I don’t do this a lot these days, pop culture ‘reviews’. I haven’t submerged myself a lot in pop culture. There was a lot of comments on reality TV, some occasional reference to my imaginary relationship with Jack Bauer. This time I want to talk about what my revisit of Sex & the City feels like.

I can’t say that I was excited for the revisit, I didn’t need to see more of the girls after the disaster of the 2nd movie. I have free time though, I have HBO and why not? I wasn’t thrilled that Samantha wouldn’t be there, but that if anything added to the first tune in because I wanted to see how they would manage missing that character.

The first episode let a lot to be desired for me. It was 40 minutes of why? The death of Mr. Big wasn’t even a big deal to me. While I looked back romantically at the love story of Carrie & John and rooted for true love to win, his death was meh. It made sense to me in the narrative. The 2nd movie showed this group of writers didn’t know how to write a happy Carrie & Big. So making Carrie the single girl again had to happen, and the death of Big helped seal the romantic ever after while resetting the landscape.

Since I started and since I still have a lot of fucking free time I kept watching.

This show is pretty ham fisted in showing what is coming. Either I have watched a lot of TV or I am a little psychic, but I saw the 2 ‘big’ reveals coming from the first episode.

The 2 big reveals are the youngest daughter of Charlotte might be non binary and Miranda might be queer.

Sex & the City has always had gay characters. The gay men who were in the lives of the women of the show were accessories like shoes. The gay men didn’t have their own stories, they just popped up told a bawdy tale of being a gay man in the 90’s and then we went back to what new pair of shoes Carrie cannot afford to buy.

There was a moment in the show where Samantha had a girlfriend, another where Charlotte tried to make friends with a group of power lesbians. Non hetero women were not a staple of the first series.

This new chapter as they call it seems on the surface willing to admit that non hetero women exist, and I am actually curious to see if they can pull it off. They aren’t addressing that these women are in their 50’s approaching 60. Sure Miranda has grey hair. Sure Charlotte has really bad cheek fillers and Carrie has a handful of grey hairs. Sure in this episode they say the word arthritis. None of these women appear to be headed towards menopause. Other than Carrie’s hip there is not the discussion of the aches and pains that come with carrying the same body around for decades.

Until this episode none of the women have sex. It’s weird that the show which had sex in every episode has 2 married characters and now one single character and none of them is having sex. For me…that is a problem. It is a problem for me because I want to see my new demographic fucking. That is not the point of this post though, this post is about the gay…women.

The child Rose in episode 1 plays her hand by refusing to wear the flowered dress her WASP turned Jewish mother who requires outward reflections of perfections bought for her to wear to her sister’s piano recital. As the series moves on Rose says she doesn’t feel like a girl, and the parents learn from the school that Rose wants to be called Rock. So far they are telling this story through the eyes of the woman who wanted to perfect life now having to deal with the fact that her real life is not the 1950’s nuclear family photo that she imagined. I don’t know that we needed it to be this way. The first go round of the show dealt with this already. For me this story would be fascinating from the eyes of the child but I don’t know that this show will tackle that. I also don’t know if I want them to after watching the coming out of Miranda Hobbs.

Miranda had it all in the first series she just had it all in Brooklyn. When we left the series Miranda was the most adjusted, the most settled. We meet her again with grey hair, unemployed trying to navigate her way in the new world where she can’t be politically incorrect. It is clear that Miranda is at mid-life crisis stage. Knowing Cynthia Nixon’s real life exploration of her sexuality it was almost expected that this would happen when you toss in the super charismatic Che Diaz who is walking sex appeal, the show called it’s shot early.

How you get to sex in Carrie’s kitchen …..well I don’t know that I expected THAT, but I am not completely mad at it.

Unlike the non binary storyline, this one is being told from the POV of the woman evolving. While I am sure that some people out there will be upset that the writers are breaking up the fairy tale of Steve and Miranda but it actually makes sense to me. There is a reality out there that the choices we make in our 20s and 30s might now always translate to the people we are in our 50s. Why would Miranda ‘throw away’ the marriage she fought for and the man she loves [because they make sure that they convey Miranda still loves Steve]? Because at times who we are at 50 doesn’t match the life we chose.

Miranda is special that of the characters she really is the only one who could carry this story. Watching Miranda awkward flirt with Che like she did with Steve all those years ago was important. Watching Che take the bait and diving full in to a mature woman and treating her like a desirable sexual being was great. Watching Miranda have a super explosive orgasm – more please.

Then Miranda breaking down to Carrie in her urine soaked bed admitting that she was unhappy and not knowing how to fix being unhappy was something that women need to see. I want more of it. I also want Che to just be a jump off, and not this be a new relationship.

It took 5 full episodes but the new show is finally telling a story that has me interested. I hope that they don’t fuck up the gay.