Boyyyy, what a lightning rod of a series this turned out to be! So much to say.
I think anyone who’s being honest, even the most rabid fan (and I’m among that group) has to admit that the quality of the first season* was a mixed bag. But before we start, I want to take just a minute to say something about criticizing art:
The ability to put something out into the world – music, writing, acting, performance of any kid – requires a pretty high level of bravery. It’s not nothing to take something that does not exist and then make it exist with your body, your voice, your brain. That’s not to say that art should be exempt from criticism, but it is to say that we as a culture have the ability to opine so freely and immediately, to create such negative discourse about the smallest thing, that we often sound like ungrateful children. “They really just ruined everything.” “They should have never come back.” “This album is horrible.” “I hated it.” I’ve found myself saying some of this stuff over the course of the last decade, but I’m trying in my old age to take a bit of a kinder, softer approach to receiving and processing OTHER PEOPLE’S ART. Does that sound dramatic, with the all caps? Good! Somebody (or in this case, a lot of somebodys) created something to put into the the world to make life less dreary and more livable. The least we can do is treat that offering with some kindness. We can be thoughtful, critical, even, but we don’t have to be quite so flippant and cavalier about how we hurriedly dismiss something other people worked for months or years to make.
Okay. So with that said.
There were highs and there were lows . I think my biggest joys came when I got to see the characters be truly joyful themselves: the laughter, the ribbing each other, Charlotte (brought forth by the wonderful Kristin Davis) doing tennis/Torah portions/tampon work, THE. CLOTHES., the evolution of what it means to be a woman, the conversations that the show started about authenticity (whether in regard to aging, sexuality, gender identification, parenting), getting to see amazing little meals for the eyes, like the vestibule of Carrie’s brownstone (!!!!).
And it feels strange to type this out, but I didn’t really miss Samantha. I think it’s kind of impossible for me to separate Samantha from Kim Cattrall, who was horribly unkind to my dear SJP in a very public way. If I try to do that, I can admit that maybe there were elements missing that Samantha would’ve brought: unapologetic brassiness, boldness, sex appeal…okay, now that I’m really sitting down to think about it, maybe I did miss her after all. Not in a way that kept me from enjoying the show, but…yeah. Hmm. That’s new.
I heard lots of feedback from people who found the show to be “too woke,” as though this series was attempting to correct or overcompensate for the sins that Sex and the City’s lily-white and largely straight, cis-gendered cast committed in the 90’s and early 00’s. And yes, we did get a fair amount of lots of different things: Rose’s transition to Rock, Miranda’s exploration of her sexual orientation, the entire character of Che Diaz (more on that in a minute). But something one of the writers said really stuck out to me and has re-framed that: this is New York City, y’all. Of course, in 2022, there would be tons of conversations about and interactions with folks whose lifestyles never would’ve been spotlighted in the original run of the show. It’s a different world! And the center of that world, in the most progressive sense, would naturally be NYC. So I’m giving them some grace there.
I’m also much more keen to give the writers space and time to show us different storylines because, as I recently discovered, *there’s going to be a second season. For about the first half of this season’s run, I had no idea there would be a second one, and I was super frustrated that so much precious time was being devoted to anyone but our three girls who we’d been missing. Knowing we have more time made me exhale and really get excited to spend more time with people like Nya, Seema, and LTW.
But then, there were storylines that didn’t make sense to me. Why did we spend so much time focusing on Brady’s sex life, for example, only for that to completely drop out of the season by episode four? How am I supposed to feel anything but a little sorry for Brady when his mom admitted over lunch with Nya that whether being a parent is worth the hype “depends on the day,” then sent him off backpacking so she could explore her new relationship on the opposite coast? Are we supposed to love Che or hate them?? (That’s a real question because I still have no idea. Sara Ramirez is so amazing and this character is soooo…something.) The show felt aimless and confused about its tone sometimes, when storylines that could’ve been amazing capsule episodes (like the amazing downstairs-neighbor Lisette who provided Carrie with a mirror of her younger years) bled weirdly into other episodes and then fizzled out with nowhere to go. Miranda’s drinking, noticed by Charlotte, dismissed by Carrie, and bad enough for Miranda to be blackout Amazon-ordering, was as easy to get rid of as Miranda deciding to cold-turkey kick the habit and was never spoken of again. Carrie’s entire hip surgery and plastic surgery consultation (though it did give us a screamingly funny painkiller induced “high-Carrie” podcast appearance) seemed like filler plot. Kristin Davis carried the entire comedic weight of the season on her back, excepting a couple of insane and brilliant SJP moments, though everyone seemed to be kind of…well, mean to Charlotte this season. Why did we spend so much time focusing on people like Nya’s mother-in-law, Big’s assistant? These are the frustrating questions that come from no one (seemingly) having put notecards on the wall at the beginning of a season. With no road map, you end up with a lot of dead ends.
It wasn’t Sex and the City, and it wasn’t even And Just Like That for a while. It was somewhere in between, laced with a little melancholia and muddy writing. For example, several choices that were made on the show I didn’t understand until I listened to the companion podcast run by the writing team – and it’s never a good sign when listening to a podcast is a requirement to understand what you’re watching. The writers admitted that they didn’t have an end in mind when they began writing, and oh, how I wish they had: any anchor might have better edited those loose ends and wasted time into meaningful plot with less wandering around. It made the beautiful moments really beautiful (Carrie in that sherbet confection on the bridge in Paris, HELLO, GORGEOUS), but mostly felt like we stumbled into them by accident.
And yet.
Being reconnected with a group of people who I’ve found friendship in for decades, seeing them trot around in their fabulous, daring garb and be themselves, watching them support and love each other, seeing their faces and bodies age…this show was A GIFT. I turned it on each Thursday while my children were in nap/quiet time on the big TV. Not a laptop, not my phone – I wanted the sacrament of watching this show to have my full attention. I put my phone in the kitchen. I got out my heating pad (which I love to sit on while watching TV because I’m 33 and this is what I do now). Sometimes I even poured myself a coffee or a cold drink – in a glass!! – to enjoy. It was an actively reverent experience – ritualistic, even – for me to be afforded the opportunity to spend time with these people again, to love them, to listen to them, to watch them live. There is no more formative character or person for me in the pop culture universe than Carrie Bradshaw/SJP, and so for all its blemishes, AJLT was a treasure. The mere fact that these now-six women (Parker, Nixon, Davis, Pittman, Parker, Sarita Chaudhury), all of whom are in their fifties, are starring in an incredibly expensive show about sex, friendship, frivolity and seriousness, death and drinking and dating? Beautiful. Impactful. Daring. Delightful. Something that makes scores of women happy is often something that the world at large enjoys taking the wind out of by deeming it frivolous or “basic.” This was deemed worth of millions of dollars and prime billing on HBO.
There were so many moments of brilliance. “What are you going to do all day, sit in a studio and laugh?” being a direct echo of Miranda’s scathing question to Carrie pre-Petrovsky-Paris-departure, “What are you going to do all day, eat croissant?” The idea that your friends are the real gut-checks. The concept of growth and change being something we all have to reckon with inside ourselves, and the big-t Truth that is this: we are dynamic, we’re all trying, and the people who love you most will cheer you on as you roll the dice over and over again on yourself.
With all its critiques and flaws and triumphs, Season 1 left us with more questions than answers. But I couldn’t help but wonder…in the game of life, sometimes, isn’t it just enough to play?