Pop Culture Reassessment: Aidan Shaw
...And Just Like That proves that the ultimate "nice guy" from Sex and the City was never the jewel of a man we were led to believe he was.
It was one of the most divisive pop culture feuds of the early 2000s: were you Team Big or Team Aidan? As Sarah Jessica Parker’s iconic character, Carrie Bradshaw, found herself unable to commit fully to either one in Sex and the City, internet forums and work conversations intensely debated whether the suave, upscale Mr. Big or the tall, rangy, hipster carpenter Aidan Shaw was Carrie’s true love. The show and the first two movies seemed to definitively answer that question: Carrie ends up with Big, and marries him in the first film.
When HBO brought back the franchise in …And Just Like That, and proceeded to kill off Mr. Big in the very first episode, fan speculation immediately abounded as to if and when Aidan Shaw would return for another shot at love.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Aidan did indeed reappear in season 2, but the man that millions once considered the ultimate wronged “nice guy” had all of his subtly toxic traits fully exposed. How did we miss it back then? Probably a sign of the times, or our general post-9/11 PTSD. Was Carrie justified in cheating on him? No, you’re supposed to break up with someone, not try to have it both ways. Why did she give him another chance after the horrendous bust-up they had during the OG run? Nostalgia? Comfort in not having to start over?
Let’s have a look at some of Aidan’s worst aspects, shall we?
Controlling
Mr. Shaw is a control freak. At times he shows an ability to relax, like when he pulls together an ill-fitting funeral suit at the last minute to go with Carrie to Lisa Todd Wexley’s father’s funeral, and doesn’t bat an eye when he splits them while sitting down in the theatre seating. Most of the time, though, he controls. From pushing her to quit smoking (which she did on her own eventually) to casually suggesting she can just ditch her clothing, shoes and purses so he has room for his stuff (remember, she was living in a studio apartment in Greenwich Village!) and getting angry when she didn’t just say yes to hounding her to fly to Vegas with him and get married, the original SATC run was filled with evidence that he wants to be in full control, and struggles when he isn’t.
To anyone who thought that two decades of a prior marriage and three children would’ve mellowed this propensity, well, you guessed wrong. The rekindling begins with Aidan refusing to set foot in her old apartment because of the bad memories, which as the relationship grows again, leads her to finally leave it behind and move to Gramercy Park. Aidan’s youngest son is an emotional wreck, likely bullied and definitely dealing with ADHD or even being on the autism spectrum. Kathy, Aidan’s ex-wife, wants to put him on Adderall (after presumably, based on her specific dosage request to Carrie, a doctor’s examination). Aidan inadvertently finds out and goes ballistic. “Our son is not going to be on any medication! He doesn’t need drugs! He needs to get out of the house!” He then bullies Kathy into bowing to his wishes. Aidan then makes Wyatt and his other sons repaint the guest house, not because it’s needed, but to force Wyatt to “focus on a task.” When Wyatt accidentally bonks Carrie with his gun during a VR laser tag game, Aidan scolds him and ends the game. Aidan repeatedly take Wyatt’s devices from him and forces him on a plane to a wilderness retreat in Wyoming for “troubled teens,” despite his son sobbing and pleading to not go.
When Aidan accidentally breaks Carrie’s historic window, and he discovers it cannot be easily fixed, he becomes obsessive with finding a replacement, taking off before she even wakes up and driving to Pennsylvania to buy what was supposedly the right glass, only to come back and find it doesn’t fit. When Carrie tries to comfort him, he suddenly blurts out that he slept with Kathy after the plane incident and apologizes, all while giving off signs that he expects Carrie to be okay with it because she cheated on him twenty-three years ago. When she said that she did not think they were exclusive, and she was hurt but understood, he tried to mute his reaction but semi-subtly indicated that he was not okay with her interpretation of the relationship. He wanted her to react like he did and was annoyed she didn’t.
