BingeyKohan

I felt like Nathan Lane was basically doing Leslie Jordan drag. Also, sorry Peggy but the passage Marian read aloud from your Clara Barton article ... not great. You walked away from The Christian Advocate, you don't have to end the piece with a Bible quote! (Mostly kidding - I know a lot of journalism from that era would sound ham-fisted to our ears.)

'shredded by everyone' has absolutely no correlation to viewing and subscribing numbers, from HBO's POV. And to shred it you have to watch in the first place. I am sure HBO Max is over the moon about the engagement this show has gotten.

I wonder if Villanelle's religiosity (as shown in the trailer) will be a *real* plot point or just more of a gag to kick off the season the way her wedding did last season. I'm not sure which would be worse -- a quick gag or a real, multi-episode religious experience. For some reason the latter does not interest me.

omg hahahaha 'you'll always be known as the girl who ... went to Cleveland.'

Based on the episode preview (and some memory of set photos that leaked during filming) my predix are:

I agree with you in spirit tho I feel compelled to note that apartment isn’t the penthouse - in the second movie they established that they sold the penthouse (which they seem to have never occupied) in favor of a smaller place a few floors down. And I only point THAT out because I can’t tell how big their current apartment even is. It seems to be a one bedroom since Carrie uses that little pass through as her office and Big seemed to use a table pushed up against the wall in the living room. It seems strange they wouldn’t have at least a second bedroom used for other things but I guess we’re supposed to handwave it that the second bedroom became the big closet. Tho in reality a place with enough square footage to have that large an enclosed, eat-in kitchen would probably be a 3-bedroom. ETA this all might be addressed in the episode’s walk-through with Carrie’s realtor. I haven’t seen it yet so I’m a maniac for even being here

yeah, ultimately I decided that's what they were going for with that bit (that an upper east sider would never deign to cross the park - tho Miranda's original apartment was on the upper west, I thought) ... but I thought they could have hit it a little harder to make it land, especially since, as you note in a different post, it's easy to assume Carrie's old apartment was supposed to be located downtown where the actual exteriors are filmed, which would make her bewilderment at the UWS register even more.

To change the subject to finances, which feels a bit safer than any other thread -- 1) if Big left Natasha a million, how much does Carrie now have? I guess we already knew she was set for life (I always identified with her much more when she still had vestiges of the woman whose chose buying Vogue over buying dinner because it 'nourished her more.' 2) SURELY Carrie has paid Charlotte back for the downpayment on her apartment but I sort of feel like Carrie should put Rose and Lily through school with her windfall to show her eternal gratitude?? (I mean, not really, Charlotte and Harry don't need it, esp never having had a mortgage, but still!)

I agree with this but the same can be said of a lot of white filmmakers of the time - I love You've Got Mail but I cringe when Meg Ryan's bookstore employee wails that she'll have to move to Brooklyn if the shop closes. I never really bought that Carrie would live on the Upper East Side in the first place but for some reason SATC's creators couldn't imagine these women below the 70s, at least in the beginning.

I feel like this conflates the corrective the show's creative team has professed to be interested in -- correcting the original series' limited perspective and exclusion of the diversity that makes NYC NYC -- with a story they're exploring with Miranda, which is questioning whether and why people must stay the same person they've always been. Those are 2 separate aims, narratively. Personally my only objection to the way they're portraying Miranda and Steve so far is they've turned him into a dottering doofus.

The constant disabling of subtitles is driving me as crazy as Carrie. I'm fine with disabling them once during a viewing experience but everything from the pre-show preview to the previously on to the episode itself to the preview for the next week's episode loads as a different file so you have to disable them every single time. Also: was Charlotte's immediate knowledge of what a million is after taxes a subtle callback to her 1M divorce payout she wrangled out of Bunny? (I always sort of thought she got the apartment in lieu of the million.)

It's starting to feel like Charlotte should follow Samantha's lead and leave this friend group behind - maybe that's part of what propels her to her new friend (who weirdly showed up in the previously on even though she wasn't even mentioned this episode). This episode had the scene from the earlier script-page leak (proving it wasn't a plant to throw us off the scent of the storyline, though out of context I could see how people could interpret it as merely Big and Carrie having a rough patch vs him being gone). I didn't get Carrie acting like the upper west side was exotic to her - her old apartment is supposed to be on the Upper East.

I have the exact same questions. I thought someone said later the movie was Bombshell but that doesn’t make any sense.

The Alex COVID Hour on UBA+ was a literal hot mess. (What was with Chip’s dopey ‘yes, this is going great!’ faces?) The only believable part was Bradley nonchalantly switching it off. But … in the twisted logic of this show it will be a massive, humanizing hit for Alex. What I think the writers were up to is resetting the Alex character to get back to the version of her in the red power dress at the table with the execs early in S1. I also have to be that guy who points out that what Paolo made is NOT. A. DOCUMENTARY. She pointed a camera at someone and asked one question and he answered. Unless she edited a lot more material into it but if she had I don’t think Corey would have sat still and watched the whole thing. I would love a tally of how many days Alex has actually been on the air in the time that this show has tracked. S1 only covered about 3 weeks and Alex was on the air for that. She was not on the air at all in the intervening time between S1-S2. S2 has covered about 2 months. It feels like within that time frame Alex has maybe been on the air for a total of a week, if that? Bizarre for a show that is grounded in this woman's professional life.

