#atravesty

It’s inevitable some sequels will jeopardize the integrity of the original. While the fanfare for a Sex and the City re-installment had some of us naively convinced in Michael Patrick’s capacity for keeping the nostalgic momentum alive, it rather played out like a dismal Judd Apatow commentary on the nearing middle-aged (à la a very tactless, banal, and frankly unnecessarily depressing blow of “This is 40″, in which audiences are left feeling like the concept of aging is the equivalent of a death row inmate’s last pile of reheated mashed potatoes, or in the case of over-acting, emphatic Parker (Season 2) - poached eggs, friends-with-benefits breakfast of one?)).

Season 1 (AJLT) introduced audiences to everything Sex and the City conceptually opposed, the original series almost diametrically opposite to the concepts of female and sexual empowerment, friendship, resilience, and heart-touching, resonant storylines and intimately-crafted, beloved characters viewers came to know and praise semi-religiously. While there are many areas to nitpick, including the dismal costuming, unnecessary, unresolved side-plots, vacant added characters integrated merely for their ‘woke’ box-ticking capacity and not for social value or plausible commentary, what I came to love of Sex and the City had been drowned like a newborn kitten in a self-praising writers’ bleach bath. We lost sex to hearing aids and ice cream toppings, or gained it in unappealing, almost grotesquely invasive showboating - i.e. Miranda’s ‘fingering’ in Carrie’s studio kitchen by the much-loathed, and not ‘somewhat’ polarizing, ‘Che Diaz’. Did we need Carrie bedwetting, a loose stream into an emptied Snapple bottle? Miranda’s conditioned facial reactions alone were enough to transport viewers to desires of chastity, of hillside convents somewhere in Romania where those CW-styled dream montages of the repellent, narcissistic Che can’t virtually survive. Note 2 (of loss) - style. Did we need Carrie’s vainglorious, bizarre hat display as she burbled out her apartment window, did we need rubber gardening gloves for a walking smoke-break? Do we need to be assaulted with plaid and tartan, pigeons for purses (thank you, Jen), Charlotte’s over-billowed poof-sleeves and polka-dotted, infantilizing displays, do we need a silver-haired Cynthia Nixon who reads more Paula Deen than tirelessly chic Miranda Priestly? ‘Gray hair don’t care’, as it were, embracing age, as it were, but should be that a singular note of character development - that the bold, independent, autonomous career-driven Miranda we knew and respected has driven toward total absence of discernment, dry as a withered martini olive for a non-committal new beau with zero attributes of integrity or general likability? And why style her (Miranda) as though she were being embalmed in prints, can ‘older’ women not show skin, have avid sex lives, exude standards beyond accepting consequences of bad backs and Peloton-claimed husbands (realistically, did Carrie’s shock need to last several minutes of screen-time, has she never heard of a heart attack?)...

Lines were crossed with Brady’s sex life and Miranda’s questionably appropriate presence throughout, lines were crossed with Porta Potty tampon insertion challenges, lines were crossed with daytime bathroom blowjobs (has that ever been identifying of the hyper-attentive, traditional Charlotte), lines were crossed with rehashed, overplayed attempts at racial justice and white martyrdom - yes, let’s address the concerns, but maybe not in the context of unfunny comedy and a socially-unhinged spin on Miranda - again, Michael Patrick, do native/residential New Yorkers really not have interactions with POC/the queer and gender-diverse in today’s age? Do we need props of characters for this representation, who are as scripted feeling as the tired attempts at the writing - do we need the original cast to become the most egoistic versions of themselves in decades of television, do we need a money-grabbing “Max” Series that respects less its audience of - generations - and their valid, informed takes on a, frankly, garbage-fire, catastrophic spinoff, do the writers need to make relevant social issues - like racism, like sexism, like transphobia, like gender and sexual expression - feel trite, tired, exasperating, and with the ambiance of capitalistically-targeted Pride ads? Che isn’t funny, isn’t remotely likable, and while perhaps not a reflection of Ramirez’s personal life (despite some apparent synonymous attributes and social media feeds), Che’s being non-binary does not make them suddenly exempt from being situationally-inappropriate, selfish, callous, and just plain ‘ick’. Che makes broader viewers want to curl up into a congealing ball, return to embryonic fluids to avoid their “comedy” shows (if the quantity of who they have fucked, will fuck, want to fuck of their - pause for emphasis - live audience members - is qualifiable as humor at all...). Che is not a queer cosplay of Amy Schumer, there are no human or relatable characteristics that make viewers embrace a character so visibly and audibly shallow, not to mention entirely exploitative (the entire subplot of uprooting Miranda from her city for a Los Angeles move, for example, which, if you have forgotten, Michael/millennial-coded writers, completely betrays the Miranda archetype - so, career, long-invested internship, scrapped, for a romantically-ambivalent, narcissist Diaz?). Did audiences need “Rock”, pacifying elementary rhetoric, did audiences need a bigoted hit on one of the few redeemed, likable original characters, Anthony - i.e. advising Charlotte against utilizing preferred pronouns, making an analogy to a dog?

