AND JUST LIKE THAT: The Ballad of Aidan and Steve, Part The First
This show is basically The DaVinci Code! The clues were there all along!
Ye, gods! All is chaos and upheaval for the very relatable rich ladies on HBO Max’s And Just Like That! All season long, this Dadaist masterpiece has taken formal risks, throwing musty old outdated notions of traditional plotting out the widow to bring us something new and confounding, a form of storytelling that mirrors LIFE itself in its constant parade of seemingly random occurrences! We never know where any of it is leading us or if it’s leading us anywhere at all! This week’s episode was a triumphant cacophony of dangling plot threads and unresolved storylines, the ellipsis in the show’s title brought to dazzling, frustrating life!
That’s because its Part I of a two-part finale! Two times the fun with a week in between to consider our life choices.
We open on the Isle of Coney, a ramshackle shantytown somewhere off the coast of Manhattan, USA, where Carrie Bradshaw has never ventured heretofore. What brings a glitzy dame like her to these woebegone sea-swept shores? Why none other than Steven Hobbes, the former Mr. Miranda, who has forsaken the vanity and decadence of Man’s World to sell clams and hotdogs, two things that famously go excellently together, out of a plywood lean-to.
Tagging along with Carrie is Aidan Shaw, her current love of her life and also Steven’s former love of his life. (Remember how Steve and Aidan were boyfriends a long time ago?) Steve and Aidan find themselves suddenly gazing into each other’s eyes longingly and wondering how they ever let each other drift away. But just as Aidan is about to push Carrie into the sea and kiss Steve on the mouth, his FacePhone rings. It is his wee troubled young’un, Wyatt, who is like, “Daddy, come hooooommme to Fork Hollow, Virginia, right now!!!” Poor Wyatt is simply lost without is papa, who has abandoned him to traipse around New Jerk City with that floozy, Carrie Broadshawl! (Meanwhile, Steve forlornly returns to shucking his clams and roasting his wieners, dreaming of a life with Aidan in the Virginia countryside…)
Back in the land of Manhattan, Charlotte is busy selling an art to Sam Smith, so the writers make her say things like, “This is a good art because of the artist uses their IDENTITY in their art just like you do, nonbinary singing artist Sam Smith!” But before she can awkwardly say anymore hip progressive buzzwords at poor Sam Smith, she is interrupted by her entire dumb family constantly calling her at work to do things for them.
“My dumb family is so dumb, I wish all their phones would explode so I can sell art in peace!” she tells Carrie and Miranda and Nicole Ari Parker at lunch one day.
But no one wants to hear about that, so Miranda stuffs some zucchini chips (stealth Jean-Georges spon-con?) into Charlotte’s mouth so they can all talk about how Carrie has won Charlotte and NAP’s kids’ school’s charity raffle! (Why does that fancy school need so much charity fundraising all the time?!?) The prize is a Michelob chef who has to make a banquet for Carrie and 16 of all her friends, which luckily is the exact number of characters on this show.
But Carrie’s like, “Not at my new house with my new white walls!” Is she afraid her fancy friends are going to, like, get in a food fight? Then, she remembers the promo image for Season 2 and decides she will have a LAST SUPPER in her tiny old apartment where she has never had a dining room or table in order to celebrate moving away from it for real this time!
Also, Charlotte is very excited because PBS wants to make a TV show out of NAP’s latest documentary. But NAP is not excited at all. She is miserable due to being impregnated. After lunch she’s like, “Stop telling people about PBS because I have to have a new offspring that is going to ruin my life and career!” But Charlotte is like, “No! You can do all the moming and filmmaking and everything if you just put your mind to it and think happy thoughts!” And NAP breaks down and cries in frustration because that all sounds like a goddamn nightmare.
“Well,” Charlotte doesn’t say, “Have you considered having an abortion, a totally valid and not uncommon choice for a married person in her 50s with three kids already and a demanding job? Let’s talk openly and honestly onscreen about how you feel about this option, which you have unlike many people in many parts of the USA in 2023,” Charlotte doesn’t continue.
