And Just like that S3 con't (and hopefully S4) the one where we hope Carrie finally bins Aidan

[Netaporter]

Link to previous thread here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5066517-and-just-like-that-season-3-pre-screening-discussion-thread?page=40&reply=145328458

All welcome! spoilers allowed on ep release day once the ep is up in the UK.

🤣 so true about the new page and large font! Love those questions, very funny!

Dame Tracey Emin should have had a proper credit and a financial donation. Cheeky gits.

I wish people would stop slagging it off so much. Not just on hear but in the mainstream press. I really don’t want it cancelled not because I think it’s as good as the original but because I look forward to the outfits and I do want to know what they are up to. There’s very little on the box that interests me these days. I don’t want it cancelled.

I agree @EachandEveryone - although I am actually also really loving it (although hate Aiden!)

It’s apparently the most watched show on HBO Max so I imagine it’ll be renewed if everyone making it is happy to come back.

Hope so. I look forward to it every Friday.

I think it’s mostly awful, because the writers are so bad. But I hugely enjoy all the commentary around it so I want them to carry on pumping this nonsense out.

I'm really enjoying the AJLT too - especially now they have got rid of the awful Che, Jackie and the rest of that entourage. I don't think the criticism is any worse than the discourse that was around the original series when it first aired and was quite shocking for the time. It's just we have social media and everyone and their auntie gets to have a public voice. It's nothing new for AJLT, the movies were similarly slated.

Any writer portraying a beloved character is going to bump up against the perceptions formed of that character by the viewer, it's just natural. It was written so well originally that we feel we know them - that's a huge compliment on the original series and its writing. And they are beloved, they have meant a lot to a lot of viewers, almost like family. So AJLT is like watching family members acting really strangely. It's horrifying, compelling and funny in equal measure.

I'm glad it's getting great viewing figures. I hope it continues to a next series, but I too think that one might be the last. Hopefully, Carrie can get rid of Aiden and put her past to bed for good this season, and move on with her life in the next.

People criticising it (constructively) is all part of the marketing and general buzz about the show, especially these days when there’s sooo much to watch. Having loyal communities around it will actually contribute towards a renewal.

@PurplebeadedFendi is spot on, if you were there the first time round for SATC, AJLT is like watching family members and we all know their past mistakes, etc. We probably know them better than some of the writers on S1 & 2 of AJLT 😉

I don’t think this will be the last season - it generates too much cash for HBO for them to end it.

I’m enjoying it for what it is - a bit like a school reunion. You want to see what everyone has been up to since you last met. At many points in my life mine has taken similar paths to Carrie’s (except I would never go back to ‘my’ Aidan if my Mr Big died 😂) so I’m very fond of it all. That said, a bit like Friends, SATC was very much of its time and I’m guessing that the writers are having to include storylines that a lot of us consider to be woke shite (because it is tbf) and you know the old saying ‘a horse designed by committee is a camel’ so this is where we’re at - incoherent plots and inconsistent writing. The producers should’ve been brave enough to go with the original formula IMO because that might well have been the new cutting edge.

Have all the writers changed then?

It’s headed up by Michael Patrick King who took over from Darren Star on SATC and who is considered by many to be just less good than he was. He has a team of writers who are all new to this world but quite a few are well known writers with good reputations; the general sense is that MPK is just not serving this well. He does a podcast with his writers which I have never been able to listen to but the tone of it is apparently immensely self-congratulatory at all times about the brilliance of the new series. There are also reports that the actors had a lot of input into their characters is what isn’t a hugely helpful way.

I remember there was a team of women writers that used to do the original SATC, including Cindy Chupack, and I think Jenny something, was it Jenny Bix? They were really great writers, and apparently a lot of them used to come up with the storylines from things that had happened in their own love/sex lives.

i’ve always found MPK to be very self-congratulatory. I’ve seen interviews and extras on DVDs where he sat with SJP and they’re talking about how they felt that there was more to be said by these characters… I think they were saying this is why they did the films. It was all very self-indulgent.

I think also the current writers, while also still using things from their real lives, are mostly a lot younger than the cast. Does that make a difference? There is an element of the main cast acting like they are much older than they are on occasion (less so maybe now than in the first series) and is that a product of that?

MPK was astonished that people didn't like Che Diaz as of course he loved her, and loved humiliating SJP and Miranda through her.

I might point out that it was only via internet slagging off that we got rid of Che at all! Otherwise we would still be stuck with her endless " I am non binary" shit.

Author/journalist, Maureen Callahan, posits that the writers are a bunch of woke, GBT men who hate older women. They hate the these characters got old and are punishing them. Once example she cited is MPK knowing SJP is terrified of rats irl. So he wrote in a scene where she's chased by them.

Didnt mind the rats but the bit where Carrie was dressed down by that annoying loud Chloe for being 'too precious about her pussy' on the podcast summed up how much the writers hate older women. Old Carrie would not have taken that bullshit

'Once example she cited is MPK knowing SJP is terrified of rats irl. So he wrote in a scene where she's chased by them.'

Jesus, that's horrible. I'm terrified of rats too and jumped out of my skin at that scene!

It's certainly not a show that 'celebrates older women' (whatever that means!). Pretty much all the main characters are made to look like twits in one way or the other

Totally agree. That was a low point.

That’s bloody awful. Very Hitchcock. At least the rats were bad CGI I guess…poor Tipi Hendren did not have that luxury in the Birds.

I’m not wholly sure about that theory as there are quite a few fairly well known women writing, eg Samantha Irby. But I do think the show in general is not doing a brilliant job representing women in their 50s positively,

The rats were real. There was a big chat about them on the podcast. They had to be flown in specially as they couldn’t use local trained rats for unfathomable reasons

Ha ha

so very true

Blimey. That’s a whole chunk of change to spend on something that looked absolutely fake 😂

'The rats were real'

WHAAAAT????!!!!! Why the actual fuck did they put SJP through that? And why did she agree to it? That's even worse than the phone sex! 🤦🏻‍♂️