Two decades ago, Sex and the City set the standard for the future of female-led television. Now the girls are back with And Just Like That ... in a series that reintroduces itself to the lady-gang rom-dramedy, to find a genre that has evolved way past it.
When Sex and the City comes up now, it often comes with a qualifier: “It was great for its time.” More than two decades have passed since that series premiered on HBO, and it’s not just our culture that’s changed; the genre for which the show became the standard-bearer has also evolved.
When SATC began, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) were all in their early thirties. Now they are all 55 and in long-term marriages. The ones who have kids are struggling with adolescence — Miranda’s once-adorable son Brady is now a sullen teenager, Charlotte’s daughter Rose is grappling with gender dysphoria — and all three are grappling in some way with ageing. The first few episodes are exceedingly uncomfortable, with our beloved heroines (minus Samantha) picking up 17 years after the last episode in a world of middle-aged characters suspended in perpetual astonishment and confusion about everything they encounter, from commonplace political and social phenomena to their own bodies.
Without giving away any major plot spoilers, I was truly astonished at how bewildered these women seem moving through the modern world. In some cases it seems as if the characters have been asleep for the last 20 years, and have awoken to find themselves flabbergasted by fairly commonplace cultural and social occurrences such as black professors, nonbinary children, queer identities and podcasts. Yes, in this parallel universe both podcasts and Instagram practically get a “haw, kids these days” in one dialogue between Carrie and Miranda.
One of the criticisms of the original franchise is its whiteness and straightness, and the folks over at And Just Like That ... got the message loud and clear because there are a host of additions to the cast. The show attempts to remedy the franchise’s earlier one-dimensionality by introducing friends of both colour and queerness, of which each main character gets at least one.
While the performances are endearing, these characters are relegated to the sidelines and are not granted principal stories or development of their own. The new cast members challenge the show's conservative notions of gender and sexuality, but only in so far as to help the three central straight white women navigate identity politics and provide a more interesting character arc.
And the truth is, there is opportunity for discourse about older women, the kind of frank conversations that made SATC such a joy to begin with. So much could be done with this group of older friends. Sex and the City resonated with audiences because, whatever its flaws, it valued and celebrated women’s adventurous spirit — whether channelled into the thrills of love and sex, friendship, fashion or beauty. There must be age-adapted plot lines that could be explored here with more depth and meaning.
For a show that made its name on frank discussions of physical taboos, it is bizarre that it has bypassed all the texture and richness of midlife
I am six episodes in, and there has been an overload of cartoonish descriptions of middle age: Colonoscopies! Hearing aids! Grey hairs! There is so far not one whisper about menopause, or its male counterpart, andropause. For a show that made its name on frank discussions of physical taboos, it is bizarre that it has bypassed all the texture and richness of midlife, as well as the universal physical experience of its sect.
The older women around me — my mother, my family, my bosses — are devoid of the childlike incompetencies depicted by the women here. From what I can see, there are real benefits to this stage of life, which I look forward to: enhanced self-confidence; knowing your own mind; the soul-nourishing connection of relationships that have deepened with time; a laissez-faire approach to taking yourself too seriously and the uproarious laughter that comes from letting things be. Midlife can also be prime years for professional achievement, which I see so much in the women in my own life.
However, the opening episodes show only a few glimpses of these perks, focusing instead on the characters’ physical decline, general confusion and cultural missteps. To say nothing of their careers, which have all but vanished.
I understand that seeing them again after 17 years was always going to cause a pang of surprise. It is natural to feel the years when faced with how someone else has aged, and what that might mean for our own mortality. But what is not natural is how surprised the characters seem themselves. They are surprised by their age, by their environment, by their lives. They’ve aged, but they have also lived, and those lives are as fabulous as their wardrobes — or they could be, if given half as much thought.