So, NAP just goes home and punches her pillows and also her husband, President Christopher Jackson, all night, because apparently he refused to get a vasectomy like she asked him to years ago. He’s like, “You can do this because of your having-it-all career-woman supermom powers!” And NAP is like, “Everyone can fuck right off with this ‘you can do it’ bullshit, because maybe I can’t and that is fucking FINE, and also maybe I DEFINITELY DON’T WANT TO, which is also 100% FINE, and additionally also I SHOULDN’T FUCKING HAVE TO!” So, PCJ is like, “Do you wanna have a you-know-what?” He means abortion, but for some reason doesn’t actually say it, like it’s a dirty word or something! But instead of doing an interesting, timely storyline about a married, wealthy mother who chooses to terminate an unplanned pregnancy, the show just has NAP be like, “No! I couldn’t possibly,” without even exploring why.
Then, a few nights later, NAP wakes in the night and is like, “I’m bleeding, we need to go to the hospital, I think…it’s too late…” So, like so many TV shows before it, this supposedly NEW CHAPTER of 2023 Sex and the City seems like it’s doing the dumb, cowardly thing where instead of having a character have an abortion, it sidesteps all the thorny uncomfortable stuff by having them have a convenient miscarriage. Booooo, show! Enjoy all the hot-takes and scathing criticisms you richly deserve for this!
Meanwhile, Carrie really has sold her old apartment to her downstairs neighbor Listerine for like $300. She’s busy packing everything up so she can go live in Gramercy Park, while Listerine stealthily squirrels away old bras and fingernail clipping so she can build a life-size Carrie doll later, when suddenly Jackie Collins Seema bursts in in a swirl of leopard print satin! She is in great distress because during coitus she accidentally said “I love you” to Ravi, that director she’s been fucking. And then he also said it! Catastrophe! Why??? Who knows! Plus, Carrie is too into her new precious baby kitten to pay attention to any of that. What is Carrie going to name that kitten!? Suggestions in the comments please!
Later, another person comes to visit Carrie. This time it is Anthony, who is having a whole thing about how he doesn’t want to bottom for Giuseppe, his hot young new Italian poet boyfriend with an enormous penis. He’s like, “I’m not a lady! I don’t put wing-wangs up my hoo-hoo!” And Giuseppe’s like, “You are-a being real-a weird about-a dis. Maybe you-a have-a some deep-a seeded emotional-a issue.” (Heh heh! Seeded.) And then Anthony is like, “Everyone in my generation is a top or a bottom and no one is versatile.” Which…is that really a thing? Also, LOLOLOL at this show for devoting more time and attention to the issue of bottoming than it did to abortion. *Chef kiss* No notes, etc.
But that’s not why Anthony has been summoned to former sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw’s office for a conference. (Like, her head would fully explode at the very mention of anal intercourse!) He’s there because Stanford Blatch, his estranged husbone, has sent a telegram to Carrie saying that he is now a monk and staying in Japan forever.
“What even do monks do?” Anthony asks.
“Clean temple, deal with tourists,” Stanford’s telegram says.
“Why didn’t he tell me!”
“You would have made fun of me!” the telegram astutely replies.
“What about divorcing tho!”
“You can have the apartment and everything I own!” the telegram immediately answers.
And Anthony’s like, “Wow, my ex-husband is a monk now so I guess I should let my new hot boyfriend butt fuck me!” And Carrie pounds her entire cosmo in one gulp at what looks like it might be 10am like a champ!
Now, here is everything that is going on with Miranda: She’s been doing such a great job solving injustice at Human Rights Watch that her boss invites her to the United Nations for I have no idea why. But it has something to do with the BBC, so maybe she’s going to prosecute J.K. Rowling for international hate crimes against the transgender community? Anyway, whatever it is she did a great job because this very tall British lady she worked with is like, “Hubba hubba, maybe?” But Miranda is just like:
…and runs away. Miranda doesn’t have time to vibe with pretty British giantesses who can sexily read her Jane Austen novels in an actual British accent! She’s got so much on her plate right now! Like her roommate, Professor Karen Pittman, who is cracking up a little because her ex-husb. André Agassi’s new girlfriend is pregnant just like he always wanted her to be!
