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Sara Jessica Parker: "And Just Like That"

 People around me ask, "How can you continue to watch Sex and the City?"


My husband waded through the recent season premiere, then said, "I can't anymore. I'm pulling the plug."

We were at dinner, and the table next to us had four gay men; the men complained about Charlotte's dog and about the way Aidan almost shat himself during phone sex. (In fact, I sort of liked the phone-sex flatulence.) The discussion became a six-person discussion, as Marc and I piled on. "To think this was the PREMIERE! Someone behind the scenes thought.....this is our BEST material, so we need to pack it into the first hour...."

I'll tell you why I stick with Carrie Bradshaw. It's because Michael Patrick King is a gay Irish (lapsed) Catholic voice--and there just aren't so many of these voices in the entertainment world. His interest in farts, adult diapers, erectile dysfunction, and "the wild CUNT-ryside" just speaks to me; his words have a way of tapping into my DNA, my genetic heritage.

I think it's best to imagine that the new season is not a season. There is no real story. No one is behind the steering wheel. Instead, it's just a collection of vignettes; most are failures, but some are intriguing half-failures.

For example, the story about Charlotte's dog. I can see what happened. Someone on the staff had a weird run-in at the pet salon--and someone else said, "This could be a story about cancellation." Tell the truth, but tell it slant. So many people write about being cancelled--but who on Earth has applied this story to the existence of dogs? (I even appreciate the "false clue" in this odd mystery story. Charlotte begins to doubt her own dog when the dog gets frisky with an "American Girls" doll in an Upper East Side home. But it seems the doll has just recently tangoed with a slice of raw beef. So: don't draw any conclusions about the dog.)

I *can* imagine someone on Madison Avenue trying to blacklist a neighbor's dog--via Instagram posts. The problem is that this vignette isn't grounded in character; we don't really learn anything about Charlotte, and we certainly don't learn anything about her nemesis. The material would be better adapted to a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Am I thinking too much about Carrie and Charlotte? Maybe so. In any case, I'm still watching.
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