‘And Just Like That’ Season 3 Episode 8 Recap: “Happily Ever After”

Last week’s episode of And Just Like That – you know, the one that turned the whole world off of karaoke and made Patti LuPone talk like a distant relative of Mario and Luigi – has one great thing going for it: no Aidan. Of course he was discussed and still existed, and was even a point of contention between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) after Miranda told Carrie she appeared to be working very hard at keeping the relationship afloat. This week, we ain’t so lucky. From the get-go, we learn that Aidan (John Corbett) is crashing at Carrie’s house for an extended stay, but don’t worry, Carrie’s not giving him any of her closet space, she’s made some space for his clothes in the cat’s room.

One of the most shocking things about this week’s episode is that is features the most sex we’ve seen all season. We’ll start with LTW, who doesn’t actually have sex but it’s on the brain. When Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) confides in Charlotte (Kristin Davis) that she’s having subconscious sex dreams about and very conscious flirtations with her editor, Man Marion (Mehcad Brooks), Charlotte tries to reframe the situation. She tells LTW that it’s probably a good thing they have a flirtatious relationship while they’re working, because that will only fuel their creativity. AJLT, please don’t try to make “flirking” (flirting while working) happen.

Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) are still seeing each other and Seema better watch out because her bed already caught fire once this season, and now it’s getting dangerously hot in there again as the two of them get it on. We even get to see Adam’s entire butt, the first nakedness – in a sexy way, not counting Miranda or her creepy neighbor’s full-frontal – of the season. Adam – whose last name is Karma!? – has a thing for armpits, it turns out. This show, which has over the years shown us golden showers and butt stuff galore, has never shown us the kink of armpit sucking till now.

When Adam Karma and Seema head out to dinner, they witness a woman in the restaurant applying deodorant for all to see. This is when Adam admits that he doesn’t touch the stuff. (Even without Adam admitting he doesn’t use deodorant, I think that was a given, no? He’s clearly a man who revels in his own musk.) Then he tells Seema that while he was sucking her pits, he could taste the aluminum from her roll-on. Absolutely none of this was on my bingo card for this show.

Lisa tries to bring the same heat to her own marital bed that Seema was bringing to hers in an effort to keep things in the bedroom exciting with Herbert, future comptroller of New York City. However, she loses her sex drive when he excuses himself to pee and then, mid-stream, mentions they need to buy toilet paper and seltzer. It’s a classic old-marrieds conundrum, balancing the sexy with the practical, and Herbert is not realizing that he should have kept things sexy in the moment. Lisa is trying to keep her feelings for Man Marion at bay, but Herbert’s obliviousness to her needs puts her in a situation where she’s struggling to resist him. Especially when he eats a juicy, succulent papaya during their lunch break.

When Man Marion tells Lisa he has a connection to the Obamas – remember, they’re trying to get Michelle Obama to do Lisa’s documentary, even though at this point, Michelle would do well to avoid being roped into this show – he invites Lisa to a screening that night where a colleague of Michelle’s will be. Lisa tries to get out of it but realizes that an in with Michelle could lead to great things for her. This means canceling plans with Herbert to attend Charlotte’s gallery opening, though, and doing so in awkward fashion to avoid admitting she’s going out with Marion.

Charlotte’s been working on a sex-positive art installation, the opening of which sets the stage for much of the episode. While Char and her gallerina girls prepare one of the works which features a full used condom next to a naked woman lying on a bed, Charlotte suffers a bout of vertigo and has to sit down. “I didn’t think vertigo was real,” her young colleague Kai says. This is a joke that’s repeated later and, I dunno, do youths not believe in vertigo? (Or Epstein Barr?)

