And Just Like That… Season 3 Episode 2 Recap: The Joy of Hate-Watching.
One of the best things about hate-watching And Just Like That… is talking about it with your friends. This season I’m making my friends who are fans of the show have a weekly watch party with me (well, they pushed it out to every few weeks because I guess they have lives and jobs and stuff?) to give the group chat some respite! This is mirrored in Miranda becoming obsessed with a Love Island-esque reality show, Bi Bingo, which makes sense with her addictive personality and callback to her TiVoing the soap opera Jules and Mimi on Sex & the City!
“I finally discovered the joy of hate-watching,” she marvels.
Bi Bingo also mirrors the puerile relationship dynamic between Carrie and Aidan because if there’s one thing they’re going to do it’s act like children. Carrie is hemming and hawing about text messages to Aidan. It’s one thing to be critical of text bubbles in modern movies and TV, but in order for And Just Like That… to get around Aidan’s absence, Carrie, the writer, has taken to talking-to-texting-and-deleting messages into her phone.
“You are so lucky you met Aidan before all of this,” Lisette Alee (Katerina Tannenbaum), jewellery designer and Carrie’s former downstairs neighbour-cum-upstairs apartment owner says during drinks with Carrie. Several men glance Carrie’s way (and who wouldn’t in that gorgeous blue dress?!), one even chatting her up at the bar that I kinda wish Carrie would entertain instead of becoming this eunuch pining for Aidan in Virginia. Lisette is obviously not privy to Carrie’s text neuroticism. And Just Like That… should utilise Lisette more to play up the differences between dating now and pre-apps, social media and smartphones, like Kristin Davis does on her podcast, Are You A Charlotte?
Another thwarted potential love interest is Carrie’s new gardener, Adam (Logan Marshall-Green), with whom she seems to have some chemistry but she’s preoccupied by Aidan. When Adam asks Carrie what her vision for her garden, which was rased in order to eradicate her rat problem (she should have gotten Shoe, her cat, onto it), she says she “loved everything as it was, but now it’s all changed and I don’t know what comes next.”
Other things I couldn’t help but wonder about:
Seema’s seeing a matchmatcher, who advises her to wear pastels and stifle her opinions. Just let Seema be single and loving it!
Miranda’s love interest, Joy from the BBC (Dolly Wells), has returned!
Charlotte and Lisa stalk a private college admissions advisor played by Kristen Schaal.
It appears the unnamed woman Carrie is writing about is from the dawn of the Civil War, inspired by the era her townhouse was built. I’m intrigued…