
When I told my younger sister I was writing an opinion piece on Binge’s hit series And Just Like That, she said – and I quote – “I feel like only people your age care about that."
Somebody call an ambulance; I’ve been shot through the heart.
The irony is that when I was younger, I said the same thing to a friend about AJLT’s predecessor, Sex and the City. When SATC launched in 1998, I wasn’t interested in the show at all. The four main characters – Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) – were in their 30s, living in New York and leading very glamorous lives.
I was a 16-year-old high school student living in the Islands. Not only were these characters not relatable, the show wasn’t even on our one (yes, ONE) TV channel in Fiji.
Watch the trailer for And Just Like That. Post continues below.
I came to SATC late, through repeat episodes that ran sometime between 10pm and 12am after I had moved to Australia. To be perfectly frank, I can’t remember what happened in most of the episodes. But I loved Samantha. I liked Miranda and most of the time, I liked Carrie. I tolerated Charlotte.
Even if you haven’t watched a single episode of SATC, I’d hazard a guess you would know what it’s about. The series broke new ground when it came to women’s exploration of sex and sexual pleasure. Suddenly talking about sex openly was ok. It was liberating.
Yet in the intervening years since SATC's final episode in 2004, critics have asked: “Where was the diversity?” It’s a fair point, especially considering how culturally diverse New York is. It’s a point that developer and principal writer Michael Patrick King addresses pretty much from the get-go in the sequel AJLT.
The introduction of new characters Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), Lisa Todd Wexley aka LTW (Nicole Ari Parker), and Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) has been a very welcome addition to the AJLT universe. Not only are these characters ethnically diverse, there is representation in terms of culture, gender, sexuality, and identity. There is a clear sense from King about wanting to right any past wrongs.