‘And Just Like That’ turns beloved SATC characters into embarrassing, out-of-touch women left behind by the world

Warning: This article includes spoilers

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And just like that — I felt let down

Like many mid-lifers, I’ve been counting the days to the Sex and the City reboot. I was 20 when the first series came out and fell in love with Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda: four glamorous, successful and hilarious women grappling with relationships and life.

Perhaps this new series would give 40-somethings like me a chance to glimpse just how fabulous we might become in our 50s?

When the first episode dropped on HBO this morning, I decided to take an extended coffee break and get stuck in. But the episode left me more disappointed than uplifted.

I’m not talking about the way Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda have aged — sure, I had to adjust a little, having only just finished rewatching the old series, but I didn’t expect everyone to still look 30. Clearly there’s been a little Botox going on, and much was made of Miranda’s shocking “gray hair”, but there were no big surprises when it came to physical ageing.

I was let down because these once-savvy women, who have — we are meant to believe — spent the twenty years offscreen continuing to live, laugh and love in New York City, are portrayed as lost and bemused by modern life.

We’re talking about an experienced newspaper columnist, knowledgeable art dealer and successful corporate lawyer: women who were once ahead of their time; who had confidence and style and, even when things went wrong, a healthy dose of humor and introspection.

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching re-runs of the first six series, and despite some issues when it comes to diversity and one or two slightly off-key topics, I feel like the show has aged pretty well. The dilemmas facing the women were cutting-edge for their time, designed to make audiences gasp, or relate, or change their minds.

Now, at best, it appears these once-dynamic women have become what those approaching midlife dread: 50-something clichés, confused by a world that has evolved and left them behind.

Miranda — the highly successful lawyer who carved a niche in what was very much a ‘man’s world’ in the early series — attends a seminar where she appears awkward, trips on her words and somehow manages to come across as both ageist, racist and incapable of normal human interaction within a couple of minutes. Her apology to her professor at the station afterwards is cringey and doesn’t fit with a character who has been working as a top lawyer for 30 years plus.

Across town recording a sex podcast, Carrie seems prudishly shocked at some of the questions she’s asked — this from a woman who has supposedly been friends with the sexually liberated, fabulous oversharer Samantha Jones for three decades.

Midlife Carrie is so horrified when asked about masturbation that she stutters and blushes, before descending into giggles and appearing to forget what she’s been asked in the first place. This is a woman who, in series one, had to stage an intervention when Charlotte becomes addicted to her “rabbit”. Surely a seasoned sex columnist shouldn’t be so fazed by a question on self-service as to giggle herself into irrelevance?

(Plus, I don’t want to ruin the ending, but I think most of us would agree a well-timed phone call rather than a hysterical shoe-ruining shower sobbing session may have made all the difference to the final scene. And just like that, I called 9-1-1.)

Charlotte, it seems, has also become unbearably clueless. An apparent stay-at-home mum, she seems not to know her teenage daughter Rose at all, appearing surprised and horrified when her younger daughter doesn’t eagerly slip on the floral monstrosity Mom buys her for a piano recital. This apparently intelligent woman has not noticed that her daughter favors jeans and sneakers over dresses and heels? I don’t buy it.

As someone looking for positive representations of oft-invisible midlife women, I was hoping for a series that presented these 50-somethings in a favorable light. But all three seemed lost in the modern world, as if they’d been cryogenically frozen at the end of series 6, and only just thawed in time for the next.

The final insult? A twist at the end of episode 1 leaves Carrie once again “single and living in New York.” I couldn’t help but wonder: In order to be relevant on screen, do women need to perpetually be looking for love?

To give SATC its due, it’s always going to be hard to restart a series that’s lain dormant for two decades (and no, I’m not counting the films). And there may be surprises ahead. Who knows? Miranda may even decide to pull on some casual jeans for her next seminar rather than tottering in looking like she’s dressed for a wedding. Perhaps Charlotte will get over her prejudices and allow her daughter to wear slacks. Or maybe, just maybe, Carrie will tap into the old, savvier and quick-quipping version of herself.

After all, they’re still in New York. Anything is possible.