AND JUST LIKE THAT: Pretty Much Fine! Basically Fun!

I am very curious what *checks notes* 2025 Booker Prize judge Sarah Jessica Parker really thinks of Carrie’s novel...

Oh my god, you guys! This week’s And Just Like That was pretty much fine! I mean, it was deranged, obviously, but basically fun! It did, however, shatter my dream of having a karaoke birthday that would secretly be a stealth one-man show, which is an actual for-real thing that I have been considering and then chickening out of doing for several years now!

Season Trois, Episode the Seventh (very auspicious, three being the magic number per Schoolhouse Rock and seven being biblically lucky or something) found Carrie delivering the first chapter of her fictionally historical novel to Duncan Beardholm IX, renowned biographer of nonfictional political men and basement dweller. See, what was happening was they had agreed to read each other’s new work, and Carrie had been so totally swept away by Duncman’s evocative prose re: the life and times of Margaret Thatcher and her romantic adventures dismantling Britain’s social safety net and starving miners to death in 1980s times (That’s what happened, right?) that she was soops nervous to show him her own tale of The Woman in the Dove Grey Button Boots.

AND SHE WAS RIGHT TO BE! If what we’ve heard in voiceover for the past six episodes is any indication, that book is FUCKING TERRIBLE! It’s like the “novel” a precociously literary 12-year-old would write in their notebook while cosplaying Jo March! As I recently mentioned on Threads (yeah, I’m back on Threads; so much for my PRINCIPLES), I am very curious what *checks notes* 2025 Booker Prize judge Sarah Jessica Parker really thinks of these snippets of Carrie’s writing…

Luckily Carrie had lots of other stuff going on to distract her while Duncan read her voiceovers for the next few days. One of those things was her poor best good girlfriend Charlotte, who was dealing with keeping Harry Goldenblatt’s (basically cured?) prostate cancer a secret from everybody but Carrie, and also with Lily, whose relationship with that pan-poly-ballerino guy had suddenly imploded. (Pour one out for that guy; I should have known better than to hope we would get more of him and the demon twink I imagined he and Lily were in a throuple with.) Because of all that, Carrie decided that she should throw Charlotte a birthday ball to cheer her up (definitely not so she could show off her new unfurnished house).

But then Miranda, Carrie’s alleged other friend who she seems to be pretty much sick of at this point, was like, “Why tho? It’s not like her husband is dying of cancer.”

And Miranda was right! According to Harry Goldenblatt, his doctors, and basically the show every episode for the last three weeks, it is not like that at all! Harry is 100% not dying of cancer, we are told! But according to Carrie’s very bad secret-keeping face, it was actually a lot like that! So, she had to quickly come up with a lie for why Charlotte got to be Princess For A Day, and it was that Richard Burton was the one dying of cancer.

FUCK YOU, BRADSHAW! KEEP PRECIOUS RICHARD BURTON’S NAME OUT OF YOUR LYING FILTHY MOUTH!

Another thing Carrie did was appropriate Patti LuPone — a person I have literally zero opinions about, so let’s just move on — from Anthony’s storyline. See, Patti LuPone was in this episode to play Guiseppe’s mother and throw Italian shade in Anthony’s general direction constantly. Which she totes did, but also she went to lunch with Carrie for no reason and blah blah blahed about how she was 50 years younger than Guiseppe’s father when they fell in love and his sons from a previous marriage hated her.

Carrie: “*GASP* Just like ME and the ShawSons!”

Pattie LuPone: *Screams at Black people on their phones at the next table* Stares at Carrie in silence for fifteen seconds, then turns to the window and sighs, “What a beautiful day.”

Meanwhile, Charlotte was at Bergdorf’s buying Lily a “get over your non-monogamous queer teenage boyfriend” present that probably cost as much as my rent (So much for “The Power of Privilege,” right? Lily is going to be such a monster when she grows up!), when she spied none other than Harry Goldenblatt hiding amongst the purses — with an unfamiliar female personage!

