It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since the last season of And Just Like That… and harder still to believe that Shoe Bradshaw is still a kitten. Shoe is the very first character we spy in this new season of the show, just chilling in Carrie’s new, still yet-to-be-decorated mansion on Gramercy Park, and this poor cat has no idea what she’s about to walk in on in a day or two when Daddy calls Mommy drunk from the front seat of his pickup truck and asks for phone sex. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
At the end of last season, Aidan (John Corbett) told Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) that he needed to take five years away from her to focus on his his, specifically his son Wyatt, who was getting into some drinking and ‘shrooming. A devastating blow to Carrie, who had realized that Aidan was the real love of her life, not Big. She had just bought this huge new house to share with Aidan, and now he’s retreating to his farm in Virginia to tend to his chickens and his children. And now, Carrie sits alone, except for Shoe, writing a heart on a postcard to Aidan, who has requested no contact until he figures some family stuff out. While Carrie waits for Aidan, she’ll keep herself busy decorating her new house. As she discusses this with Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) in a lesbian bar – now-single Miranda needs their support as she prowls – Carrie explains that is she can wait six months for the fabric for her new chaise, she can wait for Aidan. “For five years?” Charlotte asks, to which Carrie tellingly responds, “Five years,” in a way that suggests she doesn’t know – or believe – that’s how long Aidan will really need.
After Carrie and Charlotte leave the bar, Miranda is left on her own to flirt. Embarrassingly, a woman she assumed was trying to make a pass was simply just Brady’s former babysitter wanting to say hi. (I hate when that happens.) But as the bar closes, a stranger approaches – a stranger in the form of Rosie O’Donnell. She introduces herself as Mary, a woman in town from Winnipeg, and Mary cuts right to the chase, telling Miranda, “I have a hotel room.” Miranda searches for a reason to say no, but Mary seems like a genuine, nice person. She’s Canadian, what could go wrong?
The next morning, Mary springs it on Miranda that she was not just a virgin before last night she’s also a nun. I am delighted that I didn’t see that coming. “After you left the bar, I had sex with a nun,” Miranda later tells Carrie. “I cannot leave you alone for a minute!” Carrie replies. Their entire exchange is solid comedy, and SJP and Cynthia Nixon’s rapport makes me remember why, when this show works, it really works. When Miranda later asks,”Can I ghost a nun?” and Carrie replies, “It would be a holy ghost!” …I mean, this is why we watch, yes?
[GIF – 16:16 – Miranda tells Carrie “I had sex with a nun”]
At the end of last season, Seema (Sarita Choudhury) seemed like one of the only characters who had her shit together – she’s was successful at work, she had a clear way of setting her own expectations and boundaries with Carrie, she found a jet-setting boyfriend as worldly and glamorous as she is – and this season, that seems to be falling apart. Her boyfriend, Ravi, has been in Egypt filming a superhero movie, and the distance has taken a toll on her.
After Ravi bails on a FaceTime chat with her, she lights up a cigarette in bed, falls asleep, and her mattress catches fire. It’s a moment that’s played for laughs as Seema’s biggest concern is that her hair got singed by the flames. She pulls herself together when Ravi comes to New York to location scout for his movie, but when he spends his whole trip working (and she tags along in the backseat of his crew’s minivan), she is infuriated that he doesn’t put her first. Seema is the Samantha of this iteration of the show, in that she has the least realistic qualities of anyone (at least, of anyone in the world I live in), so her expectations and standards seem bonkers here. Of course she wants attention from her man, but also, he’s supposed to be a busy Hollywood director. At the end of the day, after eating chips and soda for lunch and waiting around for Ravi, she breaks up with him, telling him, “I don’t do vans or Cool Ranch potato chips –” (uh, Seema, they’re called Doritos) – “but I tried.”
