And Just Like That recap: Justice for Steve!

3 months ago 20

This story contains spoilers for season three, episode 10 of And Just Like That...

I woke up today excited to watch a new episode of And Just Like That... – something that hasn’t happened in almost four years. It’s been a long road, but here we are! Carrie’s going out at night and pashing someone hot! Praise be to The Woman.

Also: STEVE’S BACK. God, they really had me thinking he’d been put out to pasture (aka Coney Island).

“MIRANDA??” David Eigenberg returns to And Just Like That.

Brady’s got his parents together to tell them he’s both going to culinary school – he’s been inspired by The Bear and falls asleep with Anthony Bourdain’s memoir on his chest – and going to be a dad. He got a girl pregnant, and she’s too far along to have an abortion.

When Steve screams about the perils of having a baby with “someone who doesn’t want to be with you” it’s, ah, loaded. And so is Steve’s threat to knock Brady out. What is in the water these men are drinking? If it weren’t for that Peloton, would this show have made Mr Big a January 6-er or something?? Justice for Steve!

This leads to a three-way phone call in which Miranda tells the girls the news. She and Charlotte stake out the hair salon where Brady’s former hook-up works, and she’s drinking a Red Bull, farting up a storm and says it’ll be “such a f---ing vibe” to have a baby who’s a double Libra. When Miranda admits who she is, she gets a hose of water to the face. I fear we were missing something to button up this strangely flatulent storyline, but I’m learning resolution is too much to expect from AJLT.

Meanwhile, LTW’s storyline is once again stuck in wet cement. The fact all the action for her and Herbert happens off-screen – where she’s travelling to DC with Marion and he’s losing the election – means we really didn’t need to drag it out this much. I’ll do a full-season post-mortem in a couple of weeks, but for now, let’s just say the “hamster as metaphor for absent parent” isn’t hitting.

LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) is still off on an island of her own, starring in a one-woman remake of ‌I Don’t Know How She Does It.

Neither, sadly, is Charlotte’s emotional collapse – if that is what the writers are hinting at. Last we saw her she was falling over from vertigo. This week, Char is trying to log on to a Zoom meeting, but her house is chaos. She’s replacing the wallpaper, a task requiring half-a-dozen men with power tools. Rock is tap-dancing (?) with Henry (?) because they got cast in Thoroughly Modern Millie (?). Amid the noise Charlotte is struggling to connect with someone we assume is a therapist but ends up being a psychic healer who resents Char for only bidding $40 for this session at a silent auction.

She keeps her camera off until they finally connect in a quiet room and Charlotte mentions Harry’s cancer. The psychic flicks her camera on and it’s Susie Essman! But that’s it, end of storyline.

What?? This episode is flooded with ghosts – Aidan, Margaret Thatcher, Adam’s mother and Steve’s hang-ups over Miranda’s pregnancy with Brady – but we cut the line to the spirit world there?

Seema began the season so quick to reject anyone at the slightest hint of disagreement or incompatibility but Adam’s showing her even if she pushes after “killing his mother” by tipping a plant out the window, he’s not going anywhere. She’s got her driver back, he’s got a gorgeous rent-controlled apartment. They’re perfectly aligned for a future flush with cash and armpit-huffing. I’m into it.

Seema (Sarita Choudhury) clocks up her second smoking-related accident this season.

Before we get to the excellent roommates in Gramercy, two quick notes on Anthony and Giuseppe shacking up. First, wasn’t Giuseppe’s mother shopping for “queer masters” to adorn the SoHo loft she was buying him two episodes ago? Why is he rooming with an elderly puppet maker? Secondly: asking your hot boyfriend to trade a “sweet, asexual roommate” in for “a sexual” one is an excellent way to ask him to move in. I give the writers a lot of grief, so it’s only right I also give it up once in a while when they get it right.

Time for the heart of this episode. I’m suddenly giddy seeing Carrie on my screen again! Sure, she’s still possessed by the spirit of a woman called The Woman from the 1840s, but she’s lighter. Her home is not filled with a man and his awful children, but with shoes, Vivienne Westwood gowns, reams of printed pages and Duncan. She has chairs!

Duncan is thrilled by Carrie’s writing, and she glows under his praise. They’re so playful with one another. It’s a delight. They have a “who’s a bigger bestseller” pissing contest. He’s tickled by her fun frocks and what goes on in her office.

He wants her to come to a party with him. A party where his publisher, who’s also his ex-wife, raves about Carrie the moment she walks in. We so rarely get to see our girls through other people’s eyes and I appreciate the praise. It’s been years since anyone – besides Candice Bergen with her menopausal Goop newsletter – has acknowledged Carrie as a notable person in this city. I’m so glad she swapped the black heels for her sparkliest pair.

This and a post-coital scotch. Yes please.

We learn Duncan is leaving for London the next week, but Thatcher isn’t finished. He’s missed a deadline but got a lifeline – which is cheesy and also the kind of thing a certain woman would’ve written in her column many moons ago. The way they look sipping a post-coital scotch and discussing their books in bed makes so much sense.

Carrie believes the woman will die of loneliness. Duncan urges her to let the character live. I’m doing the same, begging creator Michael Patrick King to keep Carrie like this for a little longer.

And Just Like That... streams each Friday on HBO Max. You can catch up on all of our recaps here.

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