AND JUST LIKE THAT: Diddling While Rome Burns!
Aidan Shaw has been ACHING for you.
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The title of Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson’s review of And Just Like That’s third season pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling about the return of this show in the run-up to last night’s premiere: “Come, Let's All Follow And Just Like That Into the Abyss!” Like, part of me is just so not in the fucking mood to watch Carrie Bradshaw and her clueless rich friends prance around their mansions without an actual care in the world, diddling themselves while Rome burns. I mean, was there ever, in the whole history of television, a show that was less suited to its cultural moment? Its very existence feels kinda like a slap in the face to those of us who actually have to exist in reality all the time, right?
And yet! I really do badly 100% want to see what the fancy ladies will wear and what Carrie’s new house looks like, and oh god the whole thing is going to be so thoroughly cringe, but fuck me, that’s kinda fun too, right?
In me live these two wolfs and I can’t reconcile them and I kinda hope they eat each other?
But anyway, here I go, into the abyss…
The year is twenty-twentynever. The country: the United States of New York, where the good queen Shmamala Shmarris is maybe still holding it all together such that our fair heroine Carroline Bradshaw needn’t worry her flaxen head about anything beyond transporting her millions of clothes and shoes and her kitten to her giant new smarthome in Gramercy Gardens, and also whether her absent love Aedean Shaw will ever return from his sojourn in the West Virginian hinterlands.
(Here is a question I would like the answer to: How, oh how, did Carrie manage to find a second living place with a closet that is also a hallway? How? How??? Those are not real, normal things that exist, are they???)
Anyway, after fripping about in her new house for some time in a very sensible normal sheer dress with flowers growing in its pockets, Carrie goes to hang out at a lesbian bar for queer women with Charlotte and Miranda. There, she explains that she, a writer, has been sending blank postcards to Aidan Shaw because he has mandated that she not communicate with him at all while he takes five years off from her to raise his 15-year-old troubled son.
Sending blank postcards to someone who doesn’t want to hear from you sure seems like troublingly disordered stalker behavior, but Charlotte and Miranda have known Carrie long enough to understand that she’s just gonna do whatever and call it romance or something, so why waste their time being like: “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL?!”
Besides, the whole point of them being at the LesBar is for Miranda to get laid! At first, everyone thinks our girl is well on her way to pound town, because this cute younger lady is all making eyes at her from across the bar. So, Carrie and Charlotte peace out of there and Miranda trundles on over to this foxy thing, only to discover that it’s her son Brady Hobbes’s former babysitter. Gah! Miranda is like, “Oh, hi! In case you didn’t get our last family newsletter, I’m divorced now and definitely not hitting on you and also living in an Airbnb and sober and also a lesbian.” Which, oh god, I forgot Miranda was sober. Ugh! Let this poor woman drink!
Later, it is last call and Miranda is still at the bar (Jeezus, imagine sticking around a bar until closing time, a.k.a. 4am in New York, STONE COLD SOBER). But so is Rosie O’Donnell, who is visiting from Winnipeg and would very much like to jump Miranda Hobbes’s gaybones. She’s like, “‘Ey, badaboom, I’m from Winnipeg! You’s wanna goda my hotel room?” And Miranda is like, “Sure!” Which was the right move because the next morning they wake up and are both like, “Great job on the sex!”
Except then, because nothing in life can ever be uncomplicatedly good or easy, especially not if you are Miranda, Rosie O’Donnell is like, “Oh, BTW, that was my first time ever having sexual congress because I’m a NUN.”
I have so many questions! For example: What are Sister Rosie O’Donnell’s positions on celibacy, homosexuality, etc? Was this a premeditated act of dykery or did her lesbionic urges just suddenly get the better of her whilst in the Sodom of NYC? Is she going to stop being a nun now?
One would assume, Miranda too has all these questions and more. But does she ask them? OF COURSE NOT!
