Biggest question about And Just Like That death answered

Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis in And Just Like That, the Sex and the City revival. Streaming on Neon. Photo / Supplied

We couldn't help but wonder, why didn't Carrie call 911?

It's the question that's haunted critics and fans since the shocking premiere of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, last Thursday.

Carrie – played by Sarah Jessica Parker – returns home from a piano recital when she finds her husband, Mr Big (Chris Noth), leaning against the wall of the bathroom clearly suffering from some sort of medical problem after a half-hour Peloton session.

The pair stare longingly at each other before Carrie realises something is very wrong, as she rushes over to him, screams his name and caresses his body while the shower water runs around them.

A few seconds later, she narrates: "And just like that, Big died".

But given Big appeared to be alive for at least half a minute when Carrie discovered him, and even after he lost a pulse, it seems bizarre not to have called in emergency help.

Vulture have broken down the events second-by-second in an uber detailed article, before interviewing a cardiologist to figure out if Big could've been saved.

Bad news, friends, he very well could've. And it's all Carrie's fault.

"This is her fault. Without trying to point a finger at her, this is absolutely the fault of (Carrie)," Daniel Luger, a cardiologist at Chicago's Rush University Medical Centre told the publication.

He continued: "So there are a lot of different ways that you can die from a heart attack, but usually the way that a heart attack kills somebody is the blockage of an artery leading to instability of the electrical conduction system in the heart muscle.

"If you drop dead suddenly, you probably had electrical complications from a blocked artery. If he was in the hospital or if EMS was at his side when that happened, they could absolutely shock him out of that rhythm.

"That's a very treatable problem in the hospital setting. People don't die from heart attacks anymore because we're so good at quickly opening up the arteries, treating the sequelae of coronary disease or pump failure — we're good at reversing all of that stuff."

Dr Luger went on to explain what Carrie should've done the moment she realised Big was having a heart attack.

"Your brain can survive for somewhere up to three minutes without oxygen. What she needed to do was, when he went unconscious and lost a pulse, she needed to immediately start CPR. Feel for a pulse, call for help, and start chest compressions," he said.

"Because you can absolutely stimulate blood flow to the brain and the rest of the vital organs with CPR, and once EMS came, they could have resuscitated him immediately with medications and defibrillation.

"She needed to do CPR. This is a PSA: If you see somebody lose consciousness, the first thing you do is feel for a pulse. If there's no pulse, you call EMS and start chest compressions without delay. You can definitely save people's lives that way. He didn't need to die. This is a god damn travesty."

Regardless of whether or not this was a case of lazy writing, Mr Big was always going to die in the revival.

SATC creator Michael Patrick King told Entertainment Weekly he made the call on Big's fate prior to hitting the drawing board on the series.

"I wouldn't have come back if I didn't have a really strong impulse [to explore the idea of] 'Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?' for the character [Carrie] who has done nothing but tried to find love from this one person," King said.

"I also felt comfortable because the DNA is the same. People forget, Carrie never had Big in the series. She had him briefly — a minute or two. And she doesn't have Big now. It's just a different circumstance. It's more final."

• New episodes of And Just Like That stream on Neon each Friday.