Here lies Carrie. She had two loves and lots o' shoes.

Maybe some shows aren't meant to be rebooted.

I haven’t watched episodes 4 and 5 of “And Just Like That,” both of which have aired. You know what I did watch this past weekend? A few episodes of season 1 of “Sex and the City,” which first aired on HBO in 1998 and were incredibly groundbreaking at the time. Our very first exposure to Carrie Bradshaw in the pilot involves her “having sex like a man”; we see her call up an old boyfriend, get her cookie eaten, and then peace out before reciprocating. The fourth episode of season 1 deals with “up the butt,” for goodness’ sake! The fourth episode!!!

I can’t stress enough how finely drawn and real these characters were from the very first episode, which is what is so jarring about where we are now with AJLT. The OG’s dialogue was fast-paced and witty—most people probably didn’t speak like this, but it was easy to believe that they could—it was both inspirational and attainable.

People and characters should change as they age, of course, but there’s usually a level of introspection involved that each of these characters lack. They’ve become rich caricatures of themselves, and, while I can appreciate a fictional wealth porn show (god knows I love both “Gossip Girl” and “Succession,” which are on opposite sides of the wealth porn spectrum), it’s not interesting to me anymore to see what Carrie spends her Big-death money on. It’s not interesting to see Miranda flail about living in an Airbnb despite making partner at her law firm back in the late ’90s. It’s not interesting to explore the sex lives of Charlotte’s kids.

It’s really a shame because I do think LTW is sort of interesting, and Seema could have been interesting. But I have no desire to see Carrie and Aidan 3.0, or listen to Carrie’s weird fiction as the VO. It’s wild to think about, but this show was somehow better with Che Diaz. Good for Sara Ramirez for getting out, though, and good for Kim Cattrall for recognizing what a trainwreck this would be from the start.

And so, because these recaps take up time, and my time is precious and I don’t get paid for this, I’m no longer giving MPK and SJP my streaming views for AJLT. They can have them for the OG SATC, but this iteration is lazy, uninspired, and hacky. When the best part of a reboot is its references to the OG, it’s time to hang it up. I’ll be back with some Madonna and Beyoncé deep dives and potentially some other writing—summer in New York always makes me nostalgic, and I have a few Notes app musings that can be fleshed out, but it’s hard to write about New York without feeling like a Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe! (Her writing was that girl in the early 2000s…)

In the end, maybe our mistakes are what make our fate…and I hope MPK will have to answer for his at some point.

P.S. I’m by no means deluded enough to think this is Big News™️for the tens of you who read this, but if you’re starved for AJLT recaps (mine are by no means the best or wittiest or timeliest), check out the Fug Girls’ substack, as well as Amy Odell’s.