Harry Goldenblatt: “Ohhhhhh hiiiiiiiiiiii! This is…my personal shopper! Yeah! That’s it! Personal shopper. Who buys all your gifts! Not someone I have ever done sexual petting with ever!”

Personal Shopper: “Right. I picked that shirt your wife is wearing…”

Harry Goldenblatt: “Toooootally! That is the full extent of our 100% nonsexual relationship!”

Personal Shopper: “Yes. I know. It’s weird that you keep saying stuff like that…”

Harry Goldenblatt: “THE PERSONAL SHOPPER KNOWS ABOUT MY PROSTATE IN THE CANCEROUS NOT SEXUAL SENSE!!!”

Charlotte: “You whore!”

Personal Shopper: “Again, I am a professional employed here at Bergdorf’s and have never had an inappropriate sexual relationship with any of my clients, least of all probable cancer survivor Harry Goldenblatt.”

Later, it was the day of Charlotte’s big birthday bash at Carrie’s house, and Miranda showed up with a karaoke machine, millions of pink balloons, a life-size cardboard cutout of Brady Hobbes, and a determination verging on mania to make Charlotte forget about her fake woes re: Richard Burton.

“EVERYONE LOVES KARAOKE!” she said at Carrie, eyes wild, grinding her teeth. “REMEMBER THAT CURSED TIME WE ALL SANG ‘I AM WOMAN’ IN ABU DHABI BECAUSE FEMINISM? HAHAHAHA! FUN!”

Carrie could see what was happening here. Miranda was in love again, this time with Dolly Wells and her dogs. And just like when she exploded her whole entire life to run away to Hollywood with Che Diaz, Mirando was once again acting completely nuts. Carrie quickly ran downstairs to see if Duncan had a tranquilizer gun, just in case. But instead of being helpful, Duncan just started rambling nonsensically about how Carrie’s novel was the greatest, most formally innovative, provocative, soul-stirring piece of literary reading he had ever experienced! Carrie started to wonder whether all those rats she had evicted from her garden were back and seeking revenge by giving everyone she knew rabies or something. Actually, no, just kidding. She was obviously flattered and invited Duncan to Karaoke Crazy Town upstairs as well.

Unfortunately, though, Miranda was wrong: at first nobody loved karaoke. Except, that is, for Nicole Ari Parker and President Christopher Jackson’s tweenage (probably gay?) middle son, who spent most of the whole party workshopping his cabaret act in Carrie’s living room. He had just finished singing “Memory” from Cats and was about to do “Don’t Cry Me A River Argentina,” when Patti LuPone arrived with Guiseppe and Anthony and pushed him right out the window.

Another person who arrived was Seema, wearing a Louis Vuitton eye patch. What was going on there? Well, as best I can tell, what had happened was this: Michael Patrick King woke up one morning in bed next to an empty Entenmann’s coffee cake box and realized through his benzo haze that he had forgotten to write a storyline for Seema and the script was due today! So he went scrambling through his waste basket searching for all the half-formed ideas, unrelated “jokes,” and random combinations of words he’d jotted down on the back of CVS receipts and Dunkin Donuts napkins and thrown away. From that flotsam, he was able to cobble together the following:

Seema: poor now (?) due to starting own biz; cheap eyelash salon + banjee queer eyelash technician (?) with Catwoman talons; gouges out Seema’s eye = LV eye patch (pirate jokes!); Seema (poor) hates cabs? = Flirts with hot gardener (poorer)???; Eye patch = Bette Davis Eyes (???) = now they are sex together (in cab?)!

So, yes, basically Seema and Carrie’s hot gardener had commenced hooking up by the end of the episode, after he karaoked “Bette Davis Eyes” at her. Which, like, whatever. It was foretold, I guess. But honestly, this pairing isn’t doing it for me at all. They have exactly zero chemistry! Plus, is it just me or is the “hot” gardener getting somehow less and less hot the more he interacts with people and reveals himself to be just slightly too much on the wrong side of dorky?

