The day after Season 3 of And Just Like That premiered, I did not expect to have as many conversations about it as I did, which proves a theory I came up with last season: the only way is down. The show is in a unique position of being too big and too bad to fail. Meaning, because the original series Sex And The City is so highly regarded and still so binge-watched, its reprise will not be ignored, no matter how god-awful it is.
Other hit TV shows from the early 00s have been revived in this same way, injected with current-era politics and smoothed of some pre-PC grit, with less sensational results, at least in my circles. Roseanne Barr was killed off her own show when the comedian pledged support for Donald Trump during his first campaign, and now The Conners (2018-ongoing) responds to many a topical talking point with a more liberal point of view. No one I know watches it. The Karen character on Will & Grace was rewritten as a close friend of Trump when that show returned just after his first election, which felt correct but like bad timing, a joke about the accidental power of some uncultured elite that had gotten too real.
And in fact the Mr. Big character was killed off of AJLT after actor Chris Noth was accused of some misconduct that didn’t stray far from what would be expected of a real-life Mr. Big, described in the pilot of SATC (1998) as “the next Donald Trump, except he’s younger and much better looking.”
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