Mr. Big Might Have Been The Best ‘Sex and the City’ Character
Sex and the City fans have spent more than a decade debating who the best character was. Most fans argue that Carrie Bradshaw, or one of her pals, Miranda Hobbes, Charlotte York, and Samantha Jones, was the best character to appear on the show. What if the most dynamic role wasn’t one of the four main gals? Could Mr. Big have been the best character to appear on-screen in the series? It’s possible.
Mr. Big, without Carrie Bradshaw, was actually a pretty likeable guy
Sex and the City fans often view Mr. Big in relation to Carrie. His worst moments, according to fans, were moments when he let Carrie down, either by being emotionally unavailable or by being obnoxiously obtuse. When you remove Carrie from the equation, though, Mr. Big wasn’t all that bad. In fact, he was downright likable. There wasn’t much not to like. He was suave, attractive, and wealthy. Mr. Big was also completely independent and had no issue taking care of himself.
Mr. Big was also self-assured enough not to need a relationship to complete him. While he didn’t seem to have a ton of close friends, he did have enough acquaintances to keep his social calendar as full as he wanted. The private driver, a swanky apartment, and an endless supply of well-fitting suits made him an all-around catch, if it weren’t for that pesky emotional unavailability thing.
Mr. Big was a guy who was largely OK with who he was
Carrie once claimed that her biggest pain point with Mr. Big was the fact that he didn’t seem to want to “let her in.” In reality, Mr. Big let Carrie in; he just wasn’t willing to completely upend his life to accommodate her. While that made him seem like an insensitive jerk, if you look at it all from a different angle, it’s pretty obvious that Mr. Big was just comfortable setting boundaries and sticking to them.
Mr. Big made it pretty clear that he wasn’t interested in changing to meet Carrie’s whims, even if those whims were completely reasonable. Even those who aren’t fans of the charismatic character can admit that he was always honest. He told his eventual wife way back in the early seasons of the series that he liked his apartment, he liked his sheets, and he liked having her with him.
Does that mean Mr. Big was perfect for Carrie, though?
Mr. Big may have been one of the best characters to grace the screen on Sex and the City, but does that mean he was the best man for Carrie? Most likely not. At least, that’s what Candace Bushnell thinks. Bushnell, the columnist who Carrie is based on, sat down with The Guardian in 2017 and made her feelings known. She told the publication that, if Sex and the City were real life, Big and Carrie would not have ended up together.
The couple ended up together, as Bushnell believes, because that’s what viewers wanted to see. If the couple had been real, however, it seems unlikely that they could have worked past their differences. Even as the show was adapted into movie form, it was clear that Carrie and Big’s relationship was dotted with tension and misunderstandings.That doesn’t mean Mr. Big or Carrie were inherently bad people. Neither was really “right” or “wrong”, instead they were just completely different and needed totally different things.
