What if you want to be all feminist-y, yet Sarah Jessica Parker v Kim Cattrall is the only news story you care about?

With Carrie and Samantha’s spat, we finally get to watch the real Sex and the City 3

Meanwhile, uptown, Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda met in the coffee shop to discuss Samantha’s latest post on Instagram. The girls all stared at Carrie’s phone, stunned. What dialogue could possibly convey the gravity of the moment?

“I think my Instagram has just become InstaSCRAM,” Carrie gasped, shifting around in her Oscar de la Renta ballgown and tucking her blowdried hair behind her Chanel couture turban, which is how all journalists dress when they go out for coffee.

“Your social media has become social I-don’t-need-ya,” added Miranda drily. Miranda said everything drily.

“Yes,” Charlotte heavy-breathed. “Your smart phone has become a MEAN phone!”

Carrie and Miranda exchanged looks. Charlotte never was any good at the pun thing.

“Mean phone!” Charlotte replied, delightedly.

Carrie’s eyes narrowed and she slipped out of the Sex and the City script into the Mean Girls one.

“Charlotte,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee (Carrie loved coffee.) “Stop. Trying. To. Make. Mean phone. Happen!”

Meanwhile, downtown, Samantha put her crystal-encrusted gold phone down on her leopard-print bedspread and breathed deeply.

“Making that post was the most satisfying experience I’ve had in weeks!” she said, raising an eyebrow at the naked 22-year-old hunk lying next to her.

She then looked under the sheets at his body. “Well, maybe the second most satisfying!”

Was that a pun? It wasn’t as good as the classic time she called the hot priest Friar Fuck, but it would do.

Last week, Carrie and Samantha’s long-running battle went from being just a virtual rumour and became part of virtual reality (yes, good pun) when Samantha told her followers on Instagram exactly where Carrie could stick her condolences for the recent death of Samantha’s brother, and it wasn’t anywhere Chanel made accessories for.

“I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time @sarahjessicaparker,” Samantha – AKA Kim Cattrall – wrote. “Let me make this VERY clear. (If I haven’t already) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.”

Meanwhile, uptown, Carrie went to Big’s house to discuss the scandal, but as usual he was too busy smoking cigars and being an asshole to help.

“I’m completely devastated!” Carrie cried, twirling around in her lacy Dolce & Gabbana slip.

“Mmm, listen to this Frank Sinatra record. That ol’ Frank sure could sing,” said Big, who thought that saying things such as this made him look suave and classic rather than cliched and tedious.

“I mean, when did my Best Friend Forever become such a Bitch from Hell?” Carrie asked.

“That pun would have worked better if you’d used a word for Hell that began with F,” said Big, engaging with her for once.

“I couldn’t think of one, OK?” snarled Carrie, turning on her Louboutin heel and storming out.

Back at her desk in her enormous brownstone apartment on the Upper East Side, which is how all journalists live in New York, Carrie tappy tap tapped on her laptop and gazed out of her window.

How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? The whole point of her show was that it celebrated female friendship! (Until the last few series, when it became about what awful man Carrie would end up with. God forbid that a show that celebrated being a single woman in New York would end with a woman still single in New York with only her friends for company. That would be just depressing!)

Was it true what men said, that women are just too bitchy to be friends with one another? And what if you know that it’s shallow to fall for media narratives about women fighting with one another (especially women reacting to terrible personal news) and you want to be all feminist-y and everything, yet at the same time Carrie versus Samantha is the only news story you actually care about? And so, Carrie couldn’t help but wonder, what happens when the show about perfect friendship becomes the perfect shipwreck?

Meanwhile, in Britain, Samantha gave an interview last year to a chap by the name of Piers. (“Honey, if you’re talking to a man called Piers you’ve reached the end of the pier,” Carrie could have warned her, if Samantha and Carrie still spoke to one another).

Now, as all fans of Sex and the City know, nothing good ever comes from taking the show out of New York City (don’t even mention the Los Angeles episode, and let’s not even say the words “Abu Dhabi”), but Samantha was not for turning. Piers asked her why she didn’t want to make Sex and the City 3 and she refrained from replying, as she would have been more than entitled to: “Because the other two movies were so bad that they made me want to choke on my own hair, and because Sarah Jessica Parker has clearly lost whatever ability she once had to judge quality.”

Instead, she said: “I really think Sarah Jessica Parker could have been nicer.”

Meanwhile, uptown, Carrie went into swift lockdown mode, giving interviews about how “devastated” she was, and how she considered her and Samantha to be “friends.” But Samantha did not come to play and she urged her Instagram followers to read a New York Post article headlined “Inside the mean-girls culture that destroyed Sex and the City”.

This suspiciously well-briefed and very pro-Cattrall article contains such fascinating little nuggets such as: “Cattrall was arguably the biggest name among the cast in the beginning” and “a scene-stealer in the best possible sense – the camera went right to her”. Eyes to camera. Worse, according to one report, Samantha thought the movies had “too many puns”. Oh, no, Samantha, you didn’t! Do. Not. Diss. The. Puns!

Some people are saying it is undignified for fifty- and sixtysomething women to fight via the media of talkshows and Instagram, but I say they are missing the point.

This is not a feud we are seeing about who should or shouldn’t have made Sex and the City 3 – we are literally watching Sex and the City 3. After all, Samantha and Carrie falling out with one another was the only plotline left, given that, between the two of them, they have shagged everything in New York. And, by God, this is the best film yet in the franchise! So I couldn’t help but wonder, what happens when the reality becomes more interesting than the fiction?

Meanwhile, uptown.