PicoBlog

I’m not going to be gaslit into thinking Carrie Bradshaw is the worst, truly horrible or a pure piece of shit. Please, I’m Melissa Gorga on my frickin’ knees begging for no new Sex and the City discourse. Happy to focus on Oh Mary’s Broadway transfer (did you get your tickets?) or Anne Hathaway being a “secret Gooner,” fine, but no Carrie hate please!

Sex and the City crash landed on Netflix on April 1. Why? Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, inked a content agreement with Netflix last July, which included a licensing deal for several series, most notably SATC, which had previously and famously held court exclusively at its mothership. It feels sacrilegious queuing up an episode without the all too familiar HBO static intro. And yet here we are, entering into an unfamiliar world where Carrie & Co. are featured in a carousel among Love Is Blind and Buying Beverly Hills. Nothing is holy.

What’s worse, though, than the fast-collapsing industry gates is the media cycle that surrounds it. I never realized HBO is for olds and Netflix is for youngs. In fact, I still don’t believe that to be the case. But the media cycle surrounding this acquisition would make it seem as though Gen Z is about to storm the gates to watch this show as though it was previously unreleased. It’s all very Charlotte York famously pronouncing, “You’re 22. What do you know about life?”

As a result, we’ve been met with a barrage of headlines trapping readers into believing that there’s a culture war between OG fans of the show and Gen Z fans of the show.

Headline: “‘Shagging and shoes’: why Gen Z has fallen in love with Sex and the City.”

Headline: “Sex and the City is on Netflix. Perfect – Gen Z are a bunch of Charlottes.”

My favorite: “I’m Gen Z watching Sex and the City for the first time. It’s not just outdated, it’s cringey.”

I was even goaded into commenting for one of these articles for the BBC: “What will Gen Z make of Sex and the City, now it's on Netflix?” I tried digging my heels in: "’Oh, Gen Z have already discovered SATC,’ says millennial journalist Evan Ross Katz, who has watched the full series ‘six or seven times’, and discussed it at length on his podcast and in his newsletter. ‘It circulates on TikTok and I see Miranda and Samantha in particular getting a lot of love on socials; then people love to hate on Carrie Bradshaw – unfairly so, I think!’”

Even mainstream pubs got in on the conversation.

Vanity Fair: “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?”

Variety: “‘Sex and the City’ on Netflix: What the Ultimate Period Piece Might Mean to a Gen Z Audience.”

In the latter article, the writer suggests, “It can be easy to forget, watching these characters work through their dating lives in ways that might not pass muster with a 2024 twentysomething, that the episodes weren’t filmed yesterday.” Really? We are assuming an entire generation of viewers is unable to discern that something they are watching was not just made?

In truth, I think what's going on here is best summated by Racquel Gates, Associate Professor of Film at Columbia University, who wrote on Twitter: “I'm not convinced that large numbers of Gen Z are actually watching Sex and the City. My (mostly unfounded) theory is that news outlets are leaning conservative and trying to prop up Gen Z as the paragon of the return to ‘traditional’ values.” I think we should have that conversation! (Not here and now though.)

I’m reminded of the “three tickets to Challengers” meme which is running rampant online at the moment in favoring a viral template over the joke actually making sense.

Here are three of the big ones:

Like "Mama, kudos for saying that. For spilling" before it, the phrase’s quick dissemination was predicated on content over form. As my friend Stephen pointed out: “Hey the ‘3 tickets to Challengers please’ meme has to be a photo of a girl with two guys who want to/have fucked. It can’t just be three people.” 

I bring this up because it highlights what I see as a slow but steady heel turn in the depleting cleverness of meme culture. This, in my assessment, is in lockstep with the imploding of the media industry as we once knew it. So much of our media is now dictated as reactive to social media trends. For instance, after finishing Episode 6 of Baby Reindeer, I was curious to know who the person the episode was dedicated to was. I googled his name and was met with this Glamour headline: “Who is Llewellyn Harrison and why is Baby Reindeer dedicated to him?” Glamour, according to their website, “is your source for what matters to women now, from outfit ideas and makeup tutorials to celebrity news and politics.” Why would they write about something so hyper-specific, especially when it has nothing to do with their purview of coverage? Because people are searching for it. And they want the traffic.

How does this all relate to Carrie & Co.? It highlights the way we’re so often led to believe there’s discourse happening based off of one random person tweeting something antagonistic or intentionally dissenting and that getting traction from people wanting to dunk on them. The platform undoubtedly boosts this sort of in-fighting as it propels the idea that Twitter (remember, we aren’t using that new name — now or ever) is the modern-day town square.

Here’s my thing: Carrie Bradshaw is one of the greatest television characters ever created thanks to Candice Bushnell, Darren Star, Michael Patrick King and, of course, Sarah Jessica Parker. It’s really just that simple. I see so much online about the ways Carrie is a bad friend. Pish posh. How about when Carrie went to the prom with Stanford while he was upset with Marcus? How about when Carrie stuck up for Miranda in Atlantic City when the two guys called her fat? How about when Carrie took care of Big after his heart surgery? Or what about at Miranda’s baby shower, when Miranda puts Brady down on the couch and he begins to slip? Carrie rushes in to catch him and mentions nothing of it. Carrie’s a great friend, actually. And an even greater television character.

I get that this show, like any great piece of media, has been flattened over time. That’s to be expected. And I get that, like Friends, it’s being relitigated through a 2024 lens. Yes, it’s a very white show. Yes, Carrie can be incredibly selfish. Yes, she makes very bad decisions on love. Yes, her views on bisexuality weren’t progressive. Yes, she had an affair. Yes, she stalked her ex-boyfriend’s wife. Big deal! She’s the best, she’s my favorite, she’s thee icon.

Carrie Bradshaw forever.

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