After Wyatt’s return, he announces he doesn’t want to be anywhere near Aidan, and lives with his mom. Aidan plaintively asks Carrie if his son thinks he’s a monster, completely oblivious to why Wyatt wants nothing to do with him. Carrie gently provides some reasons, but the wheels are turning in her head. Later, when she asks Aidan to not talk to her downstairs neighbor/writing colleague Duncan, he does it anyway. Not just by accident, but deliberately prodding Duncan with loaded questions and jibes. By that night, when she and Duncan are holding their weekly working session, he shows up and tries to convince Carrie to eat dinner with him. When she refuses, Aidan keeps pushing, and then says he won’t eat until she comes back upstairs to have dinner. By the time she does come up, she sees he never ate at all, the steaks laying raw on the counter. Aidan’s in bed, pouting. Which leads us to….
His Easily Triggered Temper
The most man-child part of Aidan is by far his temper. He was justified once, when Carrie cheated on him (repeatedly) with a married Mr. Big in season 3 of SATC, and when she sought forgiveness initially in the next season, Aidan bellowed the classic line from his stoop: “You BROKE MY HEART!”
That wasn’t even that bad. That outburst of emotion was understandable, and yet, it was enough to make her sprint away from him, literally. It’s almost like she saw what laid behind that, and knew to run. Carrie didn’t stay away. She begged for forgiveness soon thereafter in a scene that reeked of desperation almost to the point of being pathetic, and Aidan melts.
He never trusted her again, though, and still held a grudge somewhere inside, because man, he puts her through it after that. He yells at her for having spoiled milk in her fridge when he wanted some. When she’s trying (for him!) to quit smoking, he slaps on her nicotine patch passive-aggressively, with a lot more emphasis on the aggressive part. Carrie asks Aidan to not push her about getting married after she hesitated to accept his marriage proposal, but as with many things in their relationship, he cannot stand not having his way. He shouts at her in a park that she needs to be pushed, which leads her to say, nope, I really am done with you this time, Mr. Shaw.
We see the same traits again in AJLT’s season 3. When Wyatt accidentally bonks Carrie with his gun during a VR laser tag game, Aidan scolds him and ends the game, making a scene despite Carrie insisting she’s fine and that it was an accident. Aidan yells whenever confronted with obvious signs for help out of Wyatt. He has a major overreaction to sniffing Duncan’s pipe smoke on her clothes and telling her to take a shower to get the smell off in a nasty way. When Aidan tries to make her breakfast the next morning and “apologize,” and she instead wants a real adult apology, telling him how upset she was by his controlling behavior, he flips out again and she leaves.
Hours later, when another attempt is made to repair the fractures, he gets upset again when she says “was” invested in making it work, and pushes her on the choice of verb tense. She then, in a great callback to the above video, tells him off and says that “I moved mountains and apartments to make this work,” and scolds him for so obviously still believing she would cheat again when he was the one who did it this time. He admits to it, and finally, Carrie admits that she’s done with his temper and controlling behavior (really, the divorce plus the way he is with Wyatt were massive red flags, but nostalgia is a hell of a drug). It’s over, and that’s the way it should be.
While it’s not a complete archival dive, numerous Google searches performed with filtering for the date range of Sex and the City’s early-Oughts run failed to come up with any criticisms of Aidan’s character. Even a mere year ago, a ranking of all 94 episodes by Vulture (New York Magazine’s pop culture subhead) treated Aidan kindly. It suffices to say that Aidan Shaw’s deep, deep flaws were not flagged in print. While a different culture that was more tolerant of this sort of behavior could excuse the dearth of criticism in 2002, it does not explain away the still positive coverage as recently as a year ago.
Furthermore, because women generally referred to Aidan as the sweetheart (especially when juxtaposed with Mr. Big’s snarky, suave, emotional frostiness), it influenced how men such as myself behaved. For a college-age kid determined to get it right, and seeing how the women around me largely praised Aidan and were critical of Carrie for how she treated him by cheating, I took it to heart, and the problem is that when you do that, you don’t know how to filter the bad out at that age. You don’t understand that it’s not okay to be controlling and temperamental just because you treat the woman that is the focus of this as a princess the rest of the time. I suppose it’s a sign of growth and maturity that I can spot these things now, but it surely doesn’t speak well of Gen X Aidan that he did not change a bit. Thanks to last week’s breakup, though, we no longer have to worry about it.