Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of the Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Sex and the City. There's a show
Speaker 1: that delivered on its promise plenty of sex in one
Speaker 1: of the most exciting cities of them all, New York.
Speaker 1: The appeal of the show was escapist fun, dates, designer shoes, cocktails,
Speaker 1: frivolous sex, grounded in something bigger, the modern woman's search
Speaker 1: for meaning in a life where everything was optional, men, marriage, children,
Speaker 1: and maybe even love. Then came two movies that gave
Speaker 1: fans a creeping sense something had been lost from the
Speaker 1: magic formula, and now a whole new series that confirms it.
Speaker 1: It's called and Just like that. Jessica Hallerin is actually
Speaker 1: the Australian Chief sportswriter, but she's here today in a
Speaker 1: different capacity to talk to us about Sex and the City.
Speaker 1: And just like that, just you are our resident megafan
Speaker 1: and also our resident critic. I guess tell me when
Speaker 1: Sex and the City first came out. You and I
Speaker 1: were in our early twenties. We were out having a
Speaker 1: lot of sex and drinking a lot of cocktails and
Speaker 1: having fabulous lives, just like the girls in Manhattan. Why
Speaker 1: was the original Sex in the City so important culturally.
Speaker 2: It was just this sort of moment in time it
Speaker 2: being said in New York.
Speaker 1: The women all looked amazing.
Speaker 2: It was just this perfect sort of form of escapism
Speaker 2: I found. I'd go to a girlfriend's house and we
Speaker 2: all sit around the TV and drink a ten dollar
Speaker 2: bottle of wine, and.
Speaker 1: It was a ritual. Everybody was watching it. Have you
Speaker 1: seen the New York Times style section? You know, I
Speaker 1: can't handle hard news before noon. There's a beautiful man
Speaker 1: downtown selling beautiful furniture. We're going Samford a whole afternoon
Speaker 1: plan with Australian burg. I'm not just going to drop
Speaker 1: everything to go downtown to see some cute guy. He's straight.
Speaker 1: I get my purse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a great range of characters too. Even though
Speaker 1: it was called Sex in the City, their attitudes to
Speaker 1: sex ranged from the relatively prudish to the completely liberated.
Speaker 1: And they were a new kind of iteration of the
Speaker 1: working woman, weren't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, And everybody would sort of sit around and go, oh,
Speaker 2: are you a Carrie or are you a Miranda? Or
Speaker 2: you're a Samantha, And it really became a topic of conversation,
Speaker 2: and they were having these conversations on television that we'd
Speaker 2: really never heard women speak about before.
Speaker 1: You see, this is why I don't date. The men
Speaker 1: out there are free. Well, that's completely unfair. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: If a man is over thirty and single, there's something
Speaker 2: wrong with him.
Speaker 1: It's still winning. They're being weeded out from propagating the species. Okay,
Speaker 1: what about us, We're just choosing. It was a really
Speaker 1: groundbreaking series, and it's hit the tone I feel like
Speaker 1: for the early two thousands in some ways, and became
Speaker 1: this moment for women in general. It changed fashion too,
Speaker 1: didn't it. I remember before that I wore little suits
Speaker 1: from Sports Girl to work, and afterwards it was like, well,
Speaker 1: you can wear a dress and sneakers and a denim
Speaker 1: jacket and still be fashionable and professional in fact more so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I remember carry wearing these big flowers at
Speaker 2: one point, and then everybody started wearing the flowers, I
Speaker 2: think from Milana Hill here.
Speaker 1: It looked ridiculous that I was mostlessly mocked for attempting
Speaker 1: a flower in my hair once when I was in
Speaker 1: my early twenties by one of our stuff. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: then there were a couple of movies. The TV series
Speaker 1: ended in two thousand and four, and then twenty and
Speaker 1: eight and twenty ten there were movies for me. That's
Speaker 1: when Six and the City started to go downhill. The
Speaker 1: first movie I liked. I thought that was well put together.
