AND JUST LIKE THAT: My Very Favorite Character Ever Is Back!
OH MY GOD! My favorite favorite FAVORITE character ever is back! I’ve been waiting and waiting and hoping to see them again, and here they are! I’ve missed them so much! The wait was agonizing, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see them again! I wasn’t even sure if I would feel the same way about them, but the minute they reappeared in this episode I knew that my deep and genuine affection had not diminished in the slightest!
IT’S CARRIE’S WEIRD FUNFETTI OLD LADY BLANKET!!! You may not know this about me, but I am oddly obsessed with this thing because while it kinda looks like it’s something a grandma knitted to sell at the ol’ church bazaar, it’s actually a cashmere wrap that retails for nearly $3,000, lolololol! Which is truly unhinged! I really kinda want one, even though it is totally not my style at all! I mean, those are not colors that even exist in my life! But I love it so! Like, if I ever start making you all pay for these brilliant and hilarious recaps, just know that this is where your money is going: to fund the very necessary purchase of this absurd blankie!
Anyway, so Carrie is in bed with the love of my life, that blanket, when she discovers that Aidan Shaw, that guy she was never really gonna marry back in the early 2000s, has replied to the email she sent to him last week and he wishes to dine with her on February 14.
“That is the day of the Feast of Saint Valentine!” cries Charlotte when Carrie is having lunch with her and Miranda later.
Carrie is like, “Yeah, duh, calm down please!”
But Charlotte is convinced that this auspicious date is proof that Aidan Shaw is single and wants to fall directly back in love with Carrie all over again for the billionth time.
Charlotte is also very invested in how Miranda intends to mark the upcoming sacred holiday. Are there any NEW HOT LADIES whom she is interested in getting busy upon now that she and Che Diaz (who is not a lady) are broken up? Carrie too has assumed that Miranda is only interested in LADIES now, despite the fact that the extent of Miranda’s entire non-heterosexual love life has consisted of dating exactly one person WHO IS NONBINARY. But, you know, I guess square cis ladies are gonna square cis lady all the live-long day.
But Miranda is all confused about her sexuality now, and Charlotte will have none of that! “Figure it out immediately so as to find love once more!” she badgers.
Smash cut for no reason to Professor Karen Pittman talking to her girlfriends who are not main characters on this show via FaceTime. (Oh my god! Remember last week when I was like, “Does PKP have other friends?” Well, here they are! I was just talking about them and here they are!) They want her to have Valen-Gals Time fun with them, but instead, PKP just wants to be left alone so she can make a chocolate souffle for herself. Which she does, without incident. That is her storyline this week. The end.
Remember how Anthony is a baker now and he has all these ’roided out himbos who deliver bread to people? Well, it turns out Drew Barrymore is a big fan of himbos and bread and wants him to be on her show with one of his juice pigs on Valentimes Day. How exciting for Anthony! Except all of a sudden, one of the juice pigs injects himself with human growth hormones right there in front of him and he is horrified! He’s like, “This is a family establishment! No juice pigs in my bakery!” So they all quit because they can probably make more money on OnlyFans anyway, leaving Anthony with no himbo to go on Drew Barrymore’s show with him. (And also…no delivery pigs? This seems like a major crisis for his bread delivery business!)
Meanwhile, over at the Constant Billiards school, Rock is now a famous model and Charlotte is so proud because lots of top modeling agencies are interested in signing them. But Nicole Ari Parker isn’t interested in any of that. She’s too busy hating her cute son’s white girlfriend for being too handsy with him and definitely not for any other reasons like the historically very complicated feelings Black women have about Black men dating white women.
Elsewhere, Che Diaz is being ghosted by Miranda, which sucks for them because Miranda left “a box of her shit” (ew!) at their Hudson Yards (EW!) apartment, which they have to Airbnb because they are poor now due to their terrible sitcom being a failure. Che Diaz is explaining all of this to Carrie, a rich woman who farts on a $3,000 throw blanket and could probably just give them one million dollars and not even miss it, when suddenly they spot a random stray dog! Che Diaz captures the poor scraggly cur and takes it to an animal shelter where they apparently used to work. The shelter owner is like, “Since you’re poor again, you can have your old job back!” So, I guess Che Diaz, renowned concert comedian, works at a doggie daycare now. (Also, when was the last time anyone ever saw a stray dog in Manhattan? Is that still a thing?)
Over in Brooklyn, PKP and Miranda are shopping for books at a real live bookstore, and Miranda is blah blah blahing about how she doesn’t know what dating sites to go on because of her sexual confusion. Then suddenly she hears a familiar voice… It is American actor Miriam Shor reading Jane Austen in a definitely not British accent. See in this reality, Miriam Shor is a famous audiobook narrator, and what do you know! Miranda just happens to be a big huge horny-for-her fan!
