I remember when Sex and the City ended in 2004. I had a
group of friends over; we drank Cosmos; we laughed, cried, and cheered. It was
the best series finale of any TV show ever.
So why did its sequel have to literally crap all over its (few?)
remaining fans? What the hell went wrong?
Although I was deeply disappointed in the two movies, I was
hopeful about the series. Even though it started with Big’s death—especially because
it started with Big’s death—I loved the idea of watching Carrie start over
romantically in her 50s. At the end of the series, SATC acknowledged the
difficulty of dating at that age, with Candice Bergman’s 50something character
Enid telling Carrie that men her own age didn’t want her, and why was Carrie
swimming in her dating pool? Samantha lost her sex drive due to menopause
caused by breast cancer. I expected AJLT to pick up where these threads left off;
for Charlotte to declare she was done with sex, for Carrie to go on dates with
men confessing they’d rather be with women in their 30s, for Miranda to be
pushed out at work by a younger colleague.
The world’s a tough place when you’re a woman in your 50s.
Alas.
Whether the show overreacted to criticism about being “too
white and too straight,” or whether the loss of writers Jenny Binks and Cindy
Chupak was a blow that couldn’t be overcome, AJLT never developed a strong
voice. Through its four main characters with different and strong perspectives,
SATC was about… sex in a big city. AJLT could have had a similar focus, but
with its three—sometimes six—main characters spinning off in different orbits,
that never happened.
SATC in season one established that Miranda was straight, so
watching her hook up with that annoying Che and then decide she was gay seemed
to be more about reflecting Cynthia Nixon’s private life than a genuine evolution
for Miranda. (At least Miranda never wore a blouse patterned after the
Palestinian flag.) I honestly never liked Steve and Miranda together—I thought
she deserved someone more at her intellectual level—and having her leave once
Brady had flown the nest could have worked. Steve would have hooked up with a 20something
version of Debbie, and Miranda could have tried to avoid being “a nurse with a
purse” with the 70something men pursuing her.
When the show first aired, Charlotte was the character I identified
with most of all, a romantic who longed for a husband and family. I was eager
to see how a woman who’d devoted her life to family might feel after her family
no longer needed her as much. And while we got a few episodes about that, it’s
mostly been about Harry’s needs, Lily’s needs, or Rock’s. Sure, Charlotte went
back to work, but that was a minor plot point that didn’t really expand on the
character. AJLT also could have used Charlotte to explore everything that
happens in the bedroom to a post-menopausal woman. Imagine Charlotte dealing
with topical testosterone or vaginal estrogen or sex aids. Instead, we get
Harry peeing in his pants and mourning his lost erection. Truthful and tragic,
but Charlotte is the POV character, not Harry. The show doubled down in the
final episode, with Charlotte telling Lisa, “This is about him, not me.”
And Carrie. Of course this character was never going to be
the same after Big’s death, but that joie de vivre she once had (remember her
jumping in delight at seeing the Eiffel Tower?) is completely gone. That’s
natural. And yet… there’s a sourness to the character that I’d never seen
before. She wasn’t able to connect as fully with her friends as she did in the
series. While she had always rejected Miranda’s truth-telling, now she seemed
to be rejecting Miranda. She and Charlotte now have so little in common, they
often talk past each other. Charlotte set up Carrie with a math teacher, and
then Mark? Does she know her friend at all anymore?
I liked Lisa and Seema, but again, there were so many
opportunities with these characters that were missed. Do you know how hard it
is to make new friends in your 50s? Apparently not, because these women just
seamlessly (pun intended) slid into Samantha’s chair.
Was there a reason to make Anthony a POV character, other
than having gratuitous sex scenes between men with a father/son sized age gap??
I didn’t mind that almost everyone on the show was wealthy,
but imagine a version where Big dies and Carrie finds out he was leveraged to
the hilt? And she has to completely start over?
So many missed opportunities….
Something happened to the writers of this show, and I’m not
sure what. But when AJLT was first announced, and Kim Cattrall said she’d
turned down the third movie because Samantha was supposed to seduce Brady, that
was a warning sign that somewhere the producers and writers of this beloved
franchise had completely lost their way.
Still, I’m sad the show is over. With each episode, I held
out hope that this would be the one, the show where I’d connect with a
character, see some truth. And certainly there were glimpses--scenes where the
girls humorously seemed out of touch with today’s young adults and fumbled
around to understand where the world is today—but not enough for anything to
land. Why didn’t[ Miranda ever talk about her decision to go gray, and then to
return to red? Why were there no conversations about how hard it is to maintain
a slim figure after menopause? How did they feel about Botox?
At the end, Carrie and her “woman” (seriously, couldn’t she give
her a name? Will book editor Sarah Jessica Parker now be inundated with books
with unnamed protagonists?) make peace with being “not alone, but on her own,”
as if her lifelong friends aren’t with her on every step of the journey. The
original series ended with Big saying, “You gals are the loves of her lives,
and a guy can only hope to come in fourth.” But with AJLT being so disjointed,
ending this version of the series with such a statement would have felt
completely false.
Fiftysomething women are big consumers of TV shows and
books, and we deserve to have our stories front and center. Watching AJLT
implode so drastically hurts not only because the audience loved these
characters so much, but because it’s an ominous sign that other projects
featuring women in this age group might not be well-received.
Ironically, there’s another HBO show featuring a middle-aged
woman that’s driving ratings and receiving accolades. The writers of AJLT could
have learned a thing or two from Julian Fellows, The Gilded Age, and
Bertha Russell.
Having said goodbye three times already, I’m not convinced
that this is really the end. Could we possibly see Carrie, Charlotte, and
Miranda reunite in 20 years at their assisted living home?
One thing’s for certain—after this AJLT disaster…. Yeah, who
am I kidding. I’d definitely watch it.
