so I watched And Just Like That aka Sex and the
City reboot and I really didn't like it. And to be frank with you I never had big expectations for
this show in the first place. Maybe it's because the Gossip Girl reboot was below mediocre or maybe
because I've only seen one ONE good tv reboot ever which was Twin Peaks if you're curious I had low
expectations for And Just Like That. Like really low and yet almost every week after watching a
new episode i thought to myself what the heck just happened!? The woman was too stunned to speak. As
you can see this video will be a pretty negative review. Believe me I am not a negative person in
real life but I find it really difficult to say anything positive about this reboot. And please
don't think that I didn't like it simply because of how different it was from the original series.
In my opinion it should be different, it should challenge the viewer. But dragging personal drama
into the plot is where i draw a line. And that's why in this video I will not be analysing the
differences and or similarities between the main characters. The decisions have been made. But I
think it's safe to say that Carry is stuck in the past, Miranda has divorced herself and Charlotte
is pretty much still the same. I will however focus on, in my opinion, core problems of why
And Just Like That flopped so hard. Also spoilers ahead. So let's go. NUMBER ONE: the depiction of
midlife. The original Sex and The City premiered in 1998 in the midst of deeply sexist and toxic
post-feminist era. The term post-feminism implies that all the goals of feminism have already been
achieved. And because women finally gained wider access to education and employment as we have seen
with the boom of working women in the 1980s and 1990s we collectively believed that we finally
lived in a society where misogyny no longer existed. Yet equally people still believe that:
'you know it's easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to get married over the age of 40'.
And by the way that Sleepless in Seattle scene mirrored the actual piece published in Newsweek.
The article carried the headline 'Too late for Prince Charming' and the statistics on the cover
was based on an unpublished study at the time of the story's publication. And of course years
later the so-called study turned out to be untrue, shocker I know. But at the time of its release
it caused a lot of anxiety to many single women. And it seems that especially the early seasons
of Sex and the City laughed down that Newsweek article. Instead of showing single women in their
30s and 40s on the brick of death because of all that misery their single life has cost them, they
were leading fun independent and liberated lives. Carrie Miranda Samantha and Charlotte were single
and fabulous. No question mark. And once they decided to finally settle down they easily found
romantic partners despite their age. And therefore I was seriously hoping that And Just Like That
will continue on this path. That the characters now in their mid-50s will make getting older look
fierce, bold and honestly sexy. It's the Sex and The City after all. 'And not that it matters but
i am 50 [ __ ] two and i will rock this dress' God how we miss Samantha. There is a big gap
of representation of ageing women in the media so creating almost a poster child about how the
age you feel means more than your actual birth date would be a great way for the show to stay
relevant in 2022 without all the cringy wokeness. But boy was i wrong. The sheer amount of times the
characters say that they're old or their body is ageing is funny at first but quickly becomes just
painful and embarrassing to watch. Ageing bones. Senior condition. Old lady back. I have old lady
disease. I'm old. Because I'm old. We are old. Just an old jewish guy trying to play sports.
Nonsense you're not old. oh my god thank you Seema. Frankly Seema and Rabbi Jen were the best
characters in the show and I low-key eat their own spin-off. 'Here's to 53. Best year ever'. And Just
Like That tried to acknowledge the fear of agwing but in a very superficial way. There was a
recurring theme with Miranda refusing to dye her grey hair. And spoiler alert at the finale she
actually did get her red hair back. But the whole topic revolved around the fact how the grey hair
is visually ageing and not for example the fact that many women with grey hair are often perceived
as incompetent in their workplaces. The show also attempted to address the double standards when
it comes to ageing women and men. Like you know, men age like wine and women well... 'Unfortunately
mother nature and Instagram are much harder on women' 'I mean what's this!? Who invited this?'
Honestly And Just Like That made ageing look like what people fear the most, which is not wrinkles
and grey hair by the way but being irrelevant and not adjusting well to the new technologies like
Carrie is using the freaking rose gold iphone 6s. I know I know she was never good with technology
so I guess it's very own brand for her. But most importantly the show made life over 50 look dull
unhinged and sexless. 'They're a bunch of dried-up farts who haven't had sex since Eisenhower and I
remind them of what they can't have'. NUMBER TWO: The Whole Samantha's storyline. If you're the SATC
fan then you're probably aware of the ongoing feud between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall aka
Carrie and Samantha on screen. And if you're not, let me sum it up for you. Basically and everything
I'm gonna say now is alleged during the early seasons of the original series of SATC Sarah
Jessica Parker started to become jealous and threatened by Kim's natural charisma on screen.
And purely because of that she allegedly formed a clique on set with the rest of the
main cast and apparently they gave Kim the full mean girls treatment. It reportedly has
gotten so bad that no one spoke to Kim on set, not even makeup artists. But of course at
that time this wasn't public knowledge because at its core Sex and the City is a show about
female friendship. And when Kim finally revealed that she and Sarah Jessica were never friends,
they were just co-workers people got furious. So many articles depicted Kim as a villain and Sarah
Jessica as an angel in this situation, since Sarah denied everything. Until this New York City Post
article, which brought Kim's justice. Six seasons and two movies later Kim decided that she's done
playing Samantha, which is understandable. I can perfectly imagine that playing the same character
over and over might become tiring and uninspiring. Especially if you're working in a reportedly toxic
environment. But again Kim was publicly accused of ruining the production of the third Sex and the
City movie, because of her alleged crazy financial demands. Because if you didn't know Sarah Jessica
Parker always gained more money than the rest of the main cast. Thank you for coming to my TED
talk. Now Kim Cattrall didn't return to play Samantha in And Just Like That and this is how the
show decided to address her character's absence. Tn the first episode we learned that Carrie
couldn't keep Samantha as her publicist and because of the money yes the money Samantha
ended their friendship and moved to London. Which is so out of character for her. She would
never end friendship over such a mundane thing. 'Not my style'. In the second episode there is a
whole plot line about Samantha sending flowers to the funeral and guys get ready for this because
this is crazy. In 2018 Sarah Jessica Parker sent him huge floral arrangement after Kim's brother
died, because Sarah wanted to still pretend as if the actresses were friends. To which Kim
responded with 'stop exploiting our family tragedy in order to restore your nice girl persona'.
