AND JUST LIKE THAT: Go Off, Show! Give Us Nothing!

Also, stop trying to make "flirking" happen.

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I… swear I watched a new episode of And Just Like That last night, but… all I seem to recall now are random darkened images, as if glimpsed through a scrim or by candlelight, of people coming in and out of rooms and saying things, the scenes shifting abruptly and inexplicably without reason or resolution. Was it a dream? Or has anything of consequence that happened in last night’s episode evaporated from my brain like cotton candy dropped into a vat of hydrochloric acid?

The answer is neither of those things, probably, because from what I can remember, basically almost nothing of consequence did happen. Which, like, go off, show! GIVE US NOTHING!

Possibly I fully tuned out within the first couple seconds realizing that any episode that begins with the arrival of Aidan Shaw is for sure going to be a chore. Ol’ Lurch Bunion was visiting Gramercy Manor for a whole week or something, which made StrawCarrie Shortcakes all gleeful despite the first thing out of his mouth basically being criticism of her choice of rugs. The two of them spent some time rehashing tired old jokes from Season 4 of Sex and the City about how she refuses to share her closet with him, but it was fine because she had cleared out a little linen cupboard for his gross jackets and stuff in Shosephine the Cat’s room.

Then I guess they had sex all day, but afterward Pa Shaw got all angsty about Wyatt, that kid he has that no one cares about, and also about all the time Carrie had to spend writing her future Official Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Selection historical romance The Woman in the Dove Grey Button Boots with the Right Honorable Sir Duncan Beardyface. To prove that she was not heterosexually fucking HisDunkinship, Carrie canceled her life to stay in bed her enormous husshaw for several days.

Also still in bed sexing together were Seema and that annoying Gardener. For a split-second, Weirdo Gardener was back to being Hot Gardener, due to a tantalizing glimpse of his plumptiously shapely posterior region (if Carrie Bradshaw steals this sparkling turn of phrase for her novel, I will sue!), but then their whole storyline was about how he is a hippie and doesn’t use deodorant and hates eating Secret out of Seema’s pits whilst trying to enjoy pit-licking, so he and every scene he was in became vaguely barfable.

Another scene that had nothing really to do with much of anything, so maybe I hallucinated it, had Harry Goldenblatt convalescing in bed after prostate cancer surgery, and Nicole Ari Parker visiting him dressed like a circus clown (all apologies to Marrakshi Life; their stuff is actually really fun!) and bringing him a box of large nuts to sooth his own swollen nuts. Literally this whole scene was only there for that dumb joke, so actually, yeah, that’s a for-real AJLT scene that makes total sense in the context of this show.

Later, everyone had to go to Charlotte’s gallery for the opening of a show that was all, like, endurance installations or whatever where a woman was lying naked on a mattress covered in used condoms. The whole point of that was for Charlotte to suddenly develop vertigo and fall face first upon the condoms while also trying to stop Miranda from drinking champagne.

Because, oh yeah, Miranda’s random thing was that Dolly Wells left a bottle of priceless rare gin at her house, and she was like, “Maybe I’m not actually an alcoholic and can enjoy booze responsibly now that I’m not having a mid-life post-pandemic crisis or whatever.”

Which… *sigh* Ok. I feel like this show never really did the work of showing us how actually bad Miranda’s alcohol abuse was, apart from getting fingered by Che Diaz in Carrie’s kitchen and also drunk ordering a book on Amazon one time. Getting sober has always felt to me like just another thing for her to do that wasn’t human rights lawyering, and also, I seem to remember reading about a lot of really credible research on how full abstinence from alcohol is actually less effective than programs that teach problem drinkers how to manage their drinking responsibly? But then, full disclosure, all of this might be coming from someone in a bit of denial about their not entirely healthful relationship to alcohol (me). As my mother’s wacky friend who spends too much time on Facebook might say, do your own research.

Thinkin’ ‘bout drinkin’.

The point is, everyone was like, “No Mirando! You’ve worked so hard to be sober!” Which, has she? She seemed to take to sobriety like a dead duck takes to a dried up lake bed.

After the art party, Miranda went home an got a little bonkers trying to decide whether or not to sample the tasty priceless gin, before ultimately throwing it directly into her garbage shoot, likely incurring the wrath of her beloved Dolly Wells and probably Sir Duncan if he ever hears about all this. (Those Brits, they love their gin!) (That’s thing, right?)

Back to the party though, where Aidan Shaw attempted to pump Seema for intel on Lord Dunkin’, but she was too busy picking matted hair out of that Gross Gardener’s unwashed mane. “Fuck off back to Shaw Hallow or wherever,” she spat at him as she tried to chip away at the crust of boogers around that Gardener’s nostrils.

Also, Patti LuPone was there talking to Victor Garber about David Wojnarowicz and Basquiat or something, which surely that was a stress dream I had, right?

The only person not at the gallerama was NAP, because she busy being tormented by sexual frustrations vis-à-vis Marion, her hot male film editor. Earlier, she was telling Charlotte about how she keeps having sexy dreams about Marion, and that dizzy bitch (vertigo) was like, “It’s fine! You are work flirting! Flirking!”

Literally everyone: “Stop trying to make flirking happen.”

So, NAP flirked off back to flork to flirt with Marion, who invited her to a movie premiere, which she went to instead of going to see Charlotte fall on a cum-splattered mattress at the gallery, because supposedly someone who knows Michelle Obama was going to be there. Because remember how PBS wants Michelle Obama in NAP’s documentary series?

Unfortunately, though, during the movie Marion put his dong through the bottom of a popcorn bucket and tried to put NAP’s hand in there or something, so she had to flee!

*This* look was *jeff-kiss* tho.

Luckily, for NAP, Marion was undeterred and had someone posing as an Obama hanger-on call her later. Which… Michelle Obama is NOT going to be on this show, right? This is like last season when Carrie and Seema talked nonstop about their Hamptons summer and then it never happened. Right? I mean, surely Former First Lady Michelle Obama has better things to do in these troubled times than be on And Just Like That. Things like…podcasting? RIGHT?

Although, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, Michelle Obama being on And Just Like That is exactly the kind of scenario that makes sense in our current deranged timeline.