There is no exaggerating how insufferable this character is. To call them unwatchable is not hyperbole. “Cringing” is not a strong enough verb to describe what the body reflexively does when they are on screen, like a physical defense mechanism. It’s more like an elaborate tuck and roll off the couch followed by an army crawl to hide under the bed before letting out a high-pitched scream of “No!” like the one I learned to do from Oprah during an episode of her talk show on how to protect yourself from being abducted.
Che, played by Grey’s Anatomy alum Sara Ramirez, is one of the new characters added to the series in a woke panic, meant to address the original run’s cardinal sin of unforgivable whiteness—a lack of diversity that would of course need to be rectified in any sort of reboot or revival. Several of these characters are truly captivating; I’m loving the friendship being formed between Carrie and Sarita Choudhury’s Seema Patel, a dynamic that is starting to fill the void of the Carrie-Samantha friendship, if not necessarily the unapologetic raunchiness.
Every moment Che Diaz is on screen, however, is absolutely mortifying.
They are Carrie’s gender nonbinary, pansexual boss, who hired her to cohost a podcast about gender and sexuality. It’s actually a shrewd creative decision to introduce a character that forces these privileged, multimillionaire white boomers to fumble their way into a progressive mindset.
It’s nice to see how casual, yet serious Carrie is about taking Che’s identity at face value and getting used to using different pronouns. That Che would provide a mirror through which Charlotte starts to understand her own daughter is kind of beautiful. That they would be the catalyst for Miranda’s sexual awakening was telegraphed a mile away. The storyline is good, though the Che stuff itself is nearly impossible to watch.
How unfortunate that a character like this is so heinous. No one wants to single out the only new LGBTQ+ character on a series as the worst. Yet Che Diaz leaves us no choice.
There should be conversation about gender, sex, and queerness in a modern Sex and the City telling. And it should be jarring. It should be destabilizing for these women. It should also make sense, and be delivered in a way that remotely resembles how an actual human talks or behaves.
Whether it’s the content of their podcast or everything that is said in what have become the four most harrowing words in the last 12 months of television—“Che Diaz’s comedy concert”—whatever wokeness, enlightenment, or edginess that is supposed to be happening lands with all the grace of me tripping over my laptop charger cord while getting up to get another glass of wine on a Friday night.
