HBO Max
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My therapist mentioned that Che Diaz can’t harm me.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t assist however surprise, how lengthy will it take for these scars, this trauma inflicted by the indeniable worst character on tv, to heal?
I'm an And Simply Like That… apologist. Sure, there are moments of HBO Max’s Intercourse and the Metropolis sequel sequence which can be completely mortifying to look at, however I discover there to be some verisimilitude to that. There’s no approach these characters would adapt to a brand new technology and period of social mores with out teetering of their stilettos making an attempt to navigate issues.
Is that completely different from the aspirational and horny vibes of the unique SATC? In fact. However in a nice piece for Vox this week, author Alex Abad-Santos underscored how that is perhaps the purpose. The sequence “finds the demented comedy in life’s humiliations,” he writes. The reboot “isn’t nearly being fabulous. It’s about reckoning along with your obsolescence.”
Be that as it could, the sequence is nothing if not polarizing. For everybody delighting within the indefatigable charms of Sarah Jessica Parker every week, there are those that appear to be personally offended by the sequence’ lapse in high quality. (I believe it’s gotten higher and higher every week. Alternatively, The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, who's an authority on the legacy of the unique sequence, tweeted, “Okay, I gave this SATC sequel 5.5 eps. I’m out. It’s not fun-bad, it’s simply unhealthy.”
But in these divisive instances—in all issues associated to Carrie Bradshaw or in any other case—there may be consolation in understanding that there's one factor that appears to have united us all: a passionate hatred for the Che Diaz character on And Simply Like That…
There isn't a exaggerating how unbearable this character is. To name them unwatchable is just not hyperbole. “Cringing” is just not a powerful sufficient verb to explain what the physique reflexively does when they're on display screen, like a bodily protection mechanism. It’s extra like an elaborate tuck and roll off the sofa adopted by a military crawl to cover underneath the mattress earlier than letting out a high-pitched scream of “No!” just like the one I discovered to do from Oprah throughout an episode of her discuss present on find out how to shield your self from being kidnapped.
Che, performed by Gray’s Anatomy alum Sara Ramirez, is among the new characters added to the sequence in a woke panic, meant to handle the unique run’s cardinal sin of unforgivable whiteness—an absence of variety that might in fact have to be rectified in any form of reboot or revival. A number of of those characters are actually fascinating; I’m loving the friendship being shaped between Carrie and Sarita Choudhury’s Seema Patel, a dynamic that's beginning to fill the void of the Carrie-Samantha friendship, if not essentially the unapologetic raunchiness.
Each second Che Diaz is on display screen, nevertheless, is completely mortifying.
They're Carrie’s gender nonbinary, pansexual boss, who employed her to cohost a podcast about gender and sexuality. It’s really a shrewd inventive determination to introduce a personality that forces these privileged, multimillionaire white boomers to fumble their approach right into a progressive mindset.
It’s good to see how informal, but critical Carrie is about taking Che’s identification at face worth and getting used to utilizing completely different pronouns. That Che would supply a mirror via which Charlotte begins to know her personal daughter is type of stunning. That they might be the catalyst for Miranda’s sexual awakening was telegraphed a mile away. The storyline is nice, although the Che stuff itself is sort of inconceivable to look at.
How unlucky that a character like that is so heinous. Nobody desires to single out the one new LGBTQ+ character on a sequence because the worst. But Che Diaz leaves us no alternative.
There needs to be dialog about gender, intercourse, and queerness in a contemporary Intercourse and the Metropolis telling. And it needs to be jarring. It needs to be destabilizing for these girls. It must also make sense, and be delivered in a approach that remotely resembles how an precise human talks or behaves.
Whether or not it’s the content material of their podcast or all the pieces that's mentioned in what have change into the 4 most harrowing phrases within the final 12 months of tv—“Che Diaz’s comedy live performance”—no matter wokeness, enlightenment, or edginess that's purported to be occurring lands with all of the grace of me tripping over my laptop computer charger wire whereas getting as much as get one other glass of wine on a Friday night time.
It’s not provocative, and definitely not clever. In reality, it comes off as if a smarmy far-right pundit or creator was satirizing or parodying these conversations and the left’s wokeness dependancy. That’s how broad and obtuse it's.
The interactions between Che and Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda are laborious to look at. That’s not due to any discomfort with the queer attraction being explored. It’s as a result of Che is unhinged. The shotgunning of weed off a vape pen. The fingerbanging in Carrie’s kitchen whereas Carrie pees her mattress. The instruction to Miranda to “DM me” if she desires to hang around once more. It’s laborious to place into phrases the vibe, aside from to say the vibe is unsettling. Each time somebody calls Miranda “Rambo,” an angel loses their wings.
Blessedly, Che solely seems in flashback to the aforementioned kitchen fingering on this week’s episode, however their presence looms massive because the catalyst for a critical dialogue between Miranda, Charlotte and Carrie about what Miranda is doing and the way this affair may explode her life. It’s superbly acted. It’s one of the best scene of the episode. It’s all we may ask for, after weathering these final six weeks of And Simply Like That…: speaking about Che, however not having to listen to from Che.
Che and Miranda on And Simply Like That...
HBO Max
If, like me, you have got the good misfortune of being unable to take away your eyeballs out of your Twitter timeline—it’s a illness—then you definately’ve seen that I'm not alone in my ideas about Che Diaz.
For the previous few weeks, even on days when a brand new episode of And Simply Like That… hasn’t dropped, there’s been a continuous barrage of posts dragging the character for filth, whether or not it’s evaluating them to Omicron or illustrating the fear one feels anytime they introduce themselves on their podcast: “Hey! It’s Che Diaz!”
The place does Che Diaz rank within the pantheon of horrible TV characters? I’m undecided they’re as unhealthy as Ellis Boyd from Smash or Dana Brody from Homeland. They may give April from Gilmore Women a run for her cash. They’re no less than as annoying as Ani from 13 Causes Why. Is that this a Cousin Oliver/Brady Bunch sequence killer? It’s too early to inform. That, really, is the disappointing factor right here.
There’s one thing admirable within the messiness of this sequence—and applicable for a bunch of girls unmoored as life’s circumstances drive them to determine, but once more, who they're and what they need from the world, to not point out find out how to exist in it because it adjustments round them. But from what I can inform, the largest speaking factors up to now haven’t been about that, however about Peloton, the disturbing accusations towards Chris Noth, and the way insufferable Che Diaz is. It might be a disgrace if the sequence doesn’t get one other season as a result of this stuff have overshadowed any true examination of the present.
And similar to that, regardless of Che Diaz, right here we're defending this sequence once more.