Well, hello there, readers! I can’t say I didn’t see you come in because, well, I can’t see you. I’m not the NSA, after all. Or am I? (I’m not. Pinky promise.) But that said, I still hope all is well in your patch of the world.
If you’re even remotely familiar with the world of television of the past 20 years, you’ve heard of the landmark HBO comedy, Sex and the City (1998–2004). Since fans just couldn’t get enough of the fearsome foursome of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, not one, but two sequels made their way to the big screen. And now, we find ourselves revisiting the characters (sadly, sans Sam) in the 2021 continuation, And Just Like That...
Now, longtime readers of this column will know I’m no stranger to this world and what it has added (or taken away) from queer representation on television. In fact, I’ve covered it twice. So since I’m very familiar with this show’s world and had heard that new queer stories would be at the forefront of the narrative, I knew I had to write about this.
Before we dive in, there will be SPOILERS for the first season of AJLT. If you are new to this column, you can find out what the metric is all about here.
What I Liked:
Like many viewers, I appreciated that And Just Like That... finally decided to take the deeply queer-coded Miranda and have her bring her queerness to the forefront of the story.
Real talk: Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) has always been my favorite character out of the four main stars. I loved how progressive she was and that her feminist views are still relevant all these years later. And more often than not, she was right. I also appreciated that Nixon herself is openly bi and proudly ran for political office, despite the gaywashing most publications tried to make of it.
So when the trailers made it seem like Miranda was going to have a queer relationship with podcaster/comedian Che Diaz (played by fellow bi performer Sara Ramirez), I was especially excited, since I know that head writer Michael Patrick King often does bespoke writing for these beloved characters.
I was delighted to see Miranda explore her queerness that many, many of us suspected was there all along. And it was also exciting to see more diversity in the supporting cast.
But I’ll be honest — my delights stopped there.
What I Didn't Like:
Ho boy. Where to begin?
Many readers may know that And Just Like That... got skewered by critics and viewers alike, its main characters pilloried to kingdom come. I’ve read enough think-piece articles on the show to take up whole terabytes of data. In a way, that’s to be expected, since AJLT turns out has had the highest viewership to date for an original series since the launch of the HBO Max streaming service. More eyeballs also means more scrutiny — especially when there are now multiple generations who came of age with these Manhattanites.
But what I want to focus on here at the Scale is the actual meat of the metric, or how Miranda and Che both express themselves and explore their newfound relationship.
Let’s start with Miranda. She’s a character we have cherished since the Clinton Administration. I’ll be the first to admit I am not the same person I was in the late ‘90s, and I didn’t expect Miranda to be, either. By her nature, she is progressive, but her character seems to have nearly done a moral 180 since we last saw her in the second sequel. This is a woman whose whole damn storyline in the 2004 cinematic sequel revolved around husband Steve Brady (David Eigenberg) cheating her on once and her taking over a year to forgive him.
Yet she’ll cheat on him at the drop of a hat (and a bottle of piss) with Che in Carrie’s apartment (in a truly mortifying, humorless scene) and continue the affair with few scruples. She only tells Steve the truth when Che threatens to pull the plug on their relationship until Miranda comes clean. (Side note: Was there a spot in Miranda’s mind where she was, in a way, getting even with Carrie for sending Aidan to help her out with her neck injury?) We end up with our hero going from calling out her friends’ tendencies to focus on only sex to abandoning her plans because she was objectifying people (“craving me some Che”, ick), and not even stopping to listen to their needs.
But my quibbles don’t end there. I can kind of forgive her for not understanding new technology (despite the fact she was out on her freaking honeymoon in part because her cell phone had no reception). But giving Miranda a sloppily tacked-on drinking problem which pretty much gets a tidy ending within an episode is absurd and irresponsible as a model for others who may be struggling with alcohol. And don’t even get me started on the racial gaffes that haunted her throughout the start of the season.
This is not the Miranda we know. This is an emotionally dishonest woman who was drained of most of her recognizable character traits — as well as her red hair dye.
So now let’s discuss the way AJLT handled the introduction of and fleshing out of the character of Che. While Che and Ramirez share a lot of the same background with that bespoke writing coming into play again (both Diaz and Ramirez are bi, non-binary, and come from Mexican and Irish backgrounds), Ramirez themself has noted that the similarities end there. That reflects well on Ramirez’s character but does not bode well for the development of the source of the show’s “comedy concert” (again, ick).
Why? Because Che is a wasted opportunity. Here we have a character that is unabashedly bisexual (and, hooray, uses the word with reckless abandon!), but:
- gets little development when they’re not bossing Carrie around or having sex with Che,
- re-establishes a sexually promiscuous bi stereotype but now with the added bonus of being affixed to one of the most prominent non-binary characters of recent television memory, and
- literally describes themselves as a narcissist.
I used to be part of a sketch comedy troupe. During my first show, I wrote a sketch about a guy getting upset that another guy at work ate the last piece of his birthday cake, which he considered to be an aberration of unwritten office politics. The troupe had a policy of allowing collaboration on writing, so I was fine with the two men I’d cast in the piece improvising to see if we could strengthen it. Instead, they took the main setup and turned it into a barrage of thinly veiled double entendres about female genitalia. I bring this up because it was an important writing lesson for me: Revisions can often bring in wonderful new elements — but make sure the bones of the original concept stay intact.
The AJLT writers could learn a thing or two from the progression of that sketch. These characters shared the same names and faces to their predecessors, but little else.
The Rating:
It took me a while to figure out why Miranda’s character was bothering me so much. People used the term “queer” and “bisexual”, and we got to see some same-sex interaction on a major series. Why was I so piqued?
It wasn’t until I was discussing how to tackle the subject at my birthday party that it hit me: it’s setting out a dangerously wrong roadmap. Like it or not, Sex and the City became a blueprint for how millions of American women discussed sex and came to conclusions about topics for the past years. Sometimes that led to universal recognition (who among us hasn’t had frank discussions with their inner circle of friends about love and sex?). But it has also led to perilous and damaging catchphrases getting hurled at those of us who weren’t straight, white, or insanely well off.
I know I personally heard every insult and quip from this clip thrown at me before 2010 — so much so that I couldn’t talk about being bi for five seconds without getting minimized or dismissed or made fun of with one of these jabs.
So when we have such a highly-viewed (if hate-watched) show like AJLT coming into the common discourse, I find myself bracing for the next generation of misunderstandings — they won’t hurt me, but they could damage those younger than me coming to terms with their bisexuality.
And just like that... I watched 10 hours of a missed opportunity.
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