AND JUST LIKE THAT: Duncan Checks In

Oh my god, this episode was so stressful for me on several personal levels!

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Oh my effing god! Last night’s episode of And Just Like That was so stressful for me! I was TRIGGERED in so many ways! Stomping upstairs neighbor trauma! Roommate trauma! Another Carrie-Miranda fight trauma! Trauma related to that one Sex and the City episode where Carrie almost loses her apartment trauma!

Let me explain.

So, Carrie is back in New York, safe and sound after her ordeal with the Shawshanks in God’s Country or wherever and suddenly discovers that she has a British man living in her basement. He is famous biographical author Sir Duncan Beardsworth VIII and he is big mad that he has to live beneath a woman who walks around her home in high heels all the damn time.

I AM 1000000000000% ON SIR BEARDSWORTH’S SIDE!!! I know his pain intimately! For I have lived lo these past five years beneath a series of churls who have all stomped about constantly! I hear their every move! Every floorboard’s tortured groan beneath their pitiless weight! I have lived with the sound of their bellows and shrieks, the ceaseless yapping of their vile little canines, and the profane symphonics of their heinous love-makings! But their footfalls are my constant, unwilling companions; the ever-present torment that plagues my meager existence and will surely one day be my undoing!

You would think that Carrie too could sympathize having recently lived above Lisette and her boisterous compatriots. But no. We’ve memory-holed that apparently, because His Beardship’s pleas for her to just take off her goddamn shoes whilst in the home fall upon deaf ears. Thus, a tense standoff begins.

At lunch, Carrie squawk squawk squawks about all this, and continues to do so later as she and Charlotte stroll past this bizarre fake bookstore:

What…What happened here? What did the show’s producers feel they had to cover up? And did they think no one would notice this piss poor set dressing because we are all too rapt by their compelling storyline and scintilating dialogue? Or did they just not bother to fix this in post?

Anyway, sick of hearing about this particular thing with Carrie’s basement dwelling Englishman, poor Charlotte falls upon her own sword and is like, “*Sigh* Why don’t you say things at me about Aidan Shaw now.” And so off Carrie goes blah blah blahing about how she’s totes fine with her boyfriend living in Virginia now because she can pretend everything is cowabunga romance without having to deal with him or his kids.

Charlotte: “Awe, I could not imagine living without Harry Goldenblatt!”

Smash-cut to: Harry Goldenblatt has prostate cancer! Obv, Charlotte is v devastated, but Harry Goldenblatt is like, “Everything’s gonna be fine, we caught it early, prostate cancer has an 85% survival rate, etc.” He just doesn’t want anyone else to know about his prostate secret. So, Charlotte spends the rest of the episode acting bonkers trying to hide how worried she is in front of her kids and Anthony and the Nicole Ari Parker household when they all go glamping together.

(SIDEBAR: Lol re: Lily being in a contentious battle for her polyamorous queer ballerino boyfriend’s time and attention with his boyfriend. Sounds like that’s going great. More of that, please! Though I do worry for the poor twink who has to go toe-to-toe with any spawn of Charlotte York!)

And look, do I feel bad about making light of a CANCER storyline? Eh. Kinda? But here’s the thing: Harry Goldenblatt 1) seems unbothered and 2) is fictional. Also, surely there’s no way this dumb show is going to do another dead husband season. Surely! I mean…unless Evan Handler wants off this crazy train real bad. Which would be a bummer, because Harry Goldenblatt is generally good times.

The upshot is that sweet Kristin Davis — who, bless her, I feel certain no one would call the most gifted actor on And Just Like That — actually gets some lovely, genuinely moving moments in this episode. Like when she and NAP are in a random glamping pool and she’s all sad and gazing off into the distance thinking about mortality, and NAP just rests a gentle, reassuring hand on her back, letting her know that she’s there for her. I actually teared up!

As for NAP herself, this week was just the same old run-of-the-mill she’s too busy for her family stuff. Plus also, President Christopher Jackson spies a photogram of her hot new male documentary editor, Marion, and is kinda jealous — which is dumb because Christopher Jackson is DADDY with a capital addy addy addy, and how could any living person with a pulse in their loins ever have eyes for another???

And yet! NAP is forced to admit to herself and to Charlotte that that was not in fact a glamping pool they were swimming in, but the panty puddle that had geysered from her Old Marion Faithful.

Gah! If only the Ghost of Samantha Jones were here, I’m sure she would have handled that tortured pun better. But wait! Surprise, she is here! She is with us!