I'm unclear on this as well -- there was applause when Karl indicated a vote had been forestalled ... but you'd think some shareholders (maybe a lot of them) would have preferred to have a vote? I'm also unclear on why the President needed Logan to know that day he wasn't running for a second term. First they had Michelle Ann calling, and they were generally indicating the White House was urgently trying to reach them, with the prez ultimately reaching out himself. Seems like it could have waited since the WH didn't seem to be using it for leverage about anything.

Wrong Side of the Dead: Maggie's sequel where she documents how Alex is the kiss of death for her fellow anchors!

This episode made it seem like UBA’s nighttime programming is … all about UBA itself. No wonder it’s losing $$$. As much as I enjoyed seeing Bradley lay a trap for Maggie I felt like they had to majorly dumb down the Maggie character to get there. What must viewers make of the revolving door of fill-in hosts on TMS? First Bradley bails for 3 weeks then Alex comes back then disappears then reappears then Bradley is gone for the rehab run and now they have to explain to viewers another absence for Alex. Speaking of, this show is sort of turning into a Final Destination movie all about what’s ailing Alex. In no way does it make sense for Paola to have flown from a country in lockdown for a minor begrudgingly attended memorial service. They kinda sorta planted the seed for Laura’s heart condition on her first TMS guest hosting day but that was still out of nowhere. Finally, it feels a little icky, the way I sense they are using COVID as a story engine — the great perspective (re) setter for these characters. Yes, it might be nice to see Bradley and Alex face the sobering reality that it’s their job to help get America through it and step up but … the producers can also set their show whenever the hell they want. They could get Alex to the finish line of just embracing her role in public life in some other way.

I also felt like the amount of co workers who gathered to gawk at Bradley having a very private and painful family moment was weird.

I almost felt like Karen Pittman's monologue in the office was like in a musical where a character breaks into song to express how they're feeling. that's not an insult - I like her and her performance a lot, but her cadence and the writing itself made me think of that. I guess Juliana Margulies has made the choice or been directed to be as enigmatic as possible? I think she is giving Bradley fairly good advice and comforts her well - but when you're just looking at her face when the character doesn't feel like people are clocking her expressions she seems so cold and aloof.

Exciting to see the team do some real newsgathering. Jennifer Aniston must have had it written into her contract most of her up-close scene partners had to be one other person only. Or maybe it was for insurance purposes since she also had to film the Friends reunion and they didn't want to risk it on that set. Hopefully they are setting the pieces in place for season 3 to show us what it actually looks like for Alex and Bradley to settle in as co-anchors.

Part of me thinks the book will never come out - Mitch dying and COVID arriving will derail it. This show is all about dropping anvils (Alex taking a sip of Mitch's water might as well have been accompanied by Dark Shadows-like organ music) -- I wonder if Alex thumbing through the empty pages of that mock book in Maggie's hotel room was similar; it foreshadowed the book will actually amount to nothing. I very well could be wrong and if I am my feeling is it will feel clear to Alex that however the sourcing is positioned in the book she will know it was Laura who was behind it, which will be part of the point of her character in the first place. (in Laura's mind it will be revenge on Alex for having outed her.)

<3 Are you just starting? I'm jealous! It is delightful all the way through, I thought. No spoilers beyond that : )

On first viewing I really felt like this episode retconned Alex's original account of her encounter with Mitch in Chile -- the first time she described it she made it sound like she'd been unable to give consent because he'd gotten her very drunk. I read an old recap that framed the original in-show presentation as Alex threatening Mitch she could frame it that way (when it didn't really happen like that; more in line with the version of events from this episode, after which Alex happily thought she was pregnant) Anyway I blame the 'previously on' segments for that because they have used that old exchange in the previously-ons before, free of context, so I came to believe it really was a lack-of-consent issue! Anyway, I too now wonder about the wisdom of the time jump vs what we've gotten. In a fiction workshop the rest of the class would definitely criticize the choice to jump over all the interesting stuff that happened in the interim for the much less interesting stuff happening in the foreground. Also, thinking back on Alex's memoir writing (most of which happened in the time jump) it's sort of hilarious to me that the final words of her book are "stay tuned for the twist..." Now that I understand what the twist is (I didn't for a long time; now I take it to be the official name for their version of The Third Hour of Today) I think it's deeply weird to close her book on an expression that is a handoff to a show she is not even on, starring a guy she screwed over (and which she has probably only been saying for the last couple of years of her career, since Third Hours haven't been around all that long relative to the span of her career). If Mitch is dead and Alex really does develop Covid when she gets back then it's game over for any other storyline this season that seemed to have momentum going into this episode ... but were there any storylines that seemed to have momentum?

Continue to be fascinated by their narrative choices. I had figured (before seeing the episode) Alex could come back from Italy feeling cleansed and able to actually show up for her $24M deal but this doesn’t seem like it’s going to relieve her guilt! I guess the main question is what does it all do to Maggie’s book, which is going to soon get eclipsed by COVID focus anyway. Maybe Alex’s book ends up beating hers to publication. ETA not the ‘main’ question but rather a big Alex question I should say

Like the above poster, I have to wonder what the rest of the season can even deliver at this point. We sort of know or heavily suspect at this point that Then if it's a 10-episode season there are 4 episodes for Maggie Brenner's book to come out, for the Hannah lawsuit to play out, for Alex to return (again) or not, for Alex and Bradley to maybe have a scene or two together, for Laura to reveal herself to be nefarious (or not), and for Covid to take over the world - a scenario in which these characters are no longer interacting in person anyway because they would have sorted out some kind of individual in-home remote filming situation, which obviously wouldn't make for great tv. I can't say any of that intrigues me particularly.