Why Can't We Help But Wonder?

On watching Sex and the City again & again

I am endlessly interested in the vast media landscape, specifically how it challenges our belief systems, comments on love and aims (and often still fails) to diversify. It accomplishes all of the above, multiplied exponentially by the sheer number of streaming platforms and somehow, it can’t get over Carrie B. smoking over a laptop in a rather uncomfortable position and neither can I.

Do we return to Sex and the City because of the imagery? The Jimmy Choo colors and skyscraper shimmers hooking that part of our brains that makes the “Ooh” and “Aah” sound escape our lips.

Do we watch for comfort? We won’t know what that guy from the coffee shop will do with our phone number–even though he got that for free!—but we can rely on Samantha’s double entendres.

Or is there a chance we watch because we’re better for it? Beyond comfort, do I rewatch this particular late ‘90s/early ‘00s television series because it inspires me to write more, wear what I want and explore loving different types of people?

With the return of And Just Like That…, I surmised the most effective way to explore this phenomenon is by polling the very people watching the show. Some for the first time, one for the tenth, a handful for the third. I spoke to everyone digitally, but it had the air of a diner meet-up, decked out in Patricia Field’s newest finds.