While this is mostly a blurb, a working draft, a tunnel of quality-abandonment-fueled-apathy, Season 2, so far (from what I’ve discerningly, limitedly glimpsed), took “L.T.W.”’s barber-shop painting ensembles, Carrie’s (again, the most self-involved - in the pejorative - character of the show) “user” attributes and poor-me-sloppy-grieving arc, steadily unlikable roundabout cast of diminishing characters to new, (love-to-hate) lows, without the glimmer of a blip of Cattrall resurgence, the only remarkable term to describe this train-wreck of a ‘reinstatement’ return is abysmal. Frankly, I’d have more intrigue in a Seema-driven plot-line, nil-Carrie-Che-L.T.W.-Dr.-Nya-Wallace-couch-coital-post-separation-Bridgerton-Netflix-dupe-streams, re-introducing a viable Miranda in the acting capacity we’ve seen of Nixon (who is by all measures, extremely talented in alternate roles) - or merely limiting the sheer, inarguable box-ticking strategies to reveal something more human, watchable, intimate, and real, like the SATC that charmed viewers over concurring, mingling generations, that comparatively, was successful with good cause. This is another classic example of the media industry exploiting devoted audiences with nostalgic whims of shows that in reality have been massacred by weak writing, a cacophony of plot, and a favoritism towards the emblematic assholes (excuzes mon francçais) of its series - referring, of course, to the effortlessly problematic Parker (who I, with little hesitation, can see as far more of a modern-exploit Carrie than she’d care to own), of dropping unsubtle breadcrumbs of the beloved, real, irreplaceable Samantha, likely cajoling Cattrall into a payout for her four-minutes of other-cast-members non-interactive virtual series presence as a tactic to attract views, and up subscriptions. Frankly, by Episode 1 of Season 2, by Miranda awkwardly, anti-sexily adorning a full-bodied strap-on harness (in 2023, really?) as though viewers had been thrown into the rank, antiquated sex shop of some National Lampoon-era film, for one unamused, indifferent Che, by Che’s hasty, box-check-positioned assistant complaining over the status of their not wearing a jacket (namely, not a glaring, dated, sequined one) / the shrill “non-binary”-cooing mirror harlequin-dance exchange (bizarre to witness), by Carrie once again insisting all life resolve around her and her everlasting grief plot-point with the painfully, awkwardly-timed, shit-written kitchen egg, Charlotte pop-in entrance scene, I was already exasperated.

And Just Like That is the epitome of the negative denotation of ‘woke’, it plays as turbulently and as polarizing as its core characters, and is a dreary, complacent attempt at modernity, it is the flatulence of yet another capitalistically-motivated acquisition, it is not worth your continued patience that solely a Patricia Field, Cattrall, Chris Noth, zany-glitzy-Manolo-steel-jungle-Cosmos-wonderland epitome of Sex and the City, Sex and the City alone could and will ever seemingly be capable of delivering. And Just Like That...Cattrall’s heart-wrenching cancer performance is traded for Snapple-piss and Los-Angeles-beach-cleanup-chronic-codependency, for narcissistic writers, lead creators, and yes, in some cases, eye-roll-icon, socially-liked actors.