The vexing-but-still-acceptable Sex snd the City reboot that is hurtling our way sometime this year will be missing a few people that are important. Mr. Big will not be there. Aidan, furniture man, will. Samantha “I’m a Trysexual—I’ll try anything once” Jones, would rather not, thanks—and it is this loss that has rocked the SATC community to its very core. After what feels like eons of private and public speculation about how to fill that big ol’ hole left by Samantha’s absence, we finally have an answer. I do hope you’re sitting down.
According to TVLine, the creators of this reboot will be filling the Samantha hole with three characters of color, in a ham-fisted attempt to make up for the show’s laughable lack of diversity. Samantha’s absence will be explained in the first episode, and per HBO Max’s chief content officer, Casey Bloys, she won’t be dead, which means that my fantasy cold open for this program that finds the women in mourning veils, draping Samantha’s headstone with dildos and pearl g-strings is just a figment of my overactive imagination.
“Just as in real life, people come into your life, people leave,” Bloys said. “Friendships fade, and new friendships start. So I think it is all very indicative of the real stages, the actual stages of life.” I hate to give the creators of this show anything, but I will allow this, because if Sex and the City resembled reality in any way, shape, or form, Samantha probably would’ve packed her bags and hightailed it the hell out of those women’s lives somewhere around the third season and never looked back.
As for the new show, it seems Michael Patrick King and his cohort are listening and learning: The new show will expand the women’s social circle by adding six new characters, three of which will be series regulars who will also be women (?) of color. Pour me a Cosmopolitan and meet me at Club Bed, honey, because this is P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S! Or… it’s something.
Apparently, both Sarah Jessica Parker and King were wary of telling a story about 2021 New York City that was as white as the driven snow, understanding that in order to not draw the ire of old fans and to actually attract new ones, “New York has to reflect the way New York looks today.” It is difficult to be mad about this, as it is indeed something akin to progress—or rather, a faint glimmer of hope that the reboot will be slightly more realistic than the original. I am callous for thinking that this is a panicked move made by the creators to avoid blowback, but part of it might be. The other part is maybe that they understand that a show about three white women considering their mortality in beautiful Manhattan is not as interesting as they might’ve thought. Who knows! But now, unfortunately, I’m listening.