Conveniently, Miriam Shor, who reads Jane Austen in an American accent for a living, is also a lesbian! You can tell by her pant suit and also by how she flirts with Miranda outside the bookstore later.
Miranda is like, “I used to listen to all your Jane Austen audiobooks while running!” And Miriam Shor is like, “That’s pretty weird, but you’re hot.” So Miranda asks Miriam Shor, the very first queer woman she has encountered since breaking up with Che Diaz, out on Valentines Night. Sexual identity crisis solved!
“Strong sexy women are my thing!” Miranda tells Carrie over the phone. (Again, Che Diaz does not identify as a woman, but I guess this show just doesn’t care about indirectly misgendering them throughout this episode.)
Also, Carrie has a new painting, and as a long-time scholar of her apartment and its décor, I must say, I hate it and do not understand what it is doing in there.
Meanwhile, in Nicole Ari Parker’s closet—which is maybe the only room her family uses in their entire apartment—her Cute Son is like, “Mom and Dad, my white girlfriend who you hate for reasons that won’t alienate the white women who love this show wants me to spend Valentines Night with her at a fancy hotel!” But NAP is like, “No to all of that!”
Luckily, President Christopher Jackson has a solution: he and NAP will be dining out this Valentide, so their Cute Son and his girlfriend can hang out at their apartment instead. But NAP hates that plan too, because she’s convinced that the white girlfriend is going to ravish her son upon his parents’ very bed! Also, she’s like, “That white girl treats our Black son like HE’S HER PROPERTY!” And the show invites us not to read anything at all into that statement. So, we move along…
Back to Anthony! Who is panicked due to having no buff himbos to be on Drew Barrymore with him. But then, just in the nick of time, Charlotte discovers a hot Italian poet selling bespoke poems in a Valentines shop! He is so sweet and wholesome looking! So, Charlotte convinces him to abandon his poetry to be a bread delivery hunk on Drew Barrymore.
Next, Valentine’s morn finally dawns and Anthony is backstage at the Drew Barrymore Show waiting for the sweet, angel-faced, totally nonpornographic-looking poet to put on the bread delivery onesie that is the hallmark of his weird business. What could possibly go wrong! Here is what goes wrong: it turns out, the Italian poet has a very large penis and it is basically bursting out of his skintight romper. So much for family-friendly daytime TV! But it’s too late now, and there’s definitely no possible way to tastefully rearrange the poet’s enormous package, so Anthony and Drew Barrymore spend their segment making dumb penis innuendos about the Italian poet’s huge and very visible dong. And the segment is such a hit! Anthony was wrong! Everybody love large dong, and maybe they would have loved large juiced-up himbos too, because how would they even know they were on steroids! (They would know by looking at them.) So, Anthony offers the poet a job. (Oooooh! Is this strapping whippersnapper maybe a new loooooooooove interest for ol’ Antonio???) Also, Ross Matthews has a brief dumb cameo for no reason.
Meanwhile, Carrie and Seema are at a spa where they are planning to get massaged. Carrie is blah blah blahing re: Aidan Shaw, but she has to stop that when Seema goes ballistic because the spa is only doing couple’s massages because it is Valentines Day. Seema is OUTRAGED! The nice spa receptionist lady is like, “How about the two of you just do a couple’s massage together?” Which, seems to me like a reasonable solution, right? I mean, couple’s massages aren’t, like, sexual or anything, are they? It’s just two people getting massaged in the same room, right?
But no! Seema is like, “THIS IS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE SINGLE!” and it is a hill she is 100% willing to die on! And like…believe me, I get that there are definitely ways in which life can be tough for single people over a certain age. But…this is a pretty weak sauce example of that. I mean, they’re not even being denied service! They could totally get their massages! But instead, Carrie manages to convince Seema to leave without murdering this poor spa receptionist who is just trying to do her job.
Speaking of rich women flipping out at receptionists, Charlotte does precisely that as well, except she is not at a spa. She is at a very cool hip hop happenin’ modeling agency in Brooklyn that wants to maybe sign Rock as a client. But they’ve been waiting sooooooooooo looooooooong for their appointment! So, Charlotte throws a fit and is like, “We are leaving to go back to MANHATTAN!” And everyone’s like, “Ok, good-bye forever, never come back!”
Back at home, Rock announces that they are bored with stupid modeling now and they don’t want to do it anymore. Charlotte is crushed! Then she tries to be nice to Lily, who is having a “Fuck Boys” party with her friends because her fuckboy boyfriend broke up with her after they fucked during that snowstorm. But Lily is like, “EW! Moooooom! Get out of here!” So, Charlotte steals a brownie that Lily’s friend Chekov made and eats it and goes on to have a totally normal evening, nothing at all interesting happens, why would you think it would?
