Miranda Hobbs…really hates her son. Right? I mean, a major element of Cynthia Nixon’s character’s story arch on HBO Max’s Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…, has been her contentious relationship with her very sexually active teenaged boy-child Brady (Niall Cunningham). And, like, fair. Teenage boys—particularly the cis-het variety—are disgusting! Truly the foulest of creatures. Literally, in one of the new show’s first scenes, Miranda is telling Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) about stepping on a used condom in Brady’s bedroom. Ugh! And in every subsequent interaction we’ve seen thus far, Brady has behaved like a predictably feckless, entitled little sh*t, and Miranda has been justifiably annoyed by, angry at, resentful of and just plain exhausted by her only son.
Which has me thinking about the scene in the subway in the AJLT premiere. You know, the one where Miranda saves her professor (all-around MVP Karen Pittman) from a mugger dressed as, of all things, Chucky. Now, apparently Chucky is having a minor renaissance among a very niche audience thanks to a new Syfy series all about the redheaded demon doll. He’s even become something of an LGBTQ icon!
But I wonder if the extremely random choice to dress a mugger as Chucky has more to do with the character’s passing resemblance to another ginger scamp: wee Brady Hobbs. I mean, is it just me or does the way Miranda just fully wails on that mugger, beating them like, well, a redheaded stepchild, kinda suggests that she’s subconsciously working out a lot of the unacknowledged and misdirected anger she harbors toward Brady?
Let’s be honest, Miranda has always been an…ambivalent parent. The very fact that she kept the baby—that of all of Sex and the City’s four central characters, she was the first to have a kid—was a pretty significant shock back in 2002. And motherhood didn’t come easy to Miranda. Over the course of the original show’s final two seasons and its two dubious movie spin-offs, she struggled with this demanding new presence in her life. “This 13-pound meatloaf is pushing me over the edge,” she said of her infant son in a Season 5 episode. She had to forego shopping trips with the girls and rearrange her life around childcare, etc. And there was that time that guy left in the middle of sex because Brady was crying! You know, normal single mom stuff. But for someone like Miranda—a driven, career-oriented, Type-A borderline cynic—it’s basically established Sex and the City cannon that she’s always harbored a certain amount of, if not regret, resentment toward her son. The first image that comes to mind when I think about Miranda is usually Rachel Dratch playing the character in this 2004 SNL sketch:
She hates that baby! She always hated it! And she hates it even more now that it’s a smelly, gross, hormonally incontinent teenager who leaves used condoms and dirty socks all over her house! No wonder Miranda went ham on that mugger in the Chucky costume! Can you blame her?
