When Sex and the City’s long-awaited reboot series, And Just Like That…, debuted in December, it wasted little time upsetting Carrie’s and Miranda’s romantic status quos. Carrie’s husband, Big? Dead by the end of the premiere from a Peloton-related heart attack. Miranda’s longtime love interest, Steve? Partially deaf and, as subsequent episodes proved, blind to Miranda’s gaping discontentment, increased dependency on alcohol, and blossoming romance with Carrie’s boss, Che (Sara Ramirez).

In the scenes since, Steve—the long-loyal partner who, okay, did cheat on Miranda once—has been treated increasingly like a nonentity who occasionally sidles up to Miranda at their (exquisite) sundae-bar setup. In episode five, “Tragically Hip,” Miranda has the best sex of her life with someone who is not Steve inside Carrie’s apartment, and does not feel bad about it. In episode six, “Diwali,” Miranda tells Charlotte about the affair at a picnic—but, astonishingly, none of the women even do Steve the courtesy of bringing him up by name. (Charlotte, who would usually flag such technical details, instead tells Miranda that she understands the attraction: She too had a sexual dream about Che.)

But episode seven, “Sex and the Widow,” which premiered this week, might be Steve’s saddest showing in the Sex and the City–verse yet. (And that is saying something, given his “skid mark” episode.) He gets two scenes: one in which he loses his wallet at a farmers market and is an embarrassment to Miranda, and one in which he completely fumbles Miranda’s last Hail Mary sexual pass. (“I tried to revive my sex life with Steve the other day,” Miranda tells Carrie, seemingly resting her case for the marriage being over. “I’m afraid the patient is nonresponsive.”)

In response to Steve’s harsh story lines, The Cut published a piece called “Steve Deserves Better,” while outraged Steve fans took to Reddit to express their displeasure. “After all that Miranda and Steve have gone through, all the years they’ve been married, she couldn’t just, I don’t know, COMMUNICATE with her husband,” wondered one user. “I’m so sad for Steve after watching this episode,” wrote another.

In a conversation with And Just Like That… writers Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky on Thursday, the women—who wrote on the original Sex and the City series—defended the show’s Steve story line.

For starters, Steve is partially deaf because David Eigenberg is actually battling hearing loss in real life.

“When [showrunner] Michael Patrick [King] reconnected with David Eigenberg about the show, the very first thing that David said was, ‘I got hearing aids.’ It was literally what he led with,” said Zuritsky. “That actually wound up being Steve’s tone about his aging [in the show].”

No one on And Just Like That…’s creative team actively hates Steve, or is exacting some sort of vendetta against him. “Everyone on the show, every single person, loves David Eigenberg as a human being,” she said. “We love him as an actor. We love Steve. We are really invested in the Steve-ness of him. He’s so full of life, and the Steves out there are good guys.”

“But Miranda’s journey is representing another reality out there, which a lot of people go through—the reevaluations and transitions in life,” added Rottenberg. “Grown couples grow apart, and people come to epiphanies about what their spouse is or isn’t fulfilling for them. Miranda’s story was very representative of a certain path that a lot of women find themselves on.”

“We didn’t set out to make virtuous characters necessarily,” said Zuritsky. “Even beloved people have crises. Even moral, generally wonderful people make choices that aren’t necessarily admirable or virtuous. But they do them anyway because they’re going through something, or they’re working through a crisis.” Zuritsky also wonders if the criticism of Steve’s story line is rooted in some “lopsided gender issue…you feel angry at her and more protective of him.” 

The reality, however, is that “sometimes your friends make choices that you might not agree with or that might be concerning, but you sort of have to let them make their own choices. Sometimes it’s hard.”

Zuritsky compared the Steve outcry to criticism of Big’s death. “This reminds me of the uproar after the first episode…how could we do that? Why would we do that?” But both women said they’ve also heard from people who have responded gratefully to the story line: “‘Thank God. Please. What’s taking so long? Get out of there. You’re in a loveless marriage.’”

Viewers understand how unfulfilled Miranda is by her marriage—but her blatant disregard for that union seems borderline cruel when Steve is so seemingly in the dark about Miranda’s unhappiness. “The show isn’t about Steve, but what about his fulfillment?” I asked them. “How is he feeling?”

“You’re going to get that scene,” assured Zuritsky. “You’re going to get that scene.”

The writers did have an inkling that there would be Steve-related outcry, however, when it came time to film the new series. “Our assistant-directing department made buttons for the whole crew,” Zuritsky said. “You could choose a ‘Team Steve’ or ‘Team Miranda’ button. It was very funny.”

The writers declined to say who was better represented amongst crew, but they did note that Eigenberg handled the situation just like his puppy-dog character would. “He took a ‘Team Miranda’ pin,” said Zuritsky. “That’s so David Eigenberg. That’s just what Steve would do. You have to realize that there are hundreds of people who work on the series, and they’re sort of our first glimpse of what the audience is going to feel.”

“To me, it falls under the same umbrella of why are we coming back to do this show if it’s not going to be different?” said Zuritsky. “The decision to [make And Just Like That…] was not born out of commercialism. Creatively, we wanted to see what happened to these women.... Where are they? What have they gone through? What are new stories for these women? How are they rooted in the real-life experience of women in their 50s? What do women go through?”

“If we were going to come back,” said Rottenberg, “let’s come back and cover what we are really experiencing in our own lives and our friends’ lives, although that’s sometimes not as much fun.”

After a time jump that fast-forwards through some of Carrie’s grief, “Sex and the Widow” also features Carrie’s first date after Big’s death.

“We were very aware that the whole world was wanting her to go on a date and hoping she would go on a date,” said Rottenberg, who wrote the episode with Zuritsky. “But we also knew that we wanted to honor her grief and stay true to what we thought would be her trajectory after losing the love of her life. We also knew we did not want any of her friends to pressure her into dating. Specifically, Sarah Jessica [Parker] definitely did not want to have a scene where the other women are sitting around saying, ‘You have go on a date.’ None of us wanted to do that. We realized that the way in could be her editor [pushing her to go on a date].”

The writers initially thought Carrie’s first date would be, “like, a one-scene guy…the tiniest sliver of a date.” But Zuritsky said that after serious discussion, they “realized there was a real opportunity with this guy to not make him a joke…. I don’t want to spoil anything down the road, but you have to take him seriously as a possibility for her. Even if she’s doing this slightly before she was organically ready. I don’t think she would be going on this date if Oprah [Winfrey] hadn’t pushed her through her publisher.”

In the episode, Carrie’s book editor tells her that Winfrey is interested in helping launch Carrie’s new memoir—but suggests she go on a date to lighten up the mood in a new epilogue. Zuritsky and Rottenberg noted that the story line feels “a little meta” considering the criticism And Just Like That… has been getting for being so dark.

“Before the series came out, people were getting so excited about the show. I would hear people saying, ‘I just can’t wait to kick back and have a cosmo and laugh,’” said Zuritsky. “We were like, Oh, God. They don’t know what’s coming. The image of millions of people toasting cosmos, and then watching the end of that first episode [when Big dies], was hard to shake.”

Asked about the tone of the season’s final episodes, Rottenberg said, “I guess you could argue that there is more of that comedy that people had come to expect from the show. We don’t ever forget that this season was born out of a very painful tragedy, but you will be happy to find comedy in the last four episodes.”

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