AND JUST LIKE THAT: Post-Pride Weeping in Walgreens [Relatable]
This episode was disrespectful to Nicole Ari Parker, Billy Dee Williams, Jenifer Lewis, and suburban women who love their Michael Kors purses.
Before we get into this week’s deranged, stone cold bummer of an episode of And Just Like That, I would like to officially for the record and always put some respect upon the names of Nicole Ari Parker, Christopher Jackson, Billy Dee Williams, Jenifer-effing-Lewis (!!!), that impossibly beautiful actor who plays the Wexlers’ oldest son, and suburban women who carry Michael Kors purses. WHICH IS MORE THAN THIS DUMB EPISODE DID! I mean, except for maybe Jenifer Lewis. She really got to cook, I guess. But we’ll get to all that presently.
(Also, if you are one of the dozens of people at whom I yelled “DO YOU OWN AN EMAIL ADDRESS?” at a Pride party last weekend: Welcome! I hope your post-Pride weeping in bed went well this week!)
We open on Carrie, obviously, who is continuing to try to trick Duncan Beardmore, the Englishman in her basement, into thinking she’s charming. And it seems poor DuncBeard’s resistance is faltering, because not only has he invited her down to his lair for mutton stew (sure, whatever) but he’s also taken it into his scruffsome head that he needs Carrie’s womanly perspective on the Margaret Thatcher biography he’s currently writing. See, one of the things he said last week was how he’s never written about a female woman person before, so he’s all worried about probably getting canceled for writing all about how Maggie Thatcher was constantly shopping and so emotional. And who better to set him straight than renowned scholar of 20th Century British Conservatism Carrie Bradshaw?
Later, Carrie calls Aidan Shaw from her bathroom to tell him the good news about how she’s a Marjorie Thatcher Green expert now, but instead of being impressed, he’s like, “Who exactly is this man you are dining on MUTTON with?” Because remember how Carrie cheated on him one million years ago and one of his characteristics ever since has been that he doesn’t trust her to interact with any other man?
“Oh, calm down, Shaw Patrol!” Carrie says, and Aidan is like, “Great point! BTW, my troubled son Wyatt is shipping himself to Outward Bound or whatever, so I’m coming to visit you for a week tomorrow, see you then!”
Sidebar: This really has nothing to do with anything other than my weird abiding obsession with Carrie’s home and décor, but…I’m very confused about her bathroom. Here is a rough drawing of the second floor of Carrie’s new house that I drew on an airport Dunkin’ (as in Beardworth!) Donuts napkin showing the location of said bathroom:
Why is this the bathroom she’s using for her nightly ablutions? Does she not have one off her bedroom? Also, where did this bathroom come from? I could have sworn there was a wall of bookshelves there in Episode 1. Did it, like, just appear like the five and a half min hallway in House of Leaves? Actually! Is Carrie’s closet the five and a half mins hallway? Is Carrie’s house secretly a hellmouth to a cursed labyrinth where she keeps all her dozens of giant ballgowns??? (Sincere apologies to everyone who has not read House of Leaves and therefore does not get these references. Probably you should read that instead of whatever this is.)
Maybe that is why, upon arriving at Gramercy Park the next day or whenever, Aidan Shaw is inexplicably compelled to destroy the cursed house by pelting it with rocks! Sadly, he only succeeds in shattering a window. Obv, Carrie is v devastated, because, like literally everything else in her life, she has romanticized her windows.
“They are 700 years old and can never be replaced!” she whines. I mean, jeezus, this woman probably keeps a stack of old single-use Metro Cards in a drawer because she thinks they symbolize the magic of New York or some such nonsense.
Anyway, Aidan Shaw is having a real bummer of a week. Not only did he fail to murder Carrie’s house with rocks, he is also distressed due to Young Wyatt throwing some sort of off-screen tantrum before being chloroformed and dragged to the wilderness like supposedly he consensually wanted? So, basically, since he can’t fix his broken family and troubled boychild, Aidan Shaw decides to fixate on Carrie’s broken window, and drives to Pennsylvania to buy all these ass-old doors with aged glass. But when he gets back, Carrie is like, “Oh, I’m over that already.” And Aidan is like “I slept with my ex-wife, Rosemarie DeWitt, also off-camera, because we were both so distressed re: Wyatt’s mental health!”
Carrie: “Huh. Ok, NBD, we are doing non-monogamy, right?”
Aidan: “Ummm…No?”
Carrie: “No, we totally are, because I’m probably gonna wanna let Duncan do some dunkin’ before the season finale.”
LOLOLOL, I barely recognize this woman! She’s like, “I never agreed to be celibate for five years while you finish raising your kid and ignore me. Also, why have we never talked about this before now?”
