I never purposely watched Sex and the City, but it’s been on the TV in my house over the past over the past 15 years that I’ve probably seen most if not all of them, and know way more about the characters than any straight man should.
That said, I haven’t seen the reboot, but my wife did and complained enough about it in detail I feel like I’ve seen both episodes.
Any non-spoiler thoughts?
My wife says the show’s situations are ultra-woke just for wokeness sake. And the explanations they give for certain characters not being there are lame.
Agree that the excuse for the absence of some characters doesn’t hold, but as for the wokeness comment, to me it’s more woke for the sake of inclusiveness. SATC has not historically done a great job of bringing on multi-dimensional characters who are not white, cis, heterosexual (barring that one weird venture into lesbianism for Samantha).
Stanford is gay and I’m glad they expanded on his storyline in the movies, but he seemed very stereotypical and lacking in depth as a character to me (although I always have loved his character). Anyway, I don’t think having more queer characters or more POC characters is anything but an improvement.
I watched it. I don’t think it’s especially “woke”. Maybe the Miranda trying to be not racist thing. But I’ve seen that in so many shows now that I’m numb to it.
I definitely noticed that there was a push for more diversity in the show (Charlotte’s new good friend is a POC, Miranda going to a class lead by a POC w/ related course content, Carrie’s podcast boss being gender neutral, and I think her boss’s boss is in a wheelchair (but I haven’t seen episode 3 just the previews)). And at first it felt like a bit of virtue signaling, but I’ve thought about it more and really the main reason these new characters stood out so much was because they were new characters - they needed the “yup, she’s gender neutral/POC/etc. get over it” out of the way quickly so they could get to making the show.
And it’s only been 3 episodes so far, not early enough to tell if it’s a banger or not.
Why the need for diversity in the show? The show WAS about 4 friends (now 3). Very rarely was there anyone else involved in their lives. They were 4 white women. What kind of diversity did they want? The show did an interracial relationship. No one except Miranda had a boss. Carrie eventually had a black assistant didn’t she? Gays were represented, albeit, sometimes cartoonishly.
Any characters other than the protagonists and their love interests were peripheral. If you threw POCs or other LBGTQs in there people will complain they are tokens.
And why the push to include ‘nonbinary’ people? According to WAPO, there are 1.2 million ‘nonbinary’ adults in the US. With an adult population of 209,130,000 that’s just over one half of one percent (0.5%) of the population. Why the pandering to this group?
Native Americans consist of 2.9% of the population of the US (as of 2020 per CNN). Why is there no big push for them to be represented in TV programs?
In 2020, those who presented as fully Asian (not mixed) was about 19.9 million. I know there are a few in TV and movies, but where are their equality torch-bearers?
This is New York though, which is significantly more diverse than the rest of the nation. So the numbers you quoted don’t really apply. I personally know quite a few nonbinary people. I go on grindr and quite a lot of people go by they/them in their preferred pronouns. And I don’t even live in NYC.
If this show was set in Alabama and you run into LGBTQ members left and right I might be like something’s not adding up.
And Dakotans and Alaskans. Lots of Native Americans in those states.
And I didn’t mean the show needs more of ANYTHING. It’s a show about 4 white women (now 3) and predominantly the trials and tribulations or romance in NYC. It’s an insular group. They had a black (African American, colored, negro?) love interest. Were there ever any Asians on the show? Seinfeld even had a Native American (even though she was only on one episode).
It’s great that these fringe groups are getting recognized as characters. But this show is pandering, plain and simple.
What was with Miranda’s fumbling through an interaction with a black professor? I don’t buy that a white SJW who dated and was in love (though she couldn’t bring herself to say it) with a black guy, would be less than comfortable around a black person in NYC.
I feel like part of it is to set the show in real time.
In the real world, we did go through George Floyd and BLM. A lot of celebrities are coming out as LGBT. People are recognizing that nonbinary is a thing (even amongst the gays).
The show is teleported to the present day. To show that it is present day NYC, this is their way of doing it.
A lot of other shows are doing the same thing (talking about Trump being president, #Metoo, BLM, etc.)
