Looking at Miranda’s hair color, I couldn’t help but wonder … what would happen if we joined the other big red?
HBO’s groundbreaking comedy Sex and the City is coming to Netflix in early April, according to Variety. The move follows licensing deals that brought other HBO series, including Insecure and Six Feet Under, to the platform. While it may not be the first HBO series to go to Netflix, SATC is certainly the most iconic HBO series to go over to Big Red. There’s a precedent for SATC being syndicated — on networks including E! and TBS — but previous syndicated runs censored swears, nudity, and Steve telling Miranda that she had a bat in her cave. Now, SATC will be accessible outside HBO in its full glory for the first time.
The legacy of SATC never truly left the discourse (thank you, Che Diaz), but a deal with Netflix feels different. HBO is raunchy, and Netflix’s biggest hits — Stranger Things, Wednesday, or even its licensed programming like Suits — aren’t. They aim to appeal to as many audiences as possible while alienating nobody. SATC famously alienates many audiences, having faced claims of anti-feminism and overconsumerism.
If and when Sex and the City hits the top ten on Netflix, we need to brace ourselves for bigger-than-Girls-level discourse. SATC, as boundary-breaking TV, purposefully and inevitably pushed buttons — some of which inevitably resulted in unintentional cringe. Watch Carrie Bradshaw attempt to talk to transgender women, if you so dare. How will that fare in a world where Gen Z is famously anti-sex and audiences require the points made to be underlined again and again? And isn’t that discourse just going to be the same regurgitated points that were already made in the ’90s when it first aired, and again when the movies came out, and again when And Just Like That … began? Maybe we should all just fall out a window instead.