Since it was announced that AJLT would be coming to a close, fans of the show<\/a> have felt the whirlwind of emotions that usually follow a breakup. (Haven\u2019t we all been in a relationship that we knew deep down was doomed but we still didn\u2019t want to end?) One of the weirdest things about breakups\u2014and why they can often make you feel like you\u2019re losing your mind\u2014is reconciling the beginning with the end. We\u2019re often left asking: \u201cHow could that have turned into this?\u201d And for dedicated Sex and the City fans, that\u2019s what watching AJLT has so often felt like. How did the original show, which so many of us still turn to for comfort and guidance, morph into such a masochistic viewer experience? How did the characters, who once seemed so perfectly rendered, become so wooden? <\/p>\n Ron Galella, Ltd.\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n MORE AND JUST LIKE THAT…<\/p>\n With her absence from AJLT, Samantha excused herself from this slow descent\u2014and I think her legacy will benefit from it. The original SATC gave girls, gays, and theys everywhere a taxonomy through which to categorize themselves\u2014albeit a very white, affluent, metropolitan one. I often describe myself as \u201ca Miranda, with some narcissistic Carrie tendencies\u201d (I\u2019m a writer, after all), but lately I\u2019ve taken to saying \u201cthe old Miranda.\u201d I feel the need to distinguish between the SATC version and the simpering, apologetic AJLT version of her<\/a>. But with Samantha, there is no need to make this distinction. We can still think of her as a whole person.<\/p>\n Due to Cattrall\u2019s long-running beef with SJP and pretty much everyone who was involved in SATC\u2014except stylist Patricia Field\u2014she was not asked<\/a> to be a central part of AJLT. We don\u2019t know what the show\u2019s version of Samantha would have looked like, but the first season of the spin-off was reportedly adapted from the script for the never-made third SATC movie, in which Big also died. And in that script, Samantha reportedly received unwanted nude pictures<\/a> from Miranda\u2019s teenage son, Brady. Instead of having to endure moments like this, she gets to exist in a cultural time capsule, untainted by what happened next.<\/p>\n Of course, the \u201cold Samantha\u201d wasn\u2019t perfect. As one of the more daring, outspoken characters, she\u2019s part of some of SATC\u2019s most poorly aged storylines, including an astonishingly ignorant season 3 episode<\/a> where she dates a Black music mogul. In the first movie, one of Samantha\u2019s main storylines was that she was \u201cfat.\u201d (And don\u2019t even get me started on the second movie.) But despite this, younger audiences have embraced her by posting fan-cam videos<\/a> of the PR maven\u2019s best SATC moments on TikTok.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not surprised by this. Although her lack of sexual boundaries sometimes veered toward concerning, Samantha embodied a form of sex and body positivity that has aged pretty well. Gen Z writer Riann Phillip, who watched SATC for the first time in 2023, thinks that she was ahead of her time. \u201cI had to keep reminding myself that this show first aired in 1998, a pre-app time when casual sex and hook-up culture was still fairly taboo,\u201d she wrote<\/a>, describing Samantha as \u201cunfazed, and proudly f*cking whoever she likes, societal expectations be damned.\u201d <\/p>\n And that\u2019s just it. People often make the mistake of thinking being \u201ca Samantha\u201d is all about sex, when, really, her character is grounded in shunning gendered conventions and being much less conflicted about it than her peers, because she knows what she wants. We all have a friend who we wish we could be more like, because they move through life with determination, seemingly unbothered about what people think; they\u2019re \u201ca Samantha,\u201d no matter their body count.<\/a> <\/p>\n It\u2019s also easy to forget that Samantha had a lot of heart. She\u2019s the type of ride-or-die friend who would show up to your book launch hours after getting a chemical peel, even if her face looked like beef carpaccio. And in season 6, when chemotherapy took her hair and diminished her sex drive\u2014her armor\u2014she found a deeper emotional connection with Smith, displaying a vulnerability that she had always resisted. Throughout the show, Samantha\u2019s detachment from what women are \u201csupposed\u201d to do often meant that she gave great life advice. In fact, some of her observations were extremely astute, like when she told a disgruntled Smith, \u201cFirst come the gays, then the girls, then the industry<\/a>,\u201d a savvy proverb that condensed decades of writing about queer culture\u2019s relationship with the mainstream into one neat line. <\/p>\n HBO<\/p>\n But if the end of AJLT feels like a breakup, then fans are much further along in the grieving process when it comes to Samantha. Since the spin-off show debuted in 2021, we\u2019ve had to come to terms with the fact that we weren\u2019t going to see her again\u2014until Cattrall\u2019s blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it cameo<\/a>, which she insisted was a one-off<\/a>. And like any breakup where time is a healer, that distance has given us more perspective on her. One day, we might look back at AJLT with a similar nostalgic fondness, but right now it\u2019s difficult to look past the show\u2019s wasted potential.<\/a><\/p>\n And speaking of breakups, in the first SATC movie, when Samantha ends her relationship with Smith, she tells him, \u201cI\u2019m just going to say the thing you\u2019re not supposed to say.\u201d (That she loves him, but she loves herself more.) If I were to sum up the core difference between the original show and AJLT, that would be it: SATC\u2019s characters said the thing you\u2019re not supposed to say, over and over again. Even though some of these moments aged poorly, the underlying honesty did not\u2014especially when compared to the more tentative \u201cteaching moments\u201d that defined AJLT, where it felt like everyone was always on their best behavior.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how Samantha\u2014who was famously unapologetic and uncompromising\u2014would have coped in AJLT, where the characters spent so much time repenting for the franchise\u2019s previous chapters. I suspect Kim Cattrall realized that the best way to respect her legacy, and that of Sex and the City, was to let Samantha Jones stay there. In other words: \u201cI love you, but I love me more.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"samantha](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/kim-cattrall-0-1-689e5090bbedf.jpg\" "\\"samantha")
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