Haha, just kidding. Obviously that was Chekov’s pot brownie, and Charlotte starts feeling all inexplicably weird while she and Harry are waiting for their Valentine’s reservations at a fancy restaurant later. For some reason, they decide she is having a stroke and call an ambulance to take her to the hospital, where the doctor is like, “You dummy, you’re just high!”
Then kind of out of nowhere, Charlotte realizes that she’s bored with life because she hasn’t had a job in, like, 20 years or something and her kids hate her. Oh, but hey, remember how Victor Garber offered her a job at his art gallery? Well, Charlotte decides she’s going to take that job and do a career again!
While all that was going on, NAP was laying traps in her bed so that she would know if her son and his white girlfriend laid there to get laid. But later, when she and PCJ get home from Valensdinner, none of the traps are sprung! Could she have been wrong about her one and only complaint about the white girlfriend, which was that she has “boundary issues”?
NO! She was NOT wrong! Because instead of finding her son and his white girlfriend ensnared in her sex traps, she discovers them IN HER CLOSET—which, like, again kiiiiiiiinda seems like the only room anyone ever hangs out in. What’s worse, though, is that the white girlfriend is TRYING ON NAP’S PURSES! See! Boundary issues! Nicole Ari Parker was right all along about the only thing she didn’t like about her son’s white girlfriend! Nothing else to unpack here!
Meanwhile, Carrie shows up to her date with Aidan Shaw and is distressed to find herself in what may in fact be a restaurant for poors! “Is this a restaurant for poors!?!” her face loudly says. Also, Aidan Shaw is nowhere to be seen.
Miranda also finds herself in a situation that is far less glamorous than those to which she has become accustomed. Miriam Shor is behind on her Jane Austen reading, and so has asked Miranda to come over to her apartment instead of going to a restaurant like everybody else in the whole world on Valentine’s Day.
Unfortunately, it turns out Miriam Shor is actually Miriam Poor! And if there’s one thing this show hates, it’s poor people! Her apartment is sad and tiny and gross, AND SHE HAS A CAT that poops in a box which she keeps in her kitchen/bedroom because her disgusting apartment is ALL ONE ROOM! AND she has to do her own laundry!? Barf-olla, right??? How can human beings live like this??? It must be because they are terrible and not worthy of love or respect!
Obviously, Miranda cannot be expected to endure this! So, she calls Carrie while Miriam Shor is out on the street begging for quarters to finish her laundry, and is like “HEEEELLLLPPP! The realities of how 99% of real people live in New York City has made me not horny anymore! What do I doooooooo!?” And Carrie is like, “Just leave.” So that’s what Miranda, a woman who allegedly now cares about social justice, does, updating her sexual preference to: Strong Sexy Women With Lots of Money.
Back to Carrie: she has been waiting and waiting for Aidan to show up, but for some reason she hasn’t texted him and he hasn’t texted her. Totally normal. And then her phone dies, so she has to get the waiter to let her charge it. Then, lo! A text from Aidan! He is here!
Wait, no he’s not! It then dawns on Carrie that she’s in the wrong restaurant. So, she scurries out of there—did she…leave even a tip???—and discovers Aidan waiting for her on the street in front of the much fancier restaurant next door. “Oh, thank fucking god,” she sighs. “I thought we were going to have to order blackened chicken alfredo and fishbowl margaritas in there!”
So, they have a nice date and blah blah blah about John Big’s recent tragic death and Carrie’s sad book and how they’re both single, making fuck-me eyes at each other the whole time. They are so horny for each other! So, they take a cab back to Carrie’s place, I guess to do sex together. But then when they get there, Aidan is like, “Whooooaaa, nelly! You still live in this same apartment? I thought you were a billionaire???”
See, he’s like freaking out now because of how Carrie made him buy that apartment for her and then broke his heart on multiple occasions in it and also kinda ruined his life. He’s like, “Oh, right. We dated once and you cheated on me with the man you eventually married. And then we got back together and got engaged and you decided you didn’t want to marry me. YOU HAVE PROVEN BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT I AM JUST YOUR PLAN B AND NOW YOU ARE WIDOWED AND LONELY AND WANT TO TRY TO FLOG THIS DEAD HORSE YET AGAIN?!”
And Carrie’s like, “Excellent point. It was nice seeing you again, good luck in all your future endeavors.” And Aidan leaves never to be heard from again.
Ugh, except then he remembers that he is just visiting New York and staying in a hotel where they can go have straight sex instead! So, they kiss passionately, secure in the knowledge that they will never have to enter Carrie’s apartment ever again. Seems like this is all off to a great start, can’t wait to see how it all plays out again.