RedHawk

I was just listening to the writers' podcast for this show. (This is the first one I've listened to, and I'm doing it so that y'all don't have to!) In it they discuss that line: "You can't be the white lady just writing a check." MPK says, "I'm sure it will be a lightning rod line." He sounds so self-satisfied for writing it, like he's so aware and we're all going to gasp in shock. . . um, as we recognize ourselves and realize we have to do better? Is that why he calls it a "lightning rod line"? Well, it's not a new line. I've basically been hearing it for 5 years or more. They're saying it's not enough that you "write a check", you have to show up and give your time and prove that you truly care and are involved. Except maybe some white (and all other) ladies are spending their time earning the money that goes into those checks, doing other things that need to be done, or doing behind-the-scenes volunteer work for other charities and causes (not getting handed a t-shirt). Paint and painting supplies cost money, and cash donations can be spent for the shelter's other needs, like beds and bedding, furniture, kitchen supplies, toiletries, etc. Yes, Carrie's going to write a check and also paint, as are Miranda and Charlotte. Seema is going to write a check, not paint, sit and smoke like a boss, and pull the hot guy. LTW showed up in that outfit thinking "paint" meant it was a makeup party, so she pivoted to corralling the food trucks to get the volunteers fed. It's all good and there are different ways to contribute. MPK and others aren't going to make me feel guilty for not showing up at every march, walk, shelter renovation, whatever. Don't have the time nor the outfits, sorry. This white lady is gonna keep "just" writing checks.

What was with Miranda screaming in Che's echo-y halls and stairwell? Geez, at least Che could have said, "Let's go back into my apartment and talk about this." Where I live at least three people would have stuck their heads out of their doors and frowned disapprovingly. Miranda thinks only of herself now and has no manners. I did laugh when the fan in the diner looked at the first photo Miranda took, handed the phone back, and ordered, "Again." Haha! Miranda has no photo skills. Probably because she pointed and shot to get rid of the pesky fans so she and Che could go back to having "FUN!"

A spinoff show based on Nya and Andre would be cool. We'd learn about their background and education, how they met, what jobs they've had and more of their current careers, what their first years together were like, if they discussed being childfree at that time, how the previous IVF affected them, etc. Being childfree by choice puts women in a situation that's relatable. They don't want children for reasons and that does cut down on the number of men (or women) they can pair with. The woman may want to focus on herself and/or her career and sees childrearing as a huge impediment to the life she wants to live. And sometimes a guy is all "Hey, you're enough for me, I don't need kids" in the early part of a relationship but as he gets older and his pals are becoming dads, then he wants them too. These characters intrigue me now, the only problem is that they're not integrated into the show. They're peripheral and yet they pop up with their deep issues, so it's jarring.

Thanks! :-) The writers had the history of their main characters right there in front of them and didn't use it. I realized I do like the Dr. Nya and husband storyline, just not on this show.

I get that a man Dr. Nya's husband's age can change his mind and feel the yearn for kids, and that he can start another discussion in a bad moment/inappropriate situation. It reminded me of the second movie(?) where Carrie and Big discuss that they won't be having children, and she gives him the watch with the inscription "Me and You, Just Us Two" [or was it "Just We Two"?]. Anyway, it was an issue that a childless couple their ages would have discussed and it was ok how they handled it. (I didn't exactly buy that John James Preston wouldn't want at least one child but I guess he gave up that life when he got bored with Natasha. Or he knew he could dump Carrie and still have a kid even if he was in his 50s or 60s.) Now we have a peripheral couple going through the have or not have kids story and while it's realistic to me that it's becoming a serious problem between them, I'm not invested in this couple and their lives, so it seems like more wasted time (and checking the box on an issue) when I'd rather see what's going on with our principal characters. ETA: And how natural would it be for Miranda to set up a conversation between Carrie and Dr. Nya about how she and Big had a happy marriage without children? Also, Charlotte could talk to Dr. Nya about adoption. At least those scenes would pull the character into more interaction with our main characters. Edited again to add: I think they may be setting up Dr. Nya and her husband to divorce so she will be "single" again like Carrie and Seema for Season 2. Which reminds me that I totally hope at the end of this season Miranda and Che ride off into the Netflix comedy special spotlight and are never heard from again. I have zero interest in seeing more of either character, alone or together.

Except the childless woman I know who did IVF in her 50s and had a baby at 53. Totally not the typical story, but it does happen, especially now that some women are waiting longer and longer to have children. I didn't quite think of it as "the end of my fertility" because I never wanted children but it did twinge somewhat that that part of my life was over. I laughed when he had to deliver the buns himself. That he looked a bit paunchy and out of shape, aware that he was possibly Not Hot!, was funny. Then his immediate dismissal of the Holocaust denier was indeed pitch perfect. More Anthony, less Miranda!