Speaker 1: The storylines were incredibly believable. But I remember when Sex
Speaker 1: and the City, the second movie came out, it was
Speaker 1: just getting widely panned and I thought, oh, it couldn't
Speaker 1: be that bad. It was terrible. It was absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Lies of Manali Caming.
Speaker 1: I remember watching, going, what are we watching?
Speaker 2: Little Food?
Speaker 1: They went to the Middle East on an ill fated
Speaker 1: kind of girls trip. I vividly remember a scene in
Speaker 1: a marketplace where Samantha was kind of getting pursued by
Speaker 1: sortied locals, and it just felt kind of racist.
Speaker 2: It just went from being this cleverly written, tightly written
Speaker 2: franchise to being nothing but a Dog's Breakfast sort of
Speaker 2: mash up of a musical with just some.
Speaker 1: Really poor storylines. And I don't think it's for covered since.
Speaker 1: So in twenty twenty one, and just like that, that
Speaker 1: mood two huge excitement. You know, it was really wonderful
Speaker 1: to see these women now in their late fifties returning
Speaker 1: to the screen. But from the very first episode there
Speaker 1: was disappointment, wasn't there yeah, where we have to go
Speaker 1: back to?
Speaker 2: Here is this sort of breakdown off screen between Sarah
Speaker 2: Jessica Parker and King Katrell. One of the main characters,
Speaker 2: Samantha Jones and her not returning to this franchise and
Speaker 2: the number of issues sort of bubbling around it, and
Speaker 2: as to why she's not coming back. Some of the
Speaker 2: things that have been floated is money. The other reasons
Speaker 2: was she felt like, why bring Samantha back? Can't we
Speaker 2: just let these characters go? But I think the biggest
Speaker 2: problem with this franchise is no Samantha Jones.
Speaker 1: I am heart. I'm also demanding, stubborn, self sufficient and
Speaker 1: always right in bed, at the office and everywhere else.
Speaker 1: They've attempted to replace Samantha with a couple of new
Speaker 1: additions to the quartet, a university professor called Nia and
Speaker 1: a woman called Lisa Todd Wexley, both women of color
Speaker 1: who kind of joined the group on the fringes. The
Speaker 1: Nia character has disappeared after season one of and just
Speaker 1: like that, whatever, Man, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, Nia just disappeared, Jay disappeared, Miranda's lover. I
Speaker 2: think what is happening here is that Michael Patrick King,
Speaker 2: the show runner, the original creator, the chief writer of
Speaker 2: this is bulldozing ahead with his vision without really stopping
Speaker 2: to listen to what the people are saying out there,
Speaker 2: which is they are incredibly disappointed that characters that we
Speaker 2: originally loved and adored, like say, Miranda, has completely departed
Speaker 2: from who she is.
Speaker 1: She's a lesbian now yes some of the time.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And she's an alcoholic yes, it was right. Maybe you
Speaker 1: do have a drinking problem. I don't have a drinking problem.
Speaker 1: I just got a little carried away. You are married,
Speaker 1: and you just had sex in my kitchen. I'm unhappy.
Speaker 1: I'm unhappy. Okay.
Speaker 2: Recently, there was an episode, which is a party episode,
Speaker 2: which involved Miranda becoming almost like a caricature of herself.
Speaker 2: She was a bit of a clown. She was wearing
Speaker 2: this silver jumpsuit and she was overseeing this party for Charlotte,
Speaker 2: and it really didn't feel like Miranda, and I felt
Speaker 2: kind of embarrassed for her, and actually.
Speaker 1: Felt embarrassed for the show. Yeah, this is a character who,
Speaker 1: throughout sex and the city was the hard nosed corporate
Speaker 1: lawyer who treated her puppy dogish kind of boyfriend quite
Speaker 1: meanly and didn't really need anyone, and she was hilarious.
