“I’m a try-sexual. I’ll try anything once,” winks Samantha Jones at the brunch table, while Carrie Bradshaw sits and judges a bisexual guy she’s going out with, and — cue gasp — says, “I don’t even think bisexuality exists. I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown.” Oh, Bradshaw, the number of reasons you’d have given to woke Twitter to cancel you today are more than the number of cosmopolitans you’ve had.

Sex And The City was the toast of the ’90s, and for a moment there, everyone thought they wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw, loitering around New York, cigarette in hand, in Manolos, hailing cabs, and paying their fare with the salary of writing a column. She’s supposed to be the ultimate guide to what’s new in sex, dating, and relationships. But anyone who has revisited the series in the last decade, to say the least, realises that Bradshaw is actually the opposite. She’s judgmental, she’s whiny, and she is absolutely, really, honestly not progressive, or sex positive. And more so than not, she’s the poster child for daddy issues, and not in a good way.

While Bradshaw is the worst of the lot, Miranda and Charlotte feature somewhere in the middle, and the best is, hands down, Samantha Jones. If I had to describe Samantha in one word, it would be unapologetic. A self-made public relations executive who can buy her own Birkin, and can ask anyone who tries to judge her to go fuck themselves. She runs her life, she owns her life, and compared to the other three, she has a life. Breaking the stereotype of “let the guy make the first move”, Jones has taken home every man she wants, and has sent them packing when she’s done. They called it “having sex like a man”, I call it a woman’s guide to doing exactly what she wants, men no bar.

You know what gets my goat, though? Despite being so fundamentally different from her friends, Jones sat across that table for six years, patiently listening to them cry about the same shit every Saturday. Every boy is a dick, Bradshaw is the victim. Every man only wants sex, Charlotte is turning her nose up. A man wants to be intimate, Miranda is mocking him. And then there’s Jones, listening, supporting, and advising these 30-year-old whatever the-version-of-a-manchild would be. She doesn’t judge; no “you’re such a freak, Carrie, you can’t possibly fall in love with every boy you hold hands with”, or no “Charlotte, why are you living in the ’50s?” or “Miranda, you’re a good lawyer, please make better arguments”. In fact, when Bradshaw has her raging affair with married Mr. Big while dating vanilla Aidan, who does she run to because she knows the other two will judge so hard? Jones. The core of the show — friendship — is exactly this, isn’t it?

And in return, Bradshaw went around smirking about Jones blowing the mailman, and Charlotte was always rolling her eyes in disgust, flinching at all of Jones’ stories. Sam should’ve ditched her friends with the same mantra that she used with the boys — “I love you, but I love me more”. Loving yourself first is a lesson straight out of the Samantha Jones playbook much before self-care and self-love became social media cool. Sex and love are unrelated, they’re mutually exclusive, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to make Jones believe otherwise. We all know Samantha Jones is not going to be in the reboot because of a personal feud between Kim Catrall and Sarah Jessica Parker, but the forceful recreation of a popular show is doing a disservice to its following. Isn’t it better to let the show be a trip down the memory lane? Don’t bring SATC back in a new decade — one that follows a decade that brought to light the ideas of gaslighting, lovebombing, and changed the hook-up culture for the better — without the only woman in the whole show who shunned judgement from her friends and the society like last season’s Jimmy Choos, and lived up, promising to blow whoever she wants, as long as she can breathe, and kneel. They might be bringing the cast back on screen, a wave of nostalgia hitting everyone. But without Jones, this reunion, or reboot, or whatever they’re trying to do, is going to be exactly how Samantha Jones described being maid of honour — Painful, and unnecessary.