I did like the note of contempt in Brady's voice but I couldn't tell if he intended it or if he was just being Brady. Ridiculous waste of time on the tampon story. Yes, we get it, Charlotte is dealing with menopause and her daughter is dealing with getting her period! Wow, no one ever thought to explore that before I am not at all surprised that these writers (a few of whom are women over 50) don't understand the actual definition of menopause. Carrie and Miranda of SATC -- who apparently now have passed the 12 months -- would not have hesitated to check Smug Charlotte by telling her "it ain't over 'til it's over!" Having women friends who are several years younger than me, I did have to explain perimenopause, which took them a bit by surprise in their late 40s. But they quickly did their research and understood the process. I do realize there are women who experience few hot flashes or other problems and act kind of superior "Oh, it's been no big deal for me!" when their friends are frantically fanning and dealing with periods that go on for two weeks. I can see Charlotte being one of those women, but no, this is not the "menopause story line" we hoped to see. Agree with all @thesupremediva1 wrote and especially about Steve not wanting to "rally" again to save the marriage but now he's saying " 'til death do us part". Whaaa? He needs to befriend Peter 53 and get some tips on whatever dating site that guy uses. Steve needs a good friend. Where is Aiden, by the way? Why have the same actor come back if not to play a character who has moved from selling luxury goods to owning(?) a club? I mean, no, Seema's dad wasn't going to have been the busboy Samantha kissed but this one seems kinda natural and a fun callback, especially if he and Carrie recognized each other. Also, I think you can download voicemails from your phone. Not sure how to do it and can't Google right now, but there should be a way to save them. I'm sorry about your mom. I know how you feel, I have a voicemail from my uncle who is now gone and was so happy when I found that I had saved it. I am ready for Steve's big blowup and for him to go OFF on Miranda, remembering how badly she treated him when he had a one-night stand and admitted it. Of course, we are not going to see this. I don't think Lily is getting her first period at 15. Seems like she has been wearing pads and the problem is that she will likely have her period when there's a swim party next month, hence the need to wear a tampon. Wow, they took that story line right from the old commercials I saw as a teenager. Want to go to the swim party, teenage girl? Learn to wear this thing called a tampon! I thought when I heard the scream that it was Rock who got her period. That would have been more realistic (age wise) and the story could have been about her mixed/confused feelings about her changing female body. @Lethallyfab Yes, you totally predicted the nonbinary mitzvah, and I remembered you did as soon as I saw that scene! For me Anthony's "GET OUT!" reaction was slightly funny but also the only reaction one could have. His date turning out to be Mr. Aryan Holocaust Denier was not an amusing setup and left me asking "Why???" Who had that on their "check the box" of social issues Bingo card? Also, a poster above noted that today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Wow, tasteless bad timing, Show.

Can't wait for someone to do a parody of this episode where we see Peter 53's text response to Carrie: I can't. I'm sorry. Don't hate me. (with a couple of emoji) And in the seemingly inevitable Season 2, when Charlotte drags her to another kids' school event, I hope we see Carrie bump into Peter 53 with his financée, who is 38 years old. Again Carrie with the inappropriate heels. Who paints in open-toed high heels? Sometimes we actually don't sacrifice for fashion. You can paint AND write a big check, Carrie. When can we gather to erect a statue of Saint Steve the Loyal in Brooklyn? What I took from the ending is that Steve truly loves Miranda and Carrie is like, "Hey, I'm ready to move on!" And Carrie is going clubbin' in Brooklyn now. Oh how the mighty gal about town has fallen.

If the writers want to say this is who Miranda has become during the years of her marriage we didn't see, ok, I accept it. Sometimes people change a lot, especially in long marriages where they get stuck and don't grow for various reasons. While I don't like that she refuses to see the damage she's doing, it's realistic and many of us know someone who has been so "in love" with someone new that they justified similar selfish behavior. However it turned out, there were wounded people left behind. Carrie was not on board with Miranda's behavior and basically threw her hands up, seemingly aware that she'll have to help her friend deal with the consequences at some point. Perhaps they're setting Miranda up for a Season 2 living-on-her-own self-discovery story line. I recall that she told Dr. Nya that she wished she could come home to an empty house. The Miranda of the first movie might have already made this journey if she had decided she should divorce Steve then and figure herself out.

Moved to Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered thread.

