And Just Like That

[DRW50]

If the show wants to start acknowledging reality, they have much more pressing issues (like how woefully out of touch the personnel involved have been for many years) than wokeness. 

[DRW50]

Michael Patrick King said they will not kill off Stanford because it would not be "charming." 

I think they could have managed to acknowledge the character's death and still found humor and charm, but maybe it's for the best, as it probably would just end up being a 10 minute scene of Carrie doing sad voiceovers while on her laptop.

[Vee]

Your life experience as the attempted living embodiment of a Dynasty supercut video on YT longing for the Reagan '80s is, to say the least, not universal.

[Sapounopera]

Please leave my life experience out of it. The people who watched loved the shallowness of the show. It was never meant to be Ibsen. 
After spending years and years of your life fighting strangers over soaps online you should know that we are all expressing our personal thoughts, right?

[te.]

Well, filming started in July and Garson died at the end of September. I assume that they don't want to acknowledge his death in this season at least (if there's more, which seems likely).

[DramatistDreamer]

That's why I asked whether they plan to go on or will this end after 10 episodes. Obviously, if the 10 episodes are "it", there is no need to address Stanford Blatch's portrayers loss, but with the SATC franchise, we've already witnessed that it never seems to be the end.

As bad as that Divorce series that SJP did with THC, even that got a second season, so one never knows.

[DramatistDreamer]

I was surprised by the number of people who are upset that there wasn't more V.O. by Carrie. I really didn't notice, then again, I am not a big fan of the device, it always struck me as something of a "cheat code", like using too much music in scenes to try to wring emotional depth in the absence of effective writing.

I do wonder whether  killing off Big had more to do with Chris Noth not wanting to be a full-time series regular than it did wanting to "Go Big" story-wise by deciding that 'Big had to go'?

It's fascinating to critique shows, both well and poorly executed, you learn a lot from both (obviously you learn more from the ones that are well done). In grad school, I took a Writing For The Sitcom course and one of the assignments was to watch and take notes on at least one terrible sitcom. It's far more interesting though, to watch one that used to have a successful execution, but no longer does than one that's merely terrible.

Maybe this one get better (It's unlikely that I will stick with it to find out) but so far, the most unfortunate part of this limited series is that it's well, just not funny overall, with the exception of a few limited bits (which was mostly Miranda, tbh and the funeral attendee who wondered aloud if she was the only one who remembered how shîtty Big was to Carrie). Even if it's a dramedy, you still have to have at least equal parts comedy. MPK could have done with bingeing a couple seasons of The Golden Girls to see how it's done. 

The cleverness of early SATC was that it never took itself too seriously. I think this time around probably struggling to be relevant and all things to all people, this series took itself too seriously. It's not even about killing Big (we get it, Carrie, like Samantha, was always a character who was meant to be "free") but the biggest shame is the humor wasn't there.

From a writer's standpoint, it's so fascinating to me though. I think I may be the only one that thinks so though, lol.

[te.]

They've already said that they're keeping the door open for Samantha to come back so... yes. I assume it'll get a second season unless this does really bad on streaming.

[DramatistDreamer]

The reviews are bad but the franchise seems to have a devoted following, so there's that.

[Khan]

Wait, if Big is dead, does that mean you-know-who might return?  (You know who I'm talkin' 'bout.  Whathisface.  The other dude who loved Carrie.)

[te.]

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would've done things much differently so far with what they've done with And Just Like That considering what they had to work with - but that's the issue when you're working with a property that was seen as progressive at its time, but probably not so much today. Having the ladies face some realities is to me a given - I mean, these women spent most of their 30s in bars wearing fabulous shoes while also having careers; then they progressed to marriages and moving in rather exclusive circles. That their reality is crashing with a new reality feels a bit right; if anything the main criticism of the Sex and the City movies were that they tried to relive their golden era and not pretend like anything has changed.

 

Carrie making slightly snide comments about Samantha felt right - not that it means Carrie's in the right, but that Carrie's kind of selfish and usually tends to see things from her own perspective. If that was intentional or not is another matter, but it's also kind of what often gets brought up with Carrie's character and certainly at times in the OG series like when she's the other woman, but only really worrying how it affects her.

I said it before, but the show does need to adress the fact that Carrie's an aging woman in a dying medium. She was in print media when they could probably afford having a well-paid columnist mostly lounge around in bars writing about her own life; these days, not so much. I assume that's why she'll end up moving into her old apartment; no way she can live the life she and Big lived together on her salary. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if Carrie's work mostly brought in pocket money for them.

 

(Also, I hope Aiden does not come back; Carrie does not need to get tied down to another ship-heavy coupling)

[jcar03]

I haven't seen the new episodes but I would assume that Big had assets that Carrie would inherit to live comfortably.  But maybe I'm wrong...

[Soaplovers]

Samantha not being there took away the fun and zest that made the original show pop.  While Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie had their funny moments... the real spirit and humor came from Samantha.  

Considering how dour this show is, I think Kim C was smart to move on.  She's always said she had a ball playing Samantha.... but that she wants to explore other characters (which she's done to varying degrees of success with the Red Riding hood fairy tale show, Filthy Rich, How I met your father and now the Queer as folk reboot).  

With that said, Miranda would have been the character I least expected to be an insert foot in mouth character.  I wonder if that would have been intended for Samantha had Kim C returned.

[DramatistDreamer]

Probably not.

Samantha was pretty unapologetic whenever she made a politically incorrect comment, she would say something like "what's the big deal?" Samantha wouldn't have felt embarrassed at all. 

[Faulkner]

LOL!