Suddenly inexplicably no longer hot.

Anyway. Various other things happened at Charlotte’s party including:

· Patti LuPone, a mental health professional, continued her campaign of psychological warfare and undermining against her beloved son’s beloved, Anthony.

· Bitsy von Muffalump had the cougar hots for Guiseppe and made him sing “Shallow” with her (she did the Jackson Maine parts)

· The brain worm that was now fully in control of Miranda tried to get Carrie and Charlotte to do a “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” sing-along with it

· Patti LuPone decided she would stay in New York, so maybe this is a multi-episode arc? Ugh.

· Duncston just kept going on and on and on about how much he loved Carrie’s awful book in this way that makes me really really hope that it will eventually come out that he was just lying to get into her pantaloons. Because, jeezus effing cripes, I can suspend disbelief for a lot of things, but I refuse to believe this man — any man, any adult human — thought that writing was anything other than pretentious fan fic dribble! To suggest otherwise is to insult one’s audience, specifically me! I am insulted!

Then, at one point, Carrie’s web of deception re: Richard Burton’s fake cancer turned the whole party into a middle school rumor mill when Miranda was like, “Harry, we’ll all be there for Charlotte when…the time comes” meaning Richard Burton’s hypothetical fake death. Then Harry was like, “Charlotte, did you tell Miranda about my prostate?” And Charlotte was like, “NO!” and then she was like, “Carrie, did you tell Miranda about Harry’s prostate?” And Carrie was like “NO! But I did cleverly tell her that Richard Burton was dying to throw her off the scent!” And Charlotte rightfully slapped her for even suggesting such a heinous tragedy, and then was like “Harry, Carrie told Miranda it was Richard Burton who was dying,” and Harry went and slapped Carrie too, and then was like “Why tho?” and Charlotte was like “Ohhhh, errr, I told her about your prostate in Walgreens…Whoopsie!” So then Harry was like, “This is all so dumb!” and pulled Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and NAP into the kitchen and was like, “I’m maybe definitely surviving prostate cancer!” And NAP was like, “Why have you dragged me into this nonsense?”

And with that, the party was over, and the only people left were Carrie and Miranda, so obviously they had a fight. Miranda was like, “Yiuuoooo liiiiiiike Duuuuuun-caaaaan, hahahaha.” And Carrie did not appreciate that one bit! She started throwing things, including Shoe the Cat, and pissing herself and screaming about how nuh-uh she did NOT like Duncan because she had a beloved boyfriend named Aidan Shaw and everything was totes amazeballs late-in-life romance with an old flame with him despite how he lived in a faraway land and was obsessed with him problem child and occasionally accidentally slept with Rosemarie DeWitt!

But what Carrie didn’t know was that Miranda had accidentally read the first page of her novel earlier, which said “What the fuck is this woman even doing???” and Miranda had assumed that it was another one of Carrie’s books that was all about herself.

“That is a made-up fictional story!” Carrie screamed, ripping out her hair extensions and stuffing them into her mouth.

Miranda: “Right, sure, it is definitely not at all about you, my bad.”

Then she flung the karaoke machine at Carrie and grabbed the crude dummy she’d been pretending was Brady Hobbes and fled the scene before Carrie could tear them both limb from limb.

Still in a rage, Carrie set upon all the balloon clawing at them and imagining each one bore the face of Aidan Shaw!

Well! Wasn’t that something! Honestly that whole party sequence was actually v fun. Or, rather, the most fun AJLT has probably ever been. Like, still full of cringe, but also kind of a fun romp with pretty much everyone who has ever been on this show (with the key tragic exclusion of NAP’s hot oldest son) running around acting a fool. Why can’t the show just be this all the time! Three-fourths big madcap party every week! But then, if it was that, it wouldn’t be AJLT. It would be OG Gossip Girl, and I would be Richard Lawson getting paid to recap it for Gawker instead of recapping it here for no money, and it would be 2009 and everything would be mostly fine. None of which is currently the actual case. *Sigh*