Once upon a time, HBO aired a hit show that spun a brand-new kind of fairy tale, a glittering fantasy of single-lady life in New York City.
The year was 1998. Bill Clinton was president. Donald Trump was a New York City tabloid fixture. Roe v. Wade was the law of the land.
Into this brave new world strode “Sex and the City,” the story of a quartet of glamorous New York City women who worked and dated, vacationed and shopped, went clubbing and dancing and enjoyed fulfilling casual sex — just like men!
Over the next six seasons, the show offered a message both hopeful and progressive: A woman — or, at least a thin, white, financially privileged woman — could have a rich, fulfilling life, one that didn’t necessarily involve a ring and a white picket fence, one where friendships, not romance or marriage, were the relationships that sustained you.
You could, like Charlotte, divorce a man who looked perfect on paper, and then find yourself falling for your crass, hairy-backed, big-hearted divorce lawyer. You could, like Miranda, make partner at your law firm, become a single mother then marry your baby’s father and live together in Brooklyn.
You could, like Carrie, find your one true love, or you could, like Samantha, tell your handsome boyfriend that you love him but you love yourself more. You had options of the traditional and nontraditional variety, and they all included designer clothes, gorgeous shoes and great real estate.
The show was a hit. And if the charm of it faded a bit on later nostalgia re-viewings — if Carrie appeared less delightfully madcap than entitled and irresponsible; if Miranda seemed cold and Charlotte seemed ditzy and Samantha seemed to objectify her partners; if the whole collective manhunt seemed maybe not so empoweringly feminist, I still recalled the show fondly, like the remembered taste of a Magnolia Bakery cupcake.
In 2021, HBO Max launched a reboot, and viewers re-met Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda, now in their 50s. If “Sex and the City” was a fizzy, edgy, envelope-pushing frolic, a reflection of a hopeful time, its sequel, “And Just Like That…,” was overblown and dispiriting. It felt less like a romp than a slog. It’s not an overtly political show, but it is a reflection of a very different era, when retrenchment was underway. Many of those thrilling possibilities now feel impossible.
Episode by episode, the show seemed intent on yanking happiness and contentment from underneath its protagonists, making them look like glamorous Rip van Winkles as they bungled pronouns and interactions with Black people and turned entirely ordinary parenting problems into crises. Our beloved heroines were exposed as physically frail, blinkered, clueless cartoons, caricatures of the characters we’d once loved.
Sure, this unfolded against a backdrop of dazzling real estate and beautiful clothes, with heroines who never seemed to worry about money. But the froth had blown away.
Maybe it was inevitable, given our current pendulum swing to the right, when influential figures discuss revoking women’s right not just to choose but to vote, when tradwife is a social ideal, where two highly qualified women have failed to crack the highest glass ceiling and #MeToo accusers are regarded with more suspicion and scorn than the men they accuse.
As network after corporation after university has bent the knee to a new political reality, paying settlements, walking back DEI initiatives and tendering mea culpas to the ultimate Mr. Big, “And Just Like That…” began to feel like an apology for “Sex and the City”: Did we tell you that women could be happy, even if they were single; that it was OK to chase success instead of men? Our bad!
How did “And Just Like That …” atone? How did it punish the ladies for their youthful optimism? Let us count the ways.
Did you want to believe that Carrie Bradshaw had finally found her happily ever after with Mr. Big, resolving the profound recurring tension of the first series? Surprise! The sequel killed him off in the premiere, leaving Carrie bereft — and in need of hip surgery.
Maybe you imagined Miranda peacefully partnered and living in Brooklyn? Alas, Miranda spiraled into alcoholism and embarked on a journey of sexual self-discovery that included an interlude with one of the most justly ridiculed TV characters ever.
But surely Charlotte, the most traditional of the foursome, is still content with her loving husband? She is! Except her children are spoiled and demanding and her husband’s got prostate cancer. Dear reader, I regret to inform you we have seen him pee his pants.
Only Samantha escaped with her dignity intact, because she gave the series a wide berth.
True, “And Just Like That …” offered some of the pleasures that made “Sex and the City” consumerist catnip. And the women’s friendship was still front and center.
But mostly, the reboot was a dispiriting trek through a world of hurt, where all a woman’s pleasures, all of her achievements and success, came at a cost.
Candace Bushnell is the writer who created “Sex and the City,” as a newspaper column in The New York Observer. But lately the show has made me think of a different writer: Erica Jong, the spiritual godmother to the sex-columnist-and-girl-about-town model that Carrie so gleefully embodied. (Carrie even name-checks her in Season 3, with the line “politics had always seemed as relevant to me as a new Erica Jong novel.” Ouch.)
In 1973, Ms. Jong published “Fear of Flying,” a roman-a-clef in which the young, pretty and privileged Isadora Wing leaves her husband and road trips through Europe seeking creative and sexual fulfillment. The message was that women didn’t have to stay in unfulfilling marriages. That bigger, richer lives beckoned. That message sold more than 20 million copies and made Ms. Jong a celebrated figure.
This year, that book got another kind of sequel, when Molly Jong-Fast, Ms. Jong’s only child, published a memoir called “How to Lose Your Mother.” The book depicts Erica Jong, now suffering from dementia, as a narcissist, a drunk, a disinterested parent who was either mining Molly’s life for material or ditching her to pursue her own adventures. The memoir, like “And Just Like That…,” serves as a generational rebuke to the women who prioritized careers and sex and fame and fortune over family, and a warning to any mothers foolish enough to follow Ms. Jong’s bad example.
For those of us who loved the originals, the rise of the reboots feels chilling, especially since it could be decades before the next pendulum swing. While we’re waiting, if you want a show about middle-aged women and the friendships that sustain them, where humor abounds and nobody gets punished for having sex or seeking fulfillment, there’s always “The Golden Girls.” Less couture, more caftans; less Gramercy Park townhouses, more Miami ranch houses, but all the joy and laughs that “And Just Like That…” didn’t deliver.
Jennifer Weiner, a novelist, writes frequently about gender and culture.
Source images by Craig Blankenhorn/HBO/courtesy Everett Collection, and dremesov/Getty Images
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