Dear Miranda,

It was a pleasure seeing you a few weeks ago after all these years, though, now that I think of

it, we did cross paths just over a year ago in London. That encounter, however, was unfortunately a forgettable one for me. A musical is simply not the best venue for you. While Ms. Williams did an admirable job portraying you, it was still only an imitation; she could not capture the sharpness that has always made you unmistakable. So when you decided to grace us with your presence again, it served as another reminder of your longevity and iconic status, and I eagerly looked forward to seeing you once more. Unlike so many second or third installments these days that feel like transparent money grabs, you and your team had something to say. Well, it was more of a commentary on the state of journalism and its gradual decline due to pressure from social media and publishers opting to shrink their publications. Though it was refreshing to see you and the others again, the very cutbacks you were against seemed to affect you and your team more directly. Missing were Nigel’s sly remarks, Emily’s disapproving looks, and Andy’s fashion innocence, but most of all, everything that made you you was gone. Your biting glances and sharp-tongued putdowns were absent. The woman we so admired—driven, demanding, brilliant, and impossible to ignore—appeared to be more restrained. Those very qualities are what made you deliciously villainous in the original; this time around, they were absent, curtailed by a new assistant who apparently was following HR directives to tame you. One doesn’t tame Miranda Priestly! Even if it was due to some overly sensitive assistant who ran to human resources and complained about you, after all, a million girls would kill to be your assistant. One doesn’t go to HR to complain; one sucks it up and does the job, as Andy did. Having tamed you, the role of villain was less glamorously transferred to the decline of print magazines. Was that really a good choice for a villain? I could not help but think a more interesting and more dramatic option could have been, oh, I don’t know, perhaps Emily running a competing publication and trying to force you out of Runway. While that idea did momentarily appear, it did, however, disappear like florals in the spring. While you and your team did provide several glamorous settings and sweeping panoramic views of New York, Milan, the Hamptons, and Lake Como, we did not get what many of us wanted: the devil herself unleashed again. We wanted the cutting remarks, the icy looks, and the speeches about fashion’s importance. Instead, we got a Miranda who seemed under attack and oddly in search of validation. Miranda searching for validation? I think not. This version of you is not the woman many of us loved, admired, and even wanted to emulate. What we got was a lesser version of a sparkling wine from an unknown region of the world instead of the far superior Dom Pérignon we wanted—no, expected. In the end, it simply is not the same.

That’s all.