You know that thing they say happens to people who are dying where, like, a week before they finally expire, they get this burst of vitality and clarity? I’m kinda wondering whether something like that is happening to Carrie mentally, and this is just the final burst of sanity and reason before she goes fully off the deep end…
Anyway, somehow this conversation makes everything basically fine, I guess, because Carrie and Aidan do some sexing, and then Aidan leaves, but not before running into Duncan Beardworth who is dropping off the first chapter of his Thatcher book. Duncan’s like, “Cheerio, pip pip, what what,” And Aidan is like, “Welp, I guess this is the guy I’m in a polyandrous throuple or something with now! Try to care, friends at home!”
Elsewhere, Seema is also having a rough episode. First, she has to fire her driver because she can’t afford him now that she’s starting her own business, and that sucks because getting driven around by a chauffeur is kinda half of Seema’s personality. Then her first new client or whatever is Miranda, who is Miranda-ing up a storm being difficult about every apartment Seema shows her. She refuses to offer the seller of one place $50k over the asking price due to PRINCIPLES or politics or something, which also sucks for Seema because the other half of her personality is only having clients who are amoral oligarchs. Then, Miranda refuses to buy another perfect apartment because it is NO DOGS ALLOWED, and she is also now in a polyamorous relationship with Dolly Wells and her two mini greyhounds. Ultimately, though, Miranda buys the first apartment. And she introduces her large adult son Brady Hobbes to Dolly Well and his new stepsiblings, the Doggie Wellses. So, everything’s finally coming up Milhouse for ol’ Miranda Hobbes!
But ok, so while all this is going on, another truly cursed storyline is happening and it involves the death of Nicole Ari Parker’s father, Billy Dee Williams. What happens is this: NAP is busy as usual editing her documentary and finding out that Marion, her sexy editor, is married. So busy that she turns off her phone and misses a billion calls about her dad dying — which he 100% did for the first and only time in this episode.
So, remember in Season 4 of Sex and the City when Miranda’s mom died and it was actually a pretty great episode of television that effectively married comedy with genuine pathos and allowed the show’s actors to play shades of their characters we hadn’t quite seen before? THIS IS NOT THAT AT ALL. Like, it is obviously perpetually hard to believe that essentially the same people who made SATC are the ones making AJLT, but it is particularly unbelievable that more or less the same people who made that episode made this one.
Basically, NAP just kinda phones in some sad faces before the storyline makes a hard pivot to “comedy” featuring the great Jenifer Lewis, who is playing the manager of the influential Newark, NJ, community theater that NAP’s dad founded and ran. As manager of that theatre, Jenifer Lewis’s whole job seems to have been LIVING THEATRICALLY! So, good for her. But now that NAP’s NAPops is dead, Jenifer Lewis has made it her new job to plan his funeral — THEATRICALLY and much to NAP’s chagrin! See, NAP wants to do a tasteful funeral not in New Jersey. But what Jenifer Lewis actually ends up doing, is a musical tribute to NAP’s father starring herself singing a song that I am given to believe is from something called Pippin and featuring a cast of interpretive dancers, and it all takes place in Newark, i.e. the community in which NAP’s dad lived and worked unto the end of his days.
Apart from being just…tonally chaotic, this whole storyline is disrespectful! Like, there’s this running “joke” about how proud J.Lew’s character is of her Michael Kors purses — she has several — which just feels like the show making fun of anyone who strives for even a fraction of the luxury its obscenely rich characters take for granted. Also, several characters — Seema, President Christopher Jackson’s mother — complain basically non-stop at the funeral about having to be in New Jersey. FOR THE FUNERAL OF A FRIEND’S PARENT! Monsters! The whole thing was just mean spirited and unfunny and elitist and lame and really made me want Billy Dee Williams to return as the Ghost of NAP’s Dad to berate all these wealthy assholes like he did in Season 2.
Blech!
Another dumb thing NAP’s storyline does is throw Charlotte into crisis. See, she was feeling pretty okie dokie groovy times about Harry Goldenblatt’s prostate cancer prognosis after the doctor told them he was probably definitely going to be fine. (Because let’s face it, what else is Evan Handler gonna do except be on this show?) But then NAP calls her up and is like, “My 99-year-old father was fine and now he’s suddenly dead!” And Charlotte realizes that Harry Goldenblatt is also allegedly fine and could also suddenly end up dead! JUST LIKE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US!
So, she starts spiraling into despair, while also still trying to keep Harry’s dread malady a secret from everyone they know. Plus, she also has to deal with Blitzy Von Mufflewhatever who keeps showing up places and being all butthurt that she’s never invited to cool stuff like teatime at Tiffany’s and making Charlotte hear about it.
All of this culminates in Charlotte shopping for adult diapies for Harry — who I guess is going to be fully incontinent now; the human body is a horror show — in Gramercy, where she runs into Carrie and finally has to break down and tell her all about Harry Goldenblatt’s prostate. She has a nice good cry, right there in Walgreens, just like I did buying nicotine gum and Pedialyte earlier this week!
This episode was an absolute horror show. I only watched it to read this recap. ✨
Ahhhh I’d forgotten that her Dad already died!