Speaker 1: Now she's extreme, needy, very insecure. She's given up corporate
Speaker 1: law to work for something that looks like Human Rights Watch.
Speaker 1: She's lost everything that made her interesting, hasn't she Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has.
Speaker 2: And so then it also leads to very weird interactions
Speaker 2: with other characters. And most recently, there was a very
Speaker 2: contentious scene at the end of an episode which involved
Speaker 2: Carrie and Miranda having a fight where Miranda is challenging
Speaker 2: Carrie about her relationship with the writer downstairs, who is
Speaker 2: a potential new love interest, and it just turns into
Speaker 2: Carry becoming this horrible, depressed, mean girl. And it was interesting.
Speaker 2: I was listening to a podcast with Michael Patrick King.
Speaker 1: Hello Lovers, Welcome back to and just like that the
Speaker 1: Writer's Room the Official.
Speaker 2: And he described that scene as one of his favorite
Speaker 2: scenes ever, and I just was like, this is the problem.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite scenes of all time. Carrie and
Speaker 1: Miranda in the kitchen. I've just been reading the entire
Speaker 1: party scene.
Speaker 2: Can we talk?
Speaker 1: We're not enjoying it.
Speaker 2: I'm now just watching for the clothes, which also aren't
Speaker 2: as good.
Speaker 1: They aren't as good.
Speaker 2: I mean, Pat Field's not there, so that's also another
Speaker 2: loss for the franchise.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Did we ask for storylines about age related
Speaker 1: medical conditions. I went back to the original Sex in
Speaker 1: the City and watched the whole six seasons. I'd never
Speaker 1: really focused on them properly. I hadn't watched it all
Speaker 1: the way through, and I thought, I wonder if actually
Speaker 1: our sensibilities have changed as a society and it was
Speaker 1: always kind of bad. Actually it was not bad. It
Speaker 1: has aged really really well. Apart from the lack of
Speaker 1: diverse original series, it was great. It wasn't kind of
Speaker 1: silly and confected like it is now. Yeah, silly and confected.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, people are now just hate
Speaker 1: watching it, right, Like, I haven't found anybody that's gone,
Speaker 1: oh no, it's fantastic, isn't it. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I find confronting about it is seeing these women older,
Speaker 1: And you know, this is my issue. I struggle to
Speaker 1: see the bad plastic surgery they've had, the kind of
Speaker 1: excessive filler. Although maybe I would also struggle if they
Speaker 1: hadn't had any plastic surgery or filler. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is like internalized misfortuning. You know what, do you
Speaker 1: think their faces are significantly changed, all except Miranda.
Speaker 2: I think it's really hard to move on from the
Speaker 2: early two thousands. I just don't think society has been
Speaker 2: set up for us to actually look at aging faces
Speaker 2: like we did. I mean, you know you and I
Speaker 2: also grew up with the Golden Girls, where forty year
Speaker 2: olds look like sixty years. But on the whole, I
Speaker 2: think the way that their addressing aging is interesting but
Speaker 2: also uncomfortable. Right, The beauty of Sex and the City
Speaker 2: was we had these four women living in New York,
Speaker 2: living sort of these fantasy lives. But the fantasy has
Speaker 2: gone from and just like that, but it's probably become
Speaker 2: a bit too real in some ways. The closest you
Speaker 2: got in Sex and the City to a medical issue
Speaker 2: was when Carrie's diaphram got stuck and Samantha had to
Speaker 2: retrieve it for her.
Speaker 1: Now and just like that, there's bowel cancer and prostate
Speaker 1: cancer and people dropping dead and adult and happies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not very sexy. This episode of the Front was
Speaker 1: hosted by me Claire Harvey and co produced with Jasper Leigue,
Speaker 1: who edited the episode and also wrote our theme. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us on the front this week. Our team
Speaker 1: also includes Kristen Amiot, Leat Sammerglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton,
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Coombs.