Meanwhile, remember how at the end of last season Seema was in love with that motion pictures director, but unfortunately he is always in a foreign land making movies? Well, basically what happens in this episode for her is: she almost burns herself alive because she was smoking in bed while waiting for him to FaceCall her. Then, the next day or whatever, he shows up in New York and claims he’s taking her to a fancy lunchtime date, but really instead he and his Bollywood goons all kidnap her and drag her around the city looking for a ✨PIER✨ [RIP NYC Pride ✨PIER✨ Dance] upon which to make his next film. Luckily, Seema manages to escape and is like, “We are broken up now.” So, probably that’s the end of that guy?
Oh, and somewhere in all that she also takes a walk with Carrie, an adult woman who dresses like Trans Pride Strawberry Shortcake.
We can probably also just power through Charlotte’s inane storyline too, which is: Some kooky old broad in Central Park tries to CANCEL her genuinely adorable precious English bulldog Richard Burton by accusing him of canine misconduct or whatever, which makes Charlotte go nuts for a few days. But then it turns out it was actually a completely different English bulldog that did the misconduct so both Charlotte and Richard Burton are VINDICATED! (Actually, more Richard Burton-centered storylines, please!)
As for poor Nicole Ari Parker, when she not trying super hard not to get wrapped up in Charlotte’s doggie drama, she’s got several other things on her plate. First, remember how she’s a documentary filmmaker and PBS is turning her latest film into a TV show all about unsung Black women throughout history? Well, PBS is like, “No one knows who all these underappreciated Black women are! Put in Michelle Obama!” And NAP is like, “What about President Kamala Harris Oh wait, wrong timeline We filmed all this last Brat summer HELP PLEASE WE ARE ALL IN HELL Doesn’t she work for Netflix or something now?”
Also, NAP’s dummy thicc smoke show husbone President Christopher Jackson is still running to comptroll the city or whatever, but suddenly he’s all self-conscious about being a big nerd for some reason, which could spell disaster of his political campaign! So, his hipster campaign manager bullies NAP into throwing PCJ a super groovy party, which happens later.
Oh, and speaking of smoke shows, NAP and PCJ’s babe-alicious oldest son makes a brief appearance in the family kitchen (Remember last season how NAP’s closet was the only room in her apartment? Well, the closet sprouted a kitchen!) before retreating to his bedroom to scroll through Brady Hobbes’s Instagram, trying to work up the courage to message him, like, “Hey, brony, should we maybe hang out sometime and take our shirts off together? No homo tho but maybe kinda….”
Over at Haus of Bradshaw, Carrie is doing the important work of looking at all of her own clothing when her security alarm for keeping poor people from approaching her premises goes off. Except no one is actually trying to home-invade her, her backdoor sensors are just broken! So she goes scurrying around her house trying to find her kitchen — WHERE COULD IT BE? THERE ARE TOO MANY ROOMS HERE! — and slips and falls flat on her ass breaking her other backdoor. Which is as good an excuse as any for Miranda to drop whatever she’s doing at her job lawyering for Human Rights to go over and blah blah blah about how Sister Rosie O’Donnell keeps trying to get her to do touristy shit all the time.
Carrie’s like, “LOLz that is so dumb! Have fun ghosting a lame nun while I take Lilly and Rock and Anthony and Guiseppe to the ballet.”
The whole thing with the ballet is that Lilly has a big sloppy panty gusher crush on one of the ballerinos, which I guess is going to be an ongoing storyline this season? So, while she’s off sniffing his dance belt backstage, Guiseppina is like, “So, Carrie, doing any writing lately?”
Carrie: “Oh, no, I’m far too busy being rich.”
Anthony (a mouthy truth-teller): “What the shit is going on with you and Aidan Shawshank? Why isn’t he living with you and why are you being so weird about it?”
Carrie (a person who has written extensively about her own and other people’s private romantic and sexual lives in a newspaper and books for decades): ICY DEATH STARE
Anthony: SOUL EVAPORATES LEAVING ONLY A PUDDLE OF OVERPRICED POMADE, POPPERS, AND VERSACE UNDERWEAR
Ok, prepare yourselves, because next we get a classically CURSED And Just Like That scene: That night, Carrie is lying all alone in her bed, when her phone rings. It is Aidan Shaw, who has been drinking beers and driving his truck around his West Virginian fields, and that has made him all kinds of horny for Carrie. He’s like, “I ACHE for you! TOUCH YOURSELF FOR ME!”
