PEOPLE Gets Opinionated with Our New Pop Take Column

I started at PEOPLE as an intern back in 2004. I was 21 years old, and the thing I was obsessed with more than anything else was Sex and the City. It had just wrapped that winter, and there may have been a void on HBO, but the stars were hotter than they’d ever been.

Sarah Jessica Parker was at every Met Gala for years to come. The show’s cast dominated the Emmys that year. And you could still bop around N.Y.C. and go to the places they’d shot the final few seasons (Pastis, Tao, Magnolia Bakery — anybody else been to Sea Thai, the Brooklyn restaurant that served as the stand-in for Raw, where Samantha met Smith?). 

When they finally put out the SATC movie in 2008, well, you just had to be there to understand the level of craze and fanfare surrounding it.

The passion that the original fans of SATC had for the show is the reason why so many people have kept glued to its nouveau form, And Just Like That…, even as it drifted away from its original vibe, lost some of the original cast and became (we hate to say it) somewhat torturous viewing.

“It was stressful, watching SJP and all those smart, talented people struggling to make the show work year after year. Sex and the City always seemed effortless,” says PEOPLE’s critic Tom Gliatto, who writes about AJLT’s demise in our new feature Pop Take.

“It was like being up in an airplane with one conked-out engine and a crew — a highly trained crew! — that couldn’t figure out how to get the thing above the clouds or down to a runway.”

If that sounds a little spicy for PEOPLE, buckle up. With the brand-new Pop Take, we’ll be offering up fun hot takes from our hilarious, intelligent and opinionated editors every week about the pop culture moments we can’t stop talking about — and you need to know about before your next event. (If anybody brings up politics at the family barbecue, just change the subject to Hunting Wives!)

You’ll see these in print, on people.com and in an exclusive video series on social and the PEOPLE app. 

movie Tom’s brutally honest AJLT breakdown on the PEOPLE app.

Thanks for reading, clicking and watching!