I LOVED this show when it aired- I was teens/twenties. Everyone I knew, male and female, was obsessed by it. And I actually really enjoyed the first film, but the second? Fucking hell that was bad: Badly acted, badly written, no subtlety at all and culturally insensitive (actually scrap that, it was just racist) and islamaphobic. I’m not surprised KC didn’t want to come back after she was made to say the line (re: the rich Dutch guy or whoever he was) “he’s Lawrence of my Labia”. Whatever they paid her was not enough.
But as for the show now- even the very best of it (that was series 3/4 kind of time)- it’s impossible for me to watch now. I did a rewatch with my best friend when we were around 27 and it had been off air for about five years (just before the second film came out actually) and it still held up. I sat down to rewatch it again around five years later thinking “this’ll be a nice treat” and I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get past about episode five of season one. I hated all of the characters, thought everyone in it was a whiny prick or a sociopath and every line made me cringe myself inside out. The only thing that changed between the rewatches was me having a baby, so I suspect it becomes unwatchable once you’re a proper adult (and out-mature Carrie, as the eyes and ears of the narrative). Lots of my formally diehard SATC fan friends (turned mothers) agree, we’ve talked about this at length.
As for Mr. Big, hot AF but entirely mad, she should have kicked his arse into touch after he married Natasha and then made Carrie his mistress, never mind a decade later when he literally jilted her at the alter of the Manhattan society wedding of the year. It was beyond unbelievable that she would have come back for more of that. Not that any of her other boyfriends were much better: Aiden: sulky little boy who was weird about his dog; The Russian: 173 years old; Vaughn: the lad who’s mum was an over-involved sex therapist and named her daughters after Salinger characters; Jeremy: the High School sweetheart who was on lithium; Berger: whose only fleshed-out character trait was “is mediocre white man and angry about it”.
In my opinion there were two clear winners out of the men she dated and she should have either married the guy who lived with his parents in the pent house and whose weed she stole or the guy who got balsamic vinegar in his stye and then was knocked off his chair by a pigeon.