HBO Max have just announced that they are bringing back Sex and the City, with three members of the original cast. Emma Clifton has some feelings.
First day back at the tools, I sit down to calmly transcribe an interview with a cup of tea. Hello, 2021. What have you got in store for us?
And then I SPIT THAT TEA OUT when I see on Twitter (where I get all my news) that they are rebooting Sex and the City… without Samantha.
GIRL.
!!!
Okay. I mean, where to start? This show was pop culture canon for me, right from the premiere episode I sneakily saw when I was 15 and was like “WOAH.” My only other shows at that time were Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek, two shows that were about longing and teenage horniness. But this was LADY HORNINESS. Sex and the City did what it said on the box: It covered Sex and New York and as a horny virgin trapped in Auckland, I was equally into the possibility of both of those things.
The show was bold and sexy and ridiculous and serious and, frankly, deserves more than the cultural punchline it has become in recent years. AND YET, it is because of the post-series ATROCITIES that have been visited upon the Sex and the City world that it has become such a joke. The actual series was brilliant. The follow-up movies? There are no words strong enough but I will try.
Disrespectful: you make us sit through six seasons of will they, won’t they and then you give us that wedding scene??? Racist: Every single part of Carrie hiring Jennifer Hudson as her assistant is a damn white lady cringe (don’t even GET ME STARTED on the second movie, which should frankly come with a Gone With The Wind-esque racist warning). Sexist: HE GIVES HER A CLOSET TO MAKE UP FOR JILTING HER.
The best part of the movie is when Charlotte shits herself and even that is cloaked in a real us vs them, America vs The Rest of the World mentality. The second movie is an atrocity and I say that as someone who once borrowed that Lawrence of my Labia joke because… I dated someone with that name and I am trash. I’m sorry!
And now you want to come here to me and tell me you’re bringing it back and you’re kicking out Samantha, the literal sex of the city? Boy, do I hate this! I hate it because a) they’re either going to kill her off or b) they’re going to give us a shitty backstory about her and it brings me back to my first point: it’s disrespectful. It’s disrespectful to the show and the fans and, more importantly, the central theme of the series which was friendship.
If the heart of Sex and the City could be summed up by a single moment, it would be when Carrie is miserable turning 35 while single and Charlotte suggests that maybe they be each other’s soulmates.
“Maybe we can be each other’s soul mates and then we can let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
Who amongst us has not cried into our pink wine while having conversations of this ilk with their gal pals? And who hasn’t held up this show as the bastion of how lucky we are as women to have our friendships to keep us afloat when all other things come crashing to the ground? This show took us through divorce, infidelity, death, pregnancy, infertility, and the one thing that remained was that even when they fought, these four women were each other’s bedrock.
And then you want to bring back just three of them???
In the words of this very show…