So at this point I hope you're getting how much personal petty drama has been purposely woven
into this plot line. It left such a bad taste in me and it felt manipulative. And I think it's
also important to point out that out of all the characters Carrie is the one who spends a painful
amount of time talking about Samantha's absence. 'My friend Samantha Jones'. 'No, they're from
Samantha'. 'We already lost Samantha'. Carry is also constantly texting Samantha even
though these scenes aren't adding anything to the plot. Lucy Cocoran writes: 'It doesn't
feel right to have a faceless enigma engaging in these text conversations that feel cold and
impersonal. It doesn't give enough credit to the incredible work Cattrall did in personifying
Samantha in all her feisty, fiery glory. The series would have benefited from cutting
her character out entirely and moving on, which is what Cattrall would likely have wanted and
probably expected after declining to participate'. I mean, agreed. Two sentences in a dialogue about
Samantha moving to London would be enough for the entire show. 'Where's Samantha?' 'Either Big or
Samantha'. 'You know it is kind of like she's dead Samantha'. NUMBER THREE: faux wokeness and
tokenism Let's address an elephant in the room. The main criticism of the original series was
the lack of inclusivity and diversity. Yes we had characters like Stanford and Anthony Carrie's
and Charlotte's stereotypical best gay friends who eventually got married, but that was all. And the
messiest SATC moments almost exclusively revolved around the LGBTQ+ community. Like the episode
where Carrie dates a guy who is openly bisexual, but she finds it off-putting and declares that
she doesn't believe bisexualism even exists. Or the episode when Samantha dates Maria and the
girl's reaction to Samantha identify as queer. 'How does that work? You go to bed one night
you wake up the next morning and poof you're a lesbian?' 'I don't think she's a lesbian. I think
she just ran out of men'. Or lastly, the episode when Samantha had transgender neighbors. 'Half
man, Half woman, totally annoying'. BIG YAKES! So naturally And Just Like That tried to redeem
itself by creating characters like non-binary Che and Rock as well as the trans Rabbi Jen. People
of other gender identities than cis are greatly underrepresented in the mainstream media so it
was a great move. We love to see more inclusivity. However, the execution left once again much to be
desired. Sarah Ramirez's character Che Diaz felt so stereotypical. They are a queer non-binary
stand-up comedian and LGBTQ+ activist who has a very kushy podcast about gender and sexuality
and problems of commitment. I don't want to play a white cisgender savior here, but the girls who
get it get it and the girls who don't don't. And the creators of And Just Like That clearly don't
get it. People who are gender non-conforming, queer, or from any marginalized groups really
want to be treated just like normal people. Sex and the City has a history of creating
characters who are more upper class so I don't expect Che to be a taxi driver, but their
character could be a little less stereotypical. A lawyer perhaps? Enrique Aparicio, a
non-binary journalist said: 'We have to ask creators for honesty. If you want to put
a non-binary character in your series, have it written by a non-binary writer. They will
be able to create a much more faithful portrait of the non-binary experience than a table of
the best cis scriptwriters on the planet. And if you just want to throw in a non-binary character
because it looks hip, you’re using our identities to add social capital to your work without
any real knowledge of our experience'. And besides the caricatural representation Carrie,
Miranda and Charlotte make so much fuss about Che being non-binary to the point that it became
almost their entire identity. 'But it's not she, it's they. They are on their way up'. '- Them?
There are others? - No no no no she's using them as in Che's pronoun'. oh my god cringe. same
with Hari Nef's character Rabbi Jen, or should I say... 'The trans rabbi is in!' 'Trans rabbi.'
'Trans rabbi'. Sorry. I just can't. Don't hate me. Number Four: poor research. And don't even
let me start on the amount of mistakes and insensitive jokes. In the episode which
premiered on the January 27th ,which is also known as The International Holocaust Remembrance
Day there was an actual holocaust joke and uh I'm personally choosing to believe that this this
wasn't intentional. Yeah this is this is what I'm choosing to believe. But so insensitive. Moving
on. The sari shop Seema and Carrie visited was selling lehengas not saris. Scattering ashes
is illegal in the most European countries. The whole Miranda aka partnered in a law firm going
back to university in order to practice different law doesn't make sense as she already has a law
degree. Live calls? An a podcast? Really? This is not a radio. Also creating a podcast doesn't
look like this. Okay I could go on and on, but honestly I'm tired. I'm tired of watching
yet another poorly researched tv show created by people who fail to fully acknowledge and
understand social changes from the last 10 years. And on that note I am finishing this video.
Frankly I don't plan on watching the second season of And Just Like That. Even for the
pleasure of hate watching. I will however always love the original Sex and the City
series, despite its flaws. And I'll wait for the spin-off about Seema, Rabbi Jen and yeah
why not let's get crazy Anthony in the city. Bye! 'I'm the hot fella today and if anyone has
a problem with it I'll see them in court'.