See, what happens is, Carrie texts ol’ Jonesboro to get the hot goss re: Sir Duncbeard, an Englishman, because SamJo lives in Londontown, U.K., now. And The Ghost of Samantha in the Machine texts back, “Get it, girl, he’s a hoot and a half!”

Also, Miranda is present for all this because earlier she was like, “My naked heavy metal American Psycho on fentanyl neighbor at my AirBNB tried to murder me!” And Carrie was like, “Come live with me due to my having too many rooms and no Shaws to fill them!”

(SIDEBAR 2 re: Carrie’s empty house: Should we be concerned that she just seems to be kind of recreating her old apartment in a single upstairs room of her new house and kinda not even really doing much living in the rest of it? This feels…regressive of her? I mean, obv she is not a well woman, but this seems particularly worrisome.)

Sidebar Exhibit A

Sidebar Exhibit B

So, Miranda is shacked up in Shoesephine the Cat’s boudoir in the back of Carrie’s closet getting ready to wear an orange jumpsuit for her first sex date with Dolly Wells. But Carrie’s like, “You look like a traffic cone, put on this priceless irreplaceable scarf, no problem!”

Except that there are lots of problems, because Carrie and Miranda are already having all kinds of TENSE MOMENTS living together, which is ALSO TRIGGERING FOR ME, because I AM SO SICK OF THIS SHOW DOING CARRIE AND MIRANDA FIGHTS! This worked once in SATC Season the Third and they just keep exhuming that same dead horse to beat it yet again!

Anyway, Miranda goes over to Dolly Wells’ house and Dolly Wells just cannot resist the tall drink of orange juice before her. The priceless scarf comes off and they are about to get sexually involved, but Dolly Wells’ dog proceed to freak out. I tell you, I was certain those dogs were going to shit upon that scarf in protest! (I have a friend who once told me that his dog shits the bed every time he tries to have a sexual tryst in it.) But no, Miranda just goes home, sexually thwarted by mini grey hounds, and wanders the halls of Carrie’s house FULLY NAKED for no reason. Unable to sleep, Carrie wanders her halls as well, alarmingly encountering the nude specter of her best friend!

Then, the next morning, Miranda has eaten all of Carrie’s yogurt and bananas, much to Carrie’s chagrin! The tension keeps ratcheting up! At this point, I was basically watching the episode with my hands over my face like a horror movie!

More trauma courtesy of Seema: She is trying to get a bank loan to start her new business, and fate has led her to the very same Bank Lady who refused to give Carrie a loan to buy her apartment in SATC Season 4. Now, this was triggering because I’ve been thinking a lot about that SATC episode recently because I currently find myself in a situation in which I may have to give up my own beloved (I’ve really gotten used to the upstairs churls) apartment. But you don’t want to hear about that!

So, Seema goes over to Carrie’s to blah blah blah about not getting her loan, and to see the fancy dining room table Aidan Shaw bought and mailed to her. (The twisted tale of this table is just too dumb for me to care.) Troublingly, however, Miranda has established her own home office upon that very table. Then she fully dumps a whole bottle of Mexican Coke — Carrie’s LAST Mexican Coke!!! — all over it and wipes it up with the Priceless Scarf!

This is the last straw!

HERE WE FUCKIN’ GO, GANG. Get ready for the fight of the century, the bout to end all bouts. In this corner: Carrie “The Stiletto” Bradslaughter! And in this corner: Miranda “I Will Hobble You” Hobbes!

Seema bolts the fuck out of there to go smoke and flirt with Carrie’s hot gardener, as Carrie and Miranda prepare to enter the ring.

But then, instead of pummeling each into pulp for Shoe to feast upon later, Carrie and Miranda just amicably decide that they should stop being roommates and Seema should help Miranda find a home of her own.

Sometime later, Carrie is admiring Hot Gardener’s handiwork when a piercing noise starts emitting from her basement, which is also belching smoke! Sir Duncan has set his kitchen on fire in an act of self-immolation so that he will no longer have to listen to Carrie’s merciless trod overhead! Unfortunately for Lord Dunceroo, Carrie manages to douse the flames with the very shoes that drove him to such extremes!

Resigned to his fate, Sir Beardsworth allows Carrie to take him to dinner, where they bond over the shared misery of their lives as famous writers. It is truly a terrible profession! Are those sparks we detect betwixt them? Could Duncan be interested in a taste of her Bradslaw? Might Carrie be craving his Britwurst? Tune in next week to maybe find out!