PicoBlog

This show is not trash. Was never a SATC fan - in fact publicly criticised it for "...putting a pretty dress on desperation and calling it empowerment...". and felt that Carrie had zero personality. Add to that I am a Classics Major and a literary snob - read Ovid for breakfast, Proust at night... Didn't even notice the SATC movies when they came out. However, when a NY playwright friend asked for my thoughts re: casting Cynthia Nixon for the lead role in her play, and after reading all the reviews saying how terrible season 1 of AJLT was, I felt compelled to watch it. Because my TV is LG pre 2018 I can't stream off Binge so could only access Season 1 via Youtube - cost $3.99. After reading the cynical reviews I was ready for And Just Like Crap - BUT... AJLT is real. It is moving. It touches a nerve that lives in the real bodies of real people. Put the fashion aside. As a mature age student I have lived that scene when Miranda attends her first class and struggles to find the 'right' way to say what she is trying to, to the black professor with the young students watching on squirming in their seats. I am that 'ageing' woman who goes 'ouch' when a much older woman (or so you thought) keeps referring to you as 'women our age'. When Big pours a glass of wine and sings along with the music in his kitchen that moment is so true - it's what we over 50's do, in an attempt to connect with, or reconnect with how we used to feel - ageing, overweight and singling flat in our kitchens and it is beautiful/tragic in it's futility. Big's funeral is beautifully filmed - ethereal with the misty white and everyone in black. I bawled my eyes out to 'Hello It's Me' playing over Big's photo montage. The scene where we first see the chemistry sparking between Miranda and Che is pure genius - I put this moment right up there with when Dr Schivago (Omar Shariff) meets Lara (Julie Christie) in the library after they haven't seen one another for along time. The scene is beautifully played and I felt the heat, chemistry bubbling up between them. The show, in general, captures a delicate moment where adults are forced to grow up or to wake up to reality - but not so much that we can't go '...baby just one more time...' It does it well - and with feeling.

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