It's Like I've Always Said: Mr. Big Is Trash
Sex and The City remains one of the most iconic shows of its generation: we talk a lot about the main female characters but much less about the male characters. So here is the portrait of Mr. Big.
By Emma Specter
Brian Ach
I was a teenage girl in the early to mid aughts, which is to say I've been involved in a lot of conversations about which male member of the Sex and the City cast was the dreamiest. These spirited debates rarely encompassed my beloved Steve and instead boiled down to an all-too-predictable Aidan-versus-Big quandary. Now, I'm no Aidan fan—the image of him gleefully eating KFC and refusing to leave the apartment when Carrie wants to party is burned into my brain—but it's time to state it, confidently and without equivocation: Mr. Big is the worst.
I never dreamed this conversation would become relevant again in 2021, but Page Six recently reported on a leak of the Sex and the City reboot script that paints Big in a, well, not-so-flattering light. In the script, Carrie is recently divorced and seemingly not faring so well, telling her friends, "I was taping the podcast, I was washing my hair. Yes, I wasn't eating or sleeping, but at least I felt good about my marriage. Now I'm just one of the wives he was taking care of?"
A character not as nice as it seems...
Leaving aside the horrifying yet extremely predictable revelation that Carrie has a podcast...what the hell, Big? No, we don't know the precise details of why he and Carrie split—for all we know, it was amicable or maybe Carrie screwed up. But this turn of events just activates a Big, fat hatred in me that's been brewing since he coldly told Carrie, "Don't move to Paris for me" way back in season two. (Real heads will remember that a beret-sporting Carrie took the opportunity to hurl a bag of McDonald's at him, and frankly, she was right to do it.)
Big's callous treatment of Carrie over the years is no secret—he left her at the altar, hello!—but that's not the only reason why I feel he's fallen out of favor as the number one Sex and the City dream boyfriend. Sure, way back in 1999, a guy in a suit who did something unexplained off-screen that paid him a ton of money (Lawyer? Banker? I literally have no idea) may have been the dream, but we're 20-plus years beyond that now. The earth is burning, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging around the world, and through it all, guys who look like they probably belonged to a Skull-and-Bones-type secret society with Big in undergrad just keep going to space.
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Carrie Bradshaw and Big in Sex and the City.
I realize that any socialist argument mounted against Mr. Big would also have to work against Carrie, the ultimate commodity fetishist with a closet full of stilettos somehow acquired on a columnist and podcaster's salary. (Actually, there's no way Carrie wouldn't have partnered up with Amazon on the podcast and made big money, but I digress.) What I'm saying is, in 2021, the thought of a man in a tie being repeatedly mean and avoidant while paying for dinner just isn't as sexy as it once was. But what's the modern alternative? Carrie dating a leftist organizer and making a lot of bad puns at various protests around NYC? Maybe we didn't know how good we had it.
This article was first published on British Vogue
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