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Maxim

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Cat Mentor

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Apart from that bitchy aside about Samantha going to London because 60 year old vixens are acceptable there (!), I thought it was really great.

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First two episodes were exactly what I needed.

I love Sara Ramirez's character Che!

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Cat Mentor

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They kind of make up for it by having the women miss Samantha and her presence being felt in other ways. So it's not all petty nastiness. I think the aspect I have enjoyed most in the first two episodes is these 55 year old women having lived rarefied lives but now coming to terms with new realities and rules and a world changing around them. I appreciate that they are wearing their age as a badge of honor too.

I have a feeling that Carrie is going to be confronted with finances soon. Just my speculation. 

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Efulton Rising Star

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I really enjoyed the first 2 episodes.  I worried it would be more of the same but they are really taking the characters forward in stories that are plausible for them.  I agree with Cat that Carrie will most likely have financial issues.  I also think Miranda will have an alcohol problem and Charlotte will be Charlotte.

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Jonathan Collaborator

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I watched the first two episodes and I was a little disappointed. I don't think the show was able to strike the right balance between comedy and drama the way that it did so brilliantly as SATC. Obviously, the circumstances that unfolded in the first two episodes dictated the overall tone. However, I was wanting more haha moments. Also, I think the show needs to add back in Carrie's voiceover to tie in all the scenes. Carrie's VO as a storytelling device would provide character depth.

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Cat Mentor

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Time does stand still for old folks, lol. I liked that AJLT acknowledges how out-of-touch and sheltered they might be with the current shifting environment. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and back in the mid-90s, sexual (and gender) politics were not as evolved. In its early years, SATC did open up and normalise discussion about sex and relationships, though.

LOL yes Che was a cipher for wokeness, a subject which Michael Patrick King is obviously preoccupied by. But there is a scene in ep 2 with Miranda where I thought Sara Ramirez brought some nuances to the characterisation. Miranda used to get some of the awkward-sex SLs but is now getting the awkward-race/gender-relations SL.

After the passive-aggressive abuse Cattrall received from cast and MPK two years ago, I thought Bitsy's "Sexy sirens in their 60s are still viable there!" quip was spiteful. Especially as the main actresses are pushing 60 themselves. The show tried to make up for it by acknowledging what Samantha meant to the show, that she was gone and it was a loss for the audience. However, on reflection, it is framed as 'Samantha hurt Carrie's feelings!' -- even though Carrie's the one who fired Samantha as her PR. It is hard not to see SJP's narrative of Cattrall being mean to her when she reached out as being transposed onto this storyline.

Stanford has changed the most as a character. Was he always this obsessed with his image? 

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Sapounopera Experienced

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I loved the first two episodes. I was ready to hate watch and make fun of the characters acting the same way the did in the original series and I ended up crying when I saw Charlotte's all grown girls. 

Remember when life was about buying expensive shoes and dating around in cocktail bars? The ladies have move on, so have we. It was nice that we found each other again after all these years.

The woke madness is real and the show has to acknowledge it. Please don't turn AJLT into another show obsessed with it. 

 

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DramatistDreamer Grand Master

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Originally, I had no intention of watching, because that was my feeling too, especially after the two movies that, imo, didn't need to happen but I saw opaque comments about an end to the first episode that was a shock and I said "hm, wonder what that's about?"

Then this morning, I was actually watching a morning news magazine show and on the bottom of the screen crawl said something to the effect of "SATC fans divided on the first episodes" or something and I was intrigued. Then I even saw a newspaper headline that alluded to a negative review, so I said "okay, I think I might need to watch to see what all this fuss is about" (I didn't read the article), so I had to find a stream.

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My first question after watching is "How will they deal with the Stanford Batch issue?" Or do they not plan on lasting that long. Willie Garson has died and they won't be able to pretend his character is in Europe like Samantha, who they kept discussing as if her absence were a type of death. With

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, it's going to span the maudlin to have another long-time character die in such a short space of time. I guess they are at "that age" when loss can come more frequently but isn't this still a comedy?

Speaking of which, the laughs didn't come until the second episode, and then they were few and far between and I'm including even

 

From a writing perspective, I was surprised by how much the first episode seems like a pilot. It's kind of comforting that, as accomplished as MPK and everyone connected with SATC are, they can still produce an episode that struggles with the same aspects as everyone else like writing too much exposition.

The second episode was much better, less clunky storytelling but still hung like a dark cloud, it's appropriate that the Eurythmics song closed out the episode. 

I think the episodes managed the aspect of grief well. I do wonder, in such an already somber time when loss abounds, how many people want to see consecutive episodes dealing with loss and death, especially for a show that was once known for punchlines, one-liners and oh, comedy.

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