Carrie: “…”
Other cursed things Aidan says: “I need this!” and “Are you inside yourself?”
And then he, “Mmmblaaaagh” and fully LICKS HIS HAND! (You know, for lubrication of his aching dong? Which he is manhandling whilst on the phone with poor Carrie Bradshaw?)
Luckily, Carrie spots her poor innocent kitten across the room witnessing these horrors and gets all self-conscious. So, she halfheartedly fakes an orgasm, like, “Oooh, yes, this is very pleasant for me…” and the cursed scene is finally over. (But the image of Aidan Shaw’s aching dad boner and hand licking will haunt our dreams for many a night to come.)
A bunch of other previously discussed things with Charlotte, Richard Burton, Seema, et. al. occur (see above, or don’t, it’s your life), and then it is time for everyone (except Seema for some reason) to go to NAP’s very cool party to make her hot husband feel like he’s cool. One of the cool things NAP has arranged for President Christopher Jackson to do is perform songs with his college Pentatonix group. But PCJ’s campaign hipster is like, “What the fuck is this poindexter nerdsville virgin nonsense? What? His amateur IMPROV TROUPE wasn’t available???”
NAP was already annoyed about having do any of this when she’s supposed to be hunting down Michelle Obama for PBS, so she tells the campaign hipster to fuck the fuck right off, and he’s like “Oh, sorry, this is just how we did stuff in THE WHITE HOUSE.” Which, like, is it? Also, how was this fancy party for rich “cool” people supposed to get PCJ votes? Like, has he at any point ever interacted with any actual voters? Unclear! But all NAP hears is WHITE HOUSE and visions of Michelle Obama (who I thought she didn’t really want in her documentary anyway) start dancing in her head. So now I guess she has to be nice to the insufferable campaign hipster in case he can get her an interview with MO?
Meanwhile, NAP’s white friend Charlotte’s white friend Anthony goes up to Carrie (famously also white) and is like “I’m sorry I ever questioned your absurd life decisions re: Aidan Shaw at the ballet before” and begs her not to cut him out of her life. And Carrie’s like, “Psssh, whatever queen.”
Then Miranda has to leave to go to Times Square to dump poor Sister Rosie O’Donnell, who has been having the greatest time of her whole life seeing Wicked on Broadway and going to the M&M store (no one tell PCJ’s undersecretary of cool about any of this, for he would surely die) and would very much like to cap things off by doing more clam bumping with Miranda Hobbes. But Miranda is like, “You shouldn’t leave GOD for me.” And Sister Rosie is like, “LOL, I never said I was doing any of that.” Which, again, what was this? Like, nun-springa or something? Doesn’t matter! Sister Rosie sings some Wicked at Miranda and I guess they go their separate ways.
Back in Carrie’s bed, our heroine decides to call Aidan Shaw and try to diddle herself for him on the phone for real this time. “I’m touching myself the way you touch me,” she cursedly says.
Unfortunately, however, Aidan Shaw is unable to give himself another wet willy due to being IN BED WITH HIS TEENAGE SON.
Carrie: “Cool cool cool, very normal” *hangs up phone*
Carrie’s SmartHouse: “ALARM! ALARM! ALL VERY ALARMING!”
Carrie: “Yeah, no shit!” *begins writing a novel?*
Kitten: “Help!”
And what of Che Diaz and Professor Karen Pittman? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING lololol! Their absences are not addressed at all! So, I guess we’re just pretending they never happened?
Also, one last thing: as a long-time scholar of Carrie Bradshaw’s home aesthetic, I am…puzzled by this new bedding. So, that’s what I’m going to try to focus on to get the image of Aidan Shaw LICKING HIS FUCKING HAND out of my head.
Johnny I do not and will never watch this show, but GOOD LORD who let Carrie Bradshaw adopt a kitten?!
“Let this poor woman drink!” This is a fabulous witty laugh out loud affectionate sardonic fangirl recap. 👏