I could see it coming from a mile away, particularly after her steamy extramarital encounter a few episodes earlier with Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) in Carrie Bradshaw’s kitchen, all while Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) was in the next room recovering from hip surgery. After Carrie dressed Miranda down for hooking up with Carrie’s boss instead of helping her friend as she’d promised, Miranda blurted out “I’m unhappy!” (HBO Max and CNN share a parent company.)
Nixon’s performance was stunning in this scene, the most well-written, honest moment of the whole reboot for me. With her voice catching, Miranda confesses to feeling trapped in her marriage to Steve (David Eigenberg), telling Carrie, “I don’t want to be this person anymore, I want to be something more. This isn’t enough.”
Fast forward a few months, and Miranda and Che have begun sleeping together regularly. When faced with the prospect of losing Che, who refuses to be a “homewrecker,” Miranda decides to ask Steve for a divorce. Alarm bells blare as we watch Miranda blow up her life to put all her relationship eggs in Che’s basket — Che professes love for Miranda but has told her that they “don’t do traditional” relationships.
Still, if we’re to take Miranda at her word, she hasn’t been happy in her marriage for a long time. Regardless of how Miranda’s storyline with Che plays out, as a 45-year-old woman who’s also been married for over a decade, I think she made the right decision. While the original show, “Sex and the City,” ended with Miranda, Carrie and Charlotte finding their true loves, “happily ever after” is never guaranteed in real life, and it felt good to see that reality be acknowledged so openly by a character known and loved by so many TV viewers.
However, being a feminist and knowing what you want doesn’t mean your feelings can’t change. Miranda’s cheating isn’t payback for Steve’s infidelity; the reality is that it has nothing to do with him. It’s about Miranda and how she wants to live the rest of her life. Unfortunately, Steve is a casualty — and that’s how real-life breakups often play out.
What’s so wrong with ditching ‘happily ever after’?
The problem is that “happily ever after” is a fantasy of forever that depends on unrealistic notions of complete stasis within a marriage. It’s still commonly reinforced in rom-coms and related TV shows (like the original SATC), but it doesn’t account for feelings that evolve over time or acknowledge that change is one of life’s only constants.
Of course, one need only look at how common divorce is to confirm this is true. There is a lot of misunderstanding around the term “divorce rate,” which refers only to the annual rate of divorce in a given place and not to how many marriages ultimately end in divorce.
It makes complete sense to me, as someone who has been married for 13 years, that Miranda and Steve could have grown apart, stopped having sex and begun to want different things. It’s clear that Miranda still loves Steve but, as she told Carrie, she wants more from her romantic relationships, while Steve seems content with the status quo.
My views are also certainly colored by the fact that I was a child of divorce. In fact, I have no memories of my parents as a couple and it’s difficult for me to imagine them as such. I never believed in “happily ever after” and never assumed my own marriage would last forever. I still don’t, and admit to being surprised by our longevity!
But marriage is hard and filled with ups and downs, and that’s even before kids come into the picture. I make a regular calculation about whether the good outweighs the bad, and the balance shifts over time. And if the outcome is ever divorce, that won’t mean the marriage wasn’t worth having.
Seeing more of my own peers get divorced in recent years has reinforced for me that although not free from pain, divorce can be a positive development, particularly for women who don’t feel fulfilled in their partnerships. This is why, whenever I know a friend really wanted out of their marriage, I congratulate them on their divorce; I don’t assume any announcement of divorce is necessarily a sad one.
Say what you want, this show is turning sex and gender upside down
Both of these actors have intimate experience with the storyline they’re portraying — which makes the negative public reaction to it that much more disappointing to me. As a bisexual woman (who, unlike Miranda, came out before I was married), I loved Miranda and Che’s sex scene — it felt amazing to see two non-male, queer actors having sex on a high-profile show.
While I agree with many fans that Steve has been sidelined in “And Just Like That” and that he comes off as kind of an “old fart” — especially because in “Sex and the City,” he was an ardent lover — I also saw Steve’s lack of interest in sex as a refreshing challenge of a gendered stereotype.
As we move toward the season finale of “And Just Like That,” I suspect Miranda’s about to have a rude awakening about the fact that Che is not interested in monogamy. I did wonder why Miranda never considered asking Steve about the possibility of an open marriage before jumping to divorce; after all, Che mistakenly assumed Miranda was engaging in ethical non-monogamy.
But there’s no turning back with Steve now, and it will be interesting to see how Miranda reflects on her decision once things likely flame out with Che. I can only hope that the writers, following Miranda’s confession about how unhappy she had been for years, will not have her run back to Steve to try and get him back.
In a larger sense, we should remember that fictitious couples theoretically live on after the end of the movie or show. Perhaps if we got reboots of the most beloved rom-coms (like one of my all-time favorite movies, “When Harry Met Sally,” or a recent show like “Insecure”), we’d find our favorite couples in similar predicaments as Miranda and Steve.