I still don't understand why Brady was aged down to 17 when he should be about 20. As others have said, he could easily have been a college student who came home to attend classes remotely during Covid, and then decided it works and so he's still there. Having the girlfriend practically living with him would make more sense and Miranda and Steve wouldn't look like such pushover parents who can't set and enforce appropriate rules and boundaries. Clearly Brady's behavior seems to be another thing Miranda wants to escape without having actually tried to change. Do the writers think we sympathize with her losing control of her life so badly? I get that the writers think that many viewers (especially women with teenage sons) would find all this "relatable" but I sure don't.

So please tell me that the place Steve is painting in this preview is maybe an apartment Brady is renting, NOT that Steve is moving out of his house and letting Miranda have it. Steve better not be going to live in a tiny place over top of his bar.

Also in financial careers like Big's, which is why he preferred to watch old B&W movies rather than go out on the town with Carrie. She spent her days wandering around buying over-priced shoes and trying to write her one column, so she didn't have a huge need to decompress from a stressful day. I wish they would have given us a bit more about Steve's bar, to show him as a competent businessman. We saw him on the phone trying to replace yet another bartender or manager who had flaked on him, which reflects the real shortage of service workers right now. Otherwise, his bar seems to be doing ok, and he "sent over" (I assumed as a gift) the alcohol for the bar at Big's memorial service.

I think it was a New York Times reviewer who mentioned the “Rip van Winkle effect”, as if these ladies have been asleep for 20 years and just woke up. I keep wishing we had a little more information about what their lives were like during that time. I realized that Carrie said she had only worn the Versace dress twice, once was sitting in her window eating popcorn. She didn’t even get to go out in it when she wore it in Paris, she sat in the hotel waiting all evening for Aleks, right? So, she’s married to Mr. Big, who left a few million to his favorite cultural institutions, and yet she never once wore the dress to a gala or a fundraiser or to sit in a box seat at the ballet or symphony? I get it, it was a cute wrapup to have her wear it again at the end of the episode, but it’s also an example of the weird storytelling that ignores their decade-long marriage. It’s almost as if Big never showed up in Paris to get her. Instead she left Aleks and flew back on her own to her apartment in NYC and there she is 20 years later. The two movies were just dreams.

I loved that line. And Carrie saying "Of course you don't." I now want to see post-breakup Lisette on the stoop eating those blondies.

Let's talk about Lisette. I like her! I want to see more of her and Carrie. The Lisette story is my favorite of the whole series so far. She and Carrie can connect over clothes, shoes, jewelry, and dating. Also, Lisette is new to NYC, so Carrie can share tips about living in Manhattan. Lisette will learn that Carrie is not just a crazy old lady but a published author who 20 years ago was a known Girl About Town and is now a wealthy widow. I'm glad she called Carrie cool so now Carrie can stop acting so insecure around her. Carrie has success and wealth, why worry so much about what some young chit thinks? But hey, it's the story and it fit Carrie's personality, so I went along with it.

Steve asked her what she thought was "out there" so she told him she had already met someone. If she didn't admit it and he found out a week or a month later that she was already with someone, he would know she had lied or at least withheld info. It's all painful, might as well tell him the full truth in the first conversation. We keep posting about her behavior and for me it all goes back to her volcanic anger when he confessed he'd had a one-night stand (in the first movie). She was so angry with him, never gave him a chance to explain his feelings or really express the regret he seemed to have for having done it and for hurting her. She just cut him off. And yet, it seemed like she had turned him down sexually for a while (remember "let's just get it over with"?) and had not made an effort to talk to him or work with him on re-igniting the spark. Now she's kind of blaming him for their spark going out and acting like it's all perfectly fine that she went with someone else without even trying to talk to him about her unhappiness.

Carrie's home is full of clothes and Big's records! Aside from a couple of small shelves she has no space for books. ;-)

Remember that Miranda has been so unhappy that she was day-drinking on the sly. So I think we could have had a story line where Miranda eventually admits to herself that she is deeply unhappy and needs to change her life completely, and that includes leaving Steve in order to live alone. Maybe it could have included her getting a jolt from realizing that Che excited her sexually (shotgunning the joint at the bar) in a way Steve no longer does. She might have explored that awakened side of herself by attending Che's shows and after parties and going to a lesbian bar. We'd still end up with her leaving Steve yet it would be the Miranda of SATC leaving Steve, taking into account his feelings and Brady's, the complexities of breaking apart your household, and the sadness of realizing a 20-year relationship is just over.

