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Well, well, well, look who’s in a new relationship bliss bubble! Since Carrie, Aidan, and the jacket heard ‘round the world had their big, New York City street reunion, they’ve been holed up in a hotel having lots of great sex. Carrie says she’s having the best orgasms of her entire life! The two of them quite literally can’t keep their hands off each other! When they come up for air, most people are like isn’t this a lot in a short amount of time? Charlotte’s like more, please, all of it now! Carrie follows Aidan’s school of thought because Carrie loves being told exactly what she wants to hear; it is her way.
Since Aidan still refuses to step one foot inside Carrie’s apartment — I’m no expert, but this seems like something you’re going to have to figure out if you want this to be long-term — Carrie decides they should rent Che’s AirBnB whenever Aidan’s in town. It’s not a terrible temporary solution, but because of Che’s lack of … any household items, really, it does give Carrie and Aidan the chance to basically build the homelife they never got the chance to. Ah, the high of shopping for home goods comes for us all at some point. The domesticity is cute, but it really is a relationship in hyperspeed. I will treasure watching Che have to stand there and watch as Carrie and Aidan explain why they didn’t work out the first time. “Because I made a mistake,” Carrie says before she and Aidan share a deep, emotional embrace on the opposite side of the kitchen island from where a silent Che just stands there, taking it in. It is absurd and perfect, and although I don’t condone Che writing any more standup sets, I do hope this moment makes it into one should it have to happen. Truly, what a time to be alive.
It’s not long before Carrie and Aidan are figuring out when she can visit his farmhouse in Virginia and meet his children. It’s nice to see Carrie happy and making plans (although I am glad she has not banished the memory of that mess that went down in Aidan’s cabin all those years ago), but you know there is going to be a hiccup to all this unbridled joy at some point. It’ll probably be a big hiccup. And also a Big hiccup. Let’s talk about that little Big conversation Carrie has with Miranda, shall we?
When Carrie has Miranda alone, she confides in her about a nagging thought she’s been having: Things are so great with Aidan, and she’s never felt so free and open and connected with him. She thinks that before, because of Big, she never fully let herself go there with Aidan; she was always holding back. What if this level of connection with Aidan was always there, and she was fighting it because she thought Big was the one? “Was Big a big mistake?” she asks, finally morphing into a walking version of her old Sex and the City column, as was her destiny. Miranda, understandably, has no response. What do you say to that, really? Some of it stems from these rose-colored glasses Carrie clearly has on at the start of this new relationship. I don’t fault her for trying to process this feeling with her best friend, but then the whole thing is just dropped! I’m sure it’s going to come up again down the road, but, like, what a bomb to detonate and just walk away from! Miranda has no follow-up even after she’s had time to think about it? She’s a lawyer! Lawyers always have follow-ups! I thought we’d at least touch upon this thought a little bit by the end of the episode, but And Just Like That’s story structure remains, as always, absolute chaos.
Listen, And Just Like That doesn’t need to be — and shouldn’t ever be — some emotional drama with in-depth, introspective conversations between characters, but if you’re going to tee something like that up, let’s commit to it. There’s a similar issue with Seema’s storyline here.
The crux of the episode is that Carrie is deeply encased inside her Aidan bubble and Seema is having a hard time watching this woman happily off with a second great love of her life when she’s had no one. She begins to avoid Carrie and even cancels their plans to summer in the Hamptons — the idea of spending the summer being reminded that she doesn’t have this thing she very much wants in her life is a real hard pass for her. It’s not that she isn’t happy for Carrie, but Seema can’t help but feel a little jealous, she can’t help but have some self-loathing. When Carrie finally calls her out on ghosting her — you can only hide from the woman in the seat next to you at the hair salon for so long — Seema begs her friend for a little space. Carrie begs her not to pull away. Surely, Carrie is thinking about Samantha in this moment and doesn’t want to lose another friend, but Seema is adamant about what she needs. Not to be a real dork about it, but it’s actually such a lovely example of standing up for yourself. Who among us has not felt the need to remove ourselves from a situation because it makes us feel so shitty about our own life? It may be a little selfish, but sometimes you need to be to get through the day.
This is all great. The problem, however, is that not long after this scene, Seema joins Carrie, Aidan, Miranda, and Charlotte for dinner. It’s great that she’s obviously gotten the space she needed and, after taking some time to process, is able to be an adult and be there for her friend — it just would’ve been nice to have seen how she did that. Show us the process! Is she venting to someone else? Does this woman have any other friends outside of Carrie Bradshaw? Please, for the love of god, say yes. It’s such a missed opportunity to give Seema some depth. We get a big show out of her asking for this space, but we never get to see how she works through it. It’s a great conflict to explore, but it just feels a little half-baked.
At the very least, they could give Seema a pal to chat about things with the way best friends Charlotte and Anthony chat about what’s going on in their lives, which is not talking to each other at all but talking at each other without listening and finding that very productive. Those two remain, as always, a delight.
Anthony gets a love interest! Giuseppe and his giant Italian loaf have stayed on at Hot Fellas for much longer than the week he and Anthony agreed to (this episode apparently spans over a month, but to be honest, I’ve accepted that And Just Like That exists in a universe where time has no rules and I feel great about it) and they are getting along great. There is friendly banter, and Giuseppe even engages in a reenactment of the pottery wheel scene in Ghost but with bread dough. It’s working out just fine until Anthony learns that Giuseppe is gay. As Anthony puts it, Giuseppe made his “sourdough rise in the workplace,” and he’s worried about crossing the line. They go back and forth about Anthony firing Giuseppe — which is, you know, ethically not sound — but once Anthony comes clean about being attracted to him, Giuseppe quits and kisses Anthony. I know there are a lot of red flags here, but this is kind of sweet, too. Giuseppe responding to Anthony’s “I’m fucked” with a perfectly timed “well, not yet,” is exactly what I want out of this show. Let’s all brace ourselves for Anthony’s full report as to how that loaf is in action. I can’t even begin to imagine the type of carb-related wordplay we’ll be inundated with in the near future, but I am already thrilled by the thought.
• Wait, so Miranda completely ditched her apparently highly sought-after, prestigious internship with the Human Rights Watch to get eaten out by Che all summer, and now, with a little begging, not only gets to do the internship after all but is so good at it that her supervisor hires her to fill in during her maternity leave after just a couple days on the job? In what world?! Sure, the other interns were petty, but I’d be pissed about this, too!
• While getting Miranda to this internship might be contrived, I’m enjoying the tension with the other interns. Have those twenty-somethings ever met a sentence as terrifying as “I’m a sexually-confused alcoholic who’s in the middle of a divorce?” I doubt it!!
• Was LTW out there wearing a full-ass blanket as a coat? I love it.
• Maybe I’m being a little too sensitive, but as a fat woman myself, Charlotte’s storyline rubbed me the wrong way. She’s so distraught about her little pouch being noticeable in the dress she picked out for her first day of work that she wears as many Spanx as she can to cover it. Once at the gallery, she realizes that no one else cares about her pouch, and she frees herself from her layers of restrictive undergarments. To have Charlotte inspired by her boss, a plus-sized woman wearing a crop top, came across a little bit like, “Oh, if this fat lady isn’t self-conscious about her stomach, what am I, a thin woman, worried about?” It didn’t feel great! At the very least, it wasn’t as nearly as empowering as it set out to be.
• Just mere episodes ago, Che was complaining about all the terrible they/them jokes in their pilot, and here we are giving Aidan a pronoun bit. How meta or something!
• I have never felt so old as I did when I learned that Aidan Shaw has a twenty-year-old.
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