Over in Central Park, Charlotte is accosted by a woman with a dog in a stroller, who accuses Charlotte’s dog, Richard Burton, of attacking her dog. Charlotte is defiant that this was not Richard Burton’s doing, complaining later to Harry that the woman was unhinged. (“People are crazy now… I saw two vegans get into fisticuffs in the smoothie line at Whole Foods,” Harry says, reciting a line that I’m pretty sure was written by AI. The better response comes from Charlotte’s child, Rock, who says, “Mom, believe women.”) When Charlotte offers an olive branch, in the form of offering to pay for the dog’s MRI bill, it’s attacked again by an off-leash bulldog, vindicating Richard Burton.
And LTW (Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker), is juggling her professional life with her husband Herbert’s bid to become the next comptroller of New York. LTW is pitching her latest documentary about extraordinary Black women to PBS, and she’s worked hard to represent ten unsung women in history. But when her producers suggest she include Michelle Obama, she’s at a loss because, as she says, “this series is about unsung women and Michelle Obama is… sung. Very, very sung.” But she’s left with no choice and needs to find a way to somehow get Michelle Obama on board with this thing. (Does this mean Michelle Obama is going to appear at some point on the show?!)
LTW’s husband Herbert (Christopher Jackson) is running for city comptroller and he’s very insecure about the fact that he’s polling uncool. Herbert even calls Lisa during a meeting, worried that he’s not cool. Lisa responds, “Herbert, you are running for city comptroller, there is nothing cool about that.” To prove he’s cool, at the fundraiser cocktail party LTW throws him, he and his a capella group perform for the crowd. (In the middle of the performance, Harry gets up to scream, “Yeah, baby! WOOO!” and it’s weird because the only lines Harry has this week are just so distractingly bad.)
Carrie has been trying to respect Aidan’s boundaries by not communicating with him, but Aidan himself totally shatters the boundary when he calls Carrie for some phone sex in the middle of the night. “I thought we weren’t supposed to call,” she says. “Well that rule went out the window after this third beer,” he tells her. Aidan tells her, “If I was there right now, I’d be touching you the way you like,” and I can’t continue typing the rest of their dialogue because I’m second-hand embarrassed. But as the two start to have phone sex, Aidan accidentally honks the horn of his car, taking Carrie out of the moment. Even worse, Shoe the cat is watching her so now she really can’t finish.
[GIF 26:34-39 – Shoe watches Carrie in bed]
So she fakes it while Aidan gets himself off on the other end of the phone. It is a deeply cringe moment to watch and listen to, and also, at least at the beginning when Carrie is an active participant, one of the more sexual situations Carrie has ever really been in. Sure, she has had sex plenty of times on the show, but SJP rarely dips into dirty talk or masturbation, so this moment feels kind of bold for her. Carrie explains to Charlotte and Miranda that her sex life with Aidan is “the most honest thing about us” and she feels dishonest faking it.
One person who doesn’t understand Carrie and Aidan’s situation at all is Anthony (Mario Cantone) who can’t figure out why they’re not together. He bombards her with questions about how long Aidan will really be gone and Carrie doesn’t appreciate the prying. Not because it’s rude, but because it forces Carrie to consider that she might not even know their timeline. Eventually, at LTW’s cocktail party for Herbert, Anthony apologizes to Carrie, who tells him, “You’re not the only one with opinions about us, you’re just the only one who says them out loud.”
Miranda, who has been bombarded by Mary’s texts all week long, finally goes to Times Square to say goodbye to Mary. Mary tells Miranda that now that she’s seen Wicked on Broadway and had sex with Miranda, it’s been the best week of her life. Miranda tries to let her down easy but then Mary starts singing “For Good” from Wicked leaving Miranda speechless.
To apologize to Aidan for faking her phone sex, she calls him to tell him she wants another chance. “Touch yourself, Aidan,” she says, but he cuts her off, explaining that he’s sleeping in bed with his son and he can’t. Mortified, she hangs up on him and as she does, her house alarm goes off, an issue that has been plaguing her since she moved in. She races downstairs to disable the alarm, but the incident jolts her awake and she’s restless. She goes over to her laptop, which she hasn’t opened in weeks, and starts typing. “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into,” she types. That’s the thing about Carrie Bradshaw; if she isn’t preoccupied with a man, she might as well start her novel.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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