Sometimes I think Miranda is supposed to seem this goofy and stupidly "in love" because maybe they're setting her up for a big fall. A lot of us are posting about how Miranda should have behaved, especially with Steve, but we all know that people quite often don't behave as they should. This type of middle-aged thing where someone meets someone new and gets all crazy and leaves their spouse or partner -- well, it happens. So they're depicting that, and while we don't think SATC Miranda would have done any of this, apparently AJLT Miranda does. Now I'm wondering if we're going to get Che in a Cleveland hotel with someone else (maybe a man?) and Miranda getting a sharp shock, or will it indeed be a rom-com where Che welcomes her with open arms and Miranda totally is into a new non-trad lifestyle? With these writers I really can't predict.

And now Carrie is about the age Aleks was when they were together. I would love to have one mention of him, like a comment from Charlotte about one of his new projects. That is the sort of thing I hoped to get from this show occasionally. I also enjoyed Carrie going through her clothing history and showing Seema THE dress. (I’m guessing Carrie burned or buried the Vivienne Westwood wedding gown.)

Now that we've seen Brady as an LGBTQ+ "ally" I'm looking forward to the scene where Miranda, his mom, tells him she's divorcing his father because she's in love with the non-binary comedian/activist he saw at the rally. The only way I will like this story line is if Miranda gets slammed with the realization that she's just another of Che's many sex partners and we end the season with Miranda having to face being all alone and sad, as she almost did on that New Year's Eve in the first movie. This time maybe Carrie will let her just sit with the consequences of her actions. As Carrie said, "Being alone in theory is different from being alone in reality."

Some random thoughts: Why is this show almost promoting smoking? Did we really need the time-wasting scenes of Carrie and Seema talking about smoking? Carrie has been a smoker for maybe 20 years of her life, and a non-smoker for maybe 15 years. I get that she took it up again as a regression after Big's death, but she's just now realizing that cigarette smoke stinks and the smell gets into everything including your skin, hair, and breath? (Not to mention lungs.) You'd have thought that in the past she wouldn't have wanted to stink up and ruin her prized clothing collection. Was it all so that we could see her looking like a crazy old lady in that "smoking outfit", walking around in it without even buckling her shoes? She really doesn't care what the neighbors think, does she? I guess it doesn't matter since she has no relationship with them... until the cool young new neighbor sees her. Hope being spotted looking like that convinces Carrie to give up the habit and the outfit and act like she has sense. ETA: Carrie also throws her half-smoked cigarette into the street after Lisette spots her in her crazy old lady outfit. Littering by throwing your butts in the street is nasty. I did get another chuckle from the totally obvious product placement of a nearly empty tube of Tom's toothpaste on Carrie's bathroom sink. Ridiculous. Also ridiculous: Carrie standing on a step-stool in heels! She had hip surgery and yet continues to wear heels, even while doing chores in her apartment. She (and SJP?) really has a problem with being seen as short, doesn't she? She's gonna have another surgery when she falls and breaks something.

Thanks to @ChicksDigScars I again read this interview with the writers from Vanity Fair. It's so full of justifications for the bad writing on this show. Loved this gem: After a time jump that fast-forwards through some of Carrie’s grief, “Sex and the Widow” also features Carrie’s first date after Big’s death. “We were very aware that the whole world was wanting her to go on a date and hoping she would go on a date,” said Rottenberg, who wrote the episode with Zuritsky. Um, no, the "whole world" wasn't wanting Carrie to go on a date. I'll bet not even half of the show's fans strongly wanted it. Because we're real human beings who understand grief and taking time to heal and were fine with watching Carrie go through a realistic journey. These writers are delusional.

Thanks for linking to that article. I couldn't find it again after reading it last week and wanting to refer to it in a post. So at the end the writers claim the final four episodes have the humor. Hmmm, where was the humor in this episode? Lily getting a door slammed into her head? That Charlotte claimed she was checking Harry's penis for cancer? Carrie looking like a crazy lady in her smoking outfit? Miranda idiotically saying five times "You still blow Harry?!" -- like she's so funny and clever. Her 55-year-old tongue just lately learned to lick pussy, so what's her point? Yes, it's not unheard of for middle-aged people who love and enjoy their partners to still engage in and enjoy oral sex. Made me sad because it underscored that poor Steve probably hasn't got head in a decade. Oh, I really hope we see him with a lovely woman at the end of episode 10. Maybe a friend of Aiden's. And that he fights for his full share of the marital assets! Yeah, it was a laugh riot. Oh, I did get a chuckle when Carrie's podcast pal whispered, "I'll bring the gun tomorrow."