As I’m writing this, the first episode of the second season of And Just Like That…, aka the Sex and the City reboot, is playing on my TV in the background. I wasn’t originally planning on watching this season — I absolutely hated the first season of And Just Like That…, and not in the fun way that I hated Sex and the City — but then I lost my dad and got overwhelmed by grief and having a probably terrible show to vent about suddenly seemed like a good idea. So it’s on the TV.
I want to stress that this show is very bad. Very bad. It doesn’t have the charm of the original — while that felt disconnected from reality in a rich white people fairy tale sense, this one just feels like robots playacting at being human — and the attempts to “update” the series for the modern era by adding in WOC and queer characters just feels forced. The three WOC protagonists who’ve joined the original SATC crew feel utterly disconnected from the main show (not to mention that their storylines feel half-baked) and the less said about Che Diaz, the better.
Which is why it was funny to me to come across this Newsweek piece about a bi activist who wants And Just Like That… to make amends for its biphobic past. You can read the piece if you want, but it’s basically what you’d expect: And Just Like That… should revisit the terrible biphobic plot from the Sex and the City episode with the Alanis cameo and have Carrie apologize for being super shitty about bisexuality and bi men in particular. Like, really? That’s what we want?
It’s not that I think Sex and the City has nothing to apologize for: the episode in question was really bad and really offensive, and a subsequent “Samantha’s fucking girls now” arc was also handled poorly. It’s just that I don’t think that And Just Like That… is the venue to address that mistake — and, more than that, I don’t trust the show to actually handle an apology well.
Because, again: it’s a bad show. It’s a bad show that is desperately trying to prove that it is woke now, but in a way where you can tell there’s only a superficial understanding of the mistakes made in the past. There are WOC and non-binary characters in the plot now, but they’re just… not well done, not at all, and with the non-binary characters in particular there’s an inescapable sense that their identities aren’t fully taken seriously. So the idea that And Just Like That… could deftly respond to Sex and the City’s biphobia in a way that it hasn’t successfully responded to the show’s racism feels… like a stretch.
But even beyond that, well — while I know that reboots are all the rage now, that everything is just iterations of existing IP, there’s something pretty depressing to me about the idea that the best we can hope for is “Sex and the City apologizes for its biphobia on its lackluster sequel” (something which, I should also note, it is maybe trying to do with the Miranda/Che relationship which, again, sucks?). I think that bisexuals deserve better than some ham fisted apology from Carrie Bradshaw told through the lens of Michael Patrick King. We deserve the chance to tell our own stories, the chance to remake the world in our own image.
We deserve media that vibrantly showcases what it is like to be us, on our own terms. That, to me, feels much more worthwhile than any apology from Carrie Bradshaw.
Ah yes, just what I want, a C-plot where Carrie becomes friends with a side character's side character, and later says to the girls at brunch: "You know, it turns out, bisexuality is NOT just a layover on the way to gay town. It might just be a fabulous little vacation spot on its own and ladies -- I'm ready to visit."
Or, worse, a forced apology written by a PR team published to SJP's Instagram.
Don’t judge me too harshly... I started to enjoy it 🤭