Plus, Miranda has also decided she wants to try to be platonic friendly with Che Diaz all of a sudden. So, one night, she goes to their Comeback Comedy Concert in Brooklyn with Carrie and Aidan Shaw to surprise them. See, Che Diaz has been working on all-new comedy material, which involved researching all their past terrible comedy and also watching videos of Callie Torres doing equally terrible stand-up, and now they’re ready to take the stage once again!
Except this time, instead of doing a TED Talk about nonbinary, their comedy concert is all about how terrible Miranda was to date and do queer sex with.
“She was so gross and dumb and bad at queer sex!” Che Diaz hilariously jokes, and all the cruel young gender-queer hipsters of Brooklyn laugh and laugh at poor dumb sad old Miranda.
Miranda, a woman whose best friend has exploited her sexual misadventures in print for several decades, is distressed muchly by this, so she flees the club by stealthily walking directly onto the stage and exiting via the stage door while glaring directly at Che Diaz, who follows her onto the street.
Miranda (Also everyone): “NOT FUNNY!”
Che Diaz: “BUT MY COMEDY!”
So, Miranda storms off and Che goes home with their new cute nonbinary groupie Toby.
Meanwhile, Charlotte’s co-workers take her out and get her drunk to celebrate making poor Sam Smith buy tons of hundreds of dollars of art. But her awful kids keep calling her still because they need her to wipe their butts and make them mac-and-cheese or whatever. So she throws her phone into a blender at the bar, and her co-workers are like “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS!” And then Charlotte stumbles home drunk and yells at her family for being such helpless needy little twerps and ruining her good times doing career stuff.
Later that same night, Carrie and Aidan are in bed at their latest hotel because he still pathologically refuses to go to her old apartment, which I guess is kinda fine now because Listerine is probably there building a nest for herself with strands of Carrie’s hair. Out of nowhere he’s like, “You know how you very poignantly said John Big was a MISTAKE a few episodes ago? Well, I done a mistake too!” He thinks about Steve, his eyes the dishwater grey of the briny Coney Island sea. His heart longs to rewrite the past. We coulda had a real good life, him and me, Aidan thinks. If they had only been brave enough to love each other without fear, maybe Steve would never have married that sexually confused harridan Miranda Hobbes! Maybe Aidan would never have been tortured by the hateful specter of Carrie’s second-floor walk-up in the East 70s, the thought of which wakes him in the night! It could have all been so different, so perfect!
He’s just about to tell Carrie that he’s made up his mind to go to Coney Isle and beg Steve to take him back—it’s on the tip of his tongue—when his ex-wife calls. Baby Wyatt has driven himself into a ditch and is in the hospital. So, Aidan has to rush back to West Virgina to save his sweet boychild. (While somewhere on Coney Island, Steve waits for Aidan, hope dwindling as the hours tick by, his heart breaking like the waves on the grimy shore.)
The next day at Carrie’s new house, Miranda calls. She’s so furious and traumatized by Che Diaz’s comedy that she doesn’t want to come to Carrie’s big Finale Dinner next episode. Panic-stricken, Carrie is like, “You have to come because Steven Hobbes will be there, and you have to con him back into being opposite-sex married to you so he doesn’t seduce my boyfriend away forever!”
Thus reminded of her eternal duty to serve Madam Bradslaw, Miranda is like, “Ok!”
Then Aidan calls from Virginia, and cries and cries to Carrie about Wyatt. But in their hearts, they both know he’s really crying about Steve. He realizes they may have missed their final chance to be together and he sobs for all the wasted years, as Carrie begins to worry that Aidan may be finally slipping away from her.
To be continued…