After the clustercuss that was season 1 of Sex and the City revival And Just Like That, we weren’t expecting much from season 2, and thus far, our lowered expectations have been perfectly met, in the sense that we’re only two episodes in and this show is already mooning us with absurdity after absurdity.
However. However. It’s only fair to note when there are good moments in a sea of bewildering ones, if only out of shock that there’s even one good moment. That moment comes at the end of season 2, episode 1, when Carrie steps out of her classic Manhattan apartment to head to the Met Gala in one of the series’ most iconic dresses.
The entire episode, everyone is shedding fur over the Met Gala: who’s going, what they’re wearing, and so on. Carrie ends up enlisting the help of her coworker Jackie’s wife, Smoke, to design a custom dress, but the whole operation goes horribly awry when the designated seamstresses both get the stomach flu. All afternoon, Smoke panics as she fails to put the dress together, until they’re down to the wire and she all but gives up. But then, Carrie gets a revelation as she remembers a very specific dress in her closet that still fits the veiled theme of the ball.
Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Hong Kong Garden” starts playing as we see Carrie unbox her famous wedding dress from the first movie: a dress we once teased for being a gaudy nightmare, but now elicits such strong nostalgic fondness that I nearly shed a tear.
The context is also part of the “magic” of this scene. The last time Carrie wore this dress was pretty traumatic for her, as she was publicly jilted at her own wedding:
To see her enthusiastically give this dress another shot, after all has been said and done, and for it to be a perfect fit for the context of the scene, is some kind of writing magic. Just like in the beginning of the original series, we see Carrie run down her street in heels, and wearing this previously cursed dress, no less.
This is the kind of writing that the show needs more of: tight, interwoven writing that services the original spirit of the show and pays it a respectful homage, instead of just blundering through uncharted territory over and over again. Unfortunately, we may only get one or two more good scenes of this nature (and one will probably go to Samantha by default), but at least we got to give the ol’ wedding rag another spin.
(featured image: Max)
