Ever since And Just Like That…, the Sex and the City reboot series, premiered in December of 2021, fans of the original show have had mixed feelings about the whole thing. Was this show really necessary? (Yes, it was.) Will it be the same without Kim Cattrall? (No, it isn’t.) Do women in their 50s and 60s really gossip and talk about sex and relationships with their friends over Cosmopolitans like women in their 20s and 30s do? (Yes, of course, they do!) Since the show aired its first episode, the show’s fans seem to be in conflict about pretty much all of it. However, there’s one thing we all wholeheartedly agree on: Che Díaz is the worst.
Okay, for the uninitiated in AJLT lore, here’s a bit of context: Che Díaz is Carrie’s podcast co-host on season one. During Big’s (who I always forget has an actual name — John James Preston!) funeral, Miranda has a run-in with Che, where she confronts them for having shared their marihuana with Brady, Miranda’s very underage son. Once the two have a formal introduction (where Miranda realizes she yelled at Carrie’s boss), they begin a flirtationship that eventually leads to Miranda declaring her love for Che, initiating an illicit affair with them, and eventually asking her husband Steve for a divorce.
For many people, their dislike for Che Díaz stems precisely from this: they are the catalyst for Miranda’s apparent mid-life crisis and for all the hurt she causes so many of the characters we had grown to love in the original Sex and the City. The problem isn’t Miranda suddenly deciding to explore her sexuality (I’m pretty sure we all thought she was a bit queer-coded at the beginning of the original SATC; there was even that one episode where her boss thinks she’s a lesbian and she kinda goes along with it). The problem is Miranda became the very thing she heavily criticized her best friends for all those years ago — a woman throwing her life away for a love (or lust) interest. I’m not here to dump on Miranda, however annoyed I am at what the AJLT writers did to her character. Rather I’d just like to point out that she basically got herself her very own Mr. Big.
Yup, Che Díaz is Miranda Hobbes’ Mr. Big. While Che is a comedian (and I use this word very, very generously) and Mr. Big was some wealthy businessman-type, the way both of them treat their partners is a bit too familiar. It consistently feels like Che lacks even the tiniest bit of responsibility — and that feels like it’s a conscious choice they’re making, rather than something they are not emotionally equipped to provide (I can almost hear them say something like “providing comfort and safety in relationships is ‘too heteronormative’”). The way Che consistently dismisses Miranda’s feelings, need for connection, and reassurance — despite knowing that she blew up her life to try to figure things out with them — never ceases to amaze me.
And that’s the thing, I highly dislike Che not because they’re queer, but because of that fuckboy (fuckthey? Fuckthem? What’s the gender-neutral word for this?!), “I owe you nothing” attitude and their gives-you-breadcrumbs-desgguised-as-love views on relationships. We’ve all been there, at one point or another. Hell, all of Miranda’s friends had that, too and she never lost the chance to let them know exactly what she thought about those relationships. For Miranda, it’s Che, for Carrie, it was Mr. Big, and for Charlotte, it was Trey (and for me, it was an e-bike loving stand up who made more promises than he could keep — and who honestly, should’ve just stayed as a fun summer weekend anecdote).
Maybe, just maybe though, the collective hate Che Díaz is getting is partly due to the way that Sara Ramírez manages to artfully (and annoyingly!) portray the worst of our past relationships (or almost relationships); they manage to remind us of that one person who hurt us so badly that we wish we could forget (and maybe that’s also why we’re mad at New Miranda, too; because we can see how this is going to end and it won’t be pretty).
Whether we were Carries, Charlottes, Samanthas, or Mirandas (I was always a Charlotte, by the way), many of us can relate to Old Miranda’s vibe: stand up for yourself, don’t take any nonsense from men, be a badass in a “man’s” industry, and at the same time be a loving mom, friend, and partner — the woman truly had it all! We managed to see ourselves in that “winning at life, don’t need a man, but still kinda want one” thing that Old Miranda had going on, so seeing someone as annoying and unfunny as Che Díaz crush that part of her feels personal. And to have it be a Latinx character? Yeah, that makes it even worse, in my opinion.
Yes, we love representation — and yes, I know Latinx jerks, Latinx N/B queer people, and Latinx N/B queer jerks exist! — but it’s also true that the tiny bit of Latinx representation we do have on platforms as big as HBO or MAX is already riddled with negative stereotypes. Did we really need the first Latinx main character in the SATC franchise to be such a queer cliché? Are we really supposed to applaud representation like this?
Che Díaz is more of that breadcrumbs-disguised-as-love thing that fuckboys and fucktheys are so damn good at. I’m done accepting the bare minimum as something valid — in both relationships and media representation. I know my worth and it’s about time Latinx folks start asking for what we deserve: better partners and better Latinx media representation.
