And Just Like That… Something that was once really fun has become deeply tedious

Off rip, this show draws into stark focus the power of a stylist like Patricia Field. This show is missing the two things that kept the original from becoming too navel-gazy and schlocky: Samantha Jones, and Pat Field. It reminds me of that saying, "if you throw a party and people keep talking about who isn't invited, is it really your party?" The clothes have been a damn mess, and the random menagerie of women of color they have put in this show feels so uncomfortable.

And we miss you

Look, it makes a lot of sense to show these characters as a bit out of touch with the culture of New York its famous "5th character". To see them languishing in their old age, unhappy with their choices in the case of Miranda, or morose and self-involved like Carrie (has always been) or whatever the fuck they are doing to make Charlotte the worst possible human in the world-- it just isn't well executed. To be clear, it isn't the actor's fault. The actresses always deliver, they play these characters with compassion even when they are given--to borrow a phrase from Charlie Sheen--"tin cans" to work with. The writing on this show is so damn painful.

Listen, Samantha Irby is a great writer, this just isn't in her lane and it really isn't fair to judge her by this. I blame the rest of the show apparatus. Much like the magically appearing "diversity" on the cast the choice to use her in this instance feels so forced and out of place. This has always been the problem of this show, they know they have magic but they think that magic can sustain any type of aesthetic and creative application and it can't. It's specific and should have stayed specific.

what the fuck is this outfit? how dare they

Yes, the original show was about "women living modern lives" but it is about them, these core characters. These women and their friendship, not about their relationship to the external gaze of society.

In Sex and the City, we are looking at New York and the world through the eyes of these women. In this show, they are fish in a fishbowl. We are watching them through the gaze of the Twitterati. That difference in positionality is sucking the fun out of these characters.

All that warmth and color has been replaced with a plodding fish out of water story about antiquated white perspectives in a changing society. If I want that I will watch the damn news.

Nicole Ari Parker deserved better than to be a character who seems designed only to make the audience deeply uncomfortable.

This is the problem with a long-standing franchise like this: at some point, anything new in an established universe like this just reads as commentary or a take on the original.

It is no longer rooted in the story itself but rather, in the reaction to the story, which becomes its own narrative force. We should have more restraint with the stories we love and care about enough to let them die when they need to...like Big on that Pelaton.