If I can offer and unsubtle segue, Aidan’s whole existence this week is giving me vertigo. When Aidan first arrived at Carrie’s house for his stay, it appeared he brought a lot of baggage, literally. The longer he stays, the more metaphorical that baggage becomes. On their first night together, right when Carrie is supposed to leave for a writing session with Duncan, Aidan sabotages her plans by telling her Wyatt has moved out of his house and in with Kathy. These people have phones, why wouldn’t he have shared this information before the visit? This causes Aidan to get all whiny and childish and wonder why Wyatt doesn’t like him (uh, maybe it’s all the house painting he’s forced to do?) and what he did to deserve this. It’s insufferable.

Even more annoying is that now, Aidan is also preoccupied with and very insecure about Duncan. He asks Carrie if they three of them can go to dinner, and Carrie says no because she likes keeping things exclusively work-related with Duncan (the lady doth protest too much – she’s clearly reacting to what Miranda observed last week when Carrie appeared too cozy with Duncan at Charlotte’s birthday party). This makes Aidan even more curious about the man living under the stairs, so at Charlotte’s art gallery opening, he asks Adam if he’s ever crossed paths with Duncan, and Adam calls Duncan a meanie. Ugh, the man-children have found one another.

Miranda, who has made being in the program a part of her brand for the last season, has all of a sudden decided that she’s no longer an alcoholic but an “alcohol-ish.” This revelation comes when Joy (Dolly Wells) asks Miranda if she can leave a bottle of gin at Miranda’s house, forgetting that Miranda abstains. But because she likes Joy so much, she doesn’t see the harm.

Carrie and Charlotte are shocked when Miranda tells them that when she gave up drinking she was “overcorrecting,” and that her unhappiness, rather than her alcohol abuse, was the root of her problem. Miranda seems to be asking Carrie and Charlotte for the okay to have a drink with Joy once and a while, which is a bullshit position to put your friends in, asking them for permission to bypass the rules you’ve set forth for yourself. Worse, Miranda hasn’t told Joy she’s an alcoholic, Joy just thinks Miranda doesn’t drink. The look on Carrie’s face reads “horrified” and Miranda says that things are so breezy and light with Joy, having a conversation about alcoholism would bring the mood down. “I’m having fun, do I have to be defined by my darkest chapter?” she asks. This is all unreal, the way the writers of this show can’t decide what principles, if any, these beloved characters should retain from one week to the next.

A moment later, when Joy hands Miranda her wine glass so she can go to the bathroom at Charlotte’s art opening, Charlotte, suffering from another spell of vertigo, tries to prevent Miranda from taking a sip. She wobbles and pitches forward and becomes one with the art installation, falling directly into it while yelling, “Miranda, don’t!”

After the gallery party, Miranda heads home (to do work while also watching Bi Bingo) and spots Joy’s bottle of gin. Miranda is obviously going through a crisis of temptation but the show’s peppy music along with the audible dialogue from Bi Bingo, don’t portend some deep, dark downfall. Instead, after looking at the gin and going to far as to pour herself a glass, she throws the entire bottle down the trash chute.

In an episode all about temptation, it’s truly stressful watching how each of these women is dealing with it. After accepting Marion’s invitation to a documentary screening where a rep from the Obama’s Higher Ground will be attending, Lisa leaves early, so worried that she and Marion are getting too personal. She realizes she needs to remove herself to avoid giving in. Carrie similarly is trying to act like Duncan doesn’t exist, at least while Aidan is around, to help suppress whatever feelings she has for him. It’s not avoidance of temptation so much as it’s denial. On the other end of the spectrum, Miranda’s trying to justify having a drink, allowing herself one moment of that pleasure, but ultimately she does the honorable thing when she realizes that giving in to temptation is a band-aid. It’s a temporary indulgence. And ultimately, as each of these women seems to understand, giving in to temptation will disrupt whatever good thing you have going.

Honorable Mentions for And Just Like That Season 3 Episode 8:

• Glad to see that Harry is recovering from his surgery, although it means he’s not there to help Charlotte with her vertigo.
• While I do love the pairing of Patti LuPone and Victor Garber as art world aficionados, neither of them actually had anything real to do this week, and LuPone’s character Gia, continues to exist just to make old and/or short jokes about Anthony. We deserve better from this cameo!

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.