Sex and The City has been a part of my life since college. I remember being gifted the fuzzy pink DVD set of the full series before I moved into my sophomore year dorm. (Remember DVDs?!) My roommate and I would sit in bed on rainy afternoons when we would skip class and devour the lives of these four women — their cosmos, their shoes, and their sex lives. It was a foundational text, one that eventually inspired my own career as a sex and relationships writer. To this day, I find myself turning to the original series for comfort, like a warm blanket. I’m currently in the middle of my 10th rewatch of the series, and this rewatch feels even more personal to me because I am now the exact age Carrie was at the start of the series.

All that throat-clearing would make you think I was excited for the reboot And Just Like That… But I wasn’t. I was instantly skeptical and incredibly cynical. I’d be burned by the frivolity of the films (not to mention the not-so-veiled racism of the second film) and just thought there was nothing left for these characters to do. How many more times can we watch Carrie strap on her Manolos and twirl around New York? What are we even doing here without Samantha?