for a sequel was first pitched.

The show follows the original group (minus Samantha who was apparently written out “clumsily and unbelievably” because she refused to take part) as they navigate life at 50 in a world that has changed quite a great deal from the 2000s.

Sex and the City was an era-defining show and everyone was incredibly excited and then terribly disappointed by the 10-episode sequel.

It could have broadened the representation of 50-plus women on TV, but according to The Guardian‘s scathing review, it only did that on the surface:

The promised exploration of the ageing process never came. A brief discussion of the ethics of hair dye here, a mention of menopause there, and Miranda’s leg going to sleep after she’d sat at a picnic table for lunch (again, it didn’t work any better if you saw it), and we were done.

That Carrie’s hip problem turned out to be a congenital birth defect and not an “old lady” issue was emblematic of the whole show – frightened to show anything real, and taking the least troublesome way out possible, regardless of credibility.

That’s the least of the problems in this show, though, with the review outlining all the ways it was “bafflingly tone-deaf, cringe-makingly crass and seemingly written by people who had never heard of the original”.

Damn. Let’s take a brief interlude to watch the trailer:

Some of the mess wasn’t just down to poor writing, at least:

Claims from several women of sexual impropriety by Chris Noth (Carrie’s husband, Mr Big) meant he had to be hastily written out of flashback scenes. (Noth has described the allegations as “categorically false”.)

Willie Garson (Carrie’s beloved friend Stanford) sadly died unexpectedly during shooting and a major storyline for him had to be abandoned, and the cracks papered over.

The review then moves on to the more deliberate decisions, like the crass way that characters of colour were written in, ending with “virtually the “magical negro” trope, dressed up in designer clothes”.

The other zeitgeisty concerns, like the ever-changing spectrum of sexuality, also came across as a bit of a “box-ticking exercise”. In fact, the whole thing did.

Otherwise, Miranda’s biting wit and cynicism were swapped out for a bunch of neuroses and a brief drinking problem, and Carrie became a grieving widow without the snappy lines that made her worth the watch.

As for Charlotte? Well, she was still the same flapping ostrich with her head in the sand.

And Just Like That… seems to have skirted being the revelation that it should have been, becoming more of a “regressive, embarrassing disappointment” instead.

[source:guardian]