And Just Like That… Season 3 Episode 7 Recap: You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties.

Apparently everyone but Carrie has family members, and And Just Like That… is going to introduce us to a new one every episode. This week it’s the Italian (by way of Buffalo) mother of Giussepe (Sebastiano Pigazzi), Anthony’s (Mario Cantone) much younger paramour. Anything to get Patty Lupone on the show, which was a casting that occurred before her cancellation for racist microaggressions to the POC Broadway community. But I digress…

It’s a bit random that Gia (Lupone) would invite Carrie out to lunch instead of, say, Anthony’s best friend Charlotte or Anthony himself, whom Gia has taken an immediate disliking to, but it’s an excuse for them to find common ground. They both, at one time or another, had partners with teen children who hate them. “So you’re the enemy, too,” Gia tells Carrie. “Don’t waste years being who you think they’ll accept.” Carrie could take this either way, but hopefully she and the show take heed of the first part of that and don’t waste any more years on Aidan.

Blissfully, he’s nowhere to be seen again this episode, his absence and the quality of And Just Like That… coalescing for a pretty fun instalment that revolves around Carrie hosting Charlotte’s birthday party at her cavernous townhouse, still sans furniture but with the addition of… karaoke!

“I love kara…oke,” says Duncan (Jonathan Cake) when Carrie warns him of/invites him to the festivities, strategically breaking up the pronunciation to linger on the part that sounds like her name. “Show tunes carry straight down through the floorboards,” it turns out, and I bet Duncan wants something else to carrie down through the floorboards. For now he settles for discussing the chapters they traded, calling Carrie “darling” and touching her shoulder as he compliments the vibrancy of her nameless character that I guess we’re not privy to. Carrie and Aidan only talk about tables, not the literary tableaus of her and Duncan’s conversations, the latter expertly straddling the line of “gay or just British,” Carrie’s confusion dancing across Sarah Jessica Parker’s face.

Her expression turns darker when Miranda comments on her flirtatious rapport with Duncan. She insists that there’s nothing going on and she’s in a relationship with someone who just last episode cheated on her. Though that was likely to settle the score against Carrie’s affair with Big when she and Aidan dated the first time, the slate has now been cleared for Carrie to get messy again. Or, if we were to read between the lines of their non-conversation last week, I guess they’re in an open relationship now so perhaps a dalliance Duncan isn’t off the table…

“The woman held onto what she knew to be true,” Carrie says in her voiceover at the conclusion of the episode. Does she know what is true? ’Cause I’m having a hard time figuring it out.

Other things I couldn’t help but wonder about:

• Shoutout to Melbourne literary legend Helen Garner, whose book Monkey Grip, originally published in 1977 (!), is getting the AJLT rub.

• Harry—and recipient Charlotte—could do worse than a personal shopper in Schiaparelli!

• You might not find Joy (Dolly Wells) in the kitchen at parties, but you will find her wherever the dog is. As with Duncan’s introduction, it’s hard to tell if Joy hates other people or just really loves dogs. Several times now she’s more than half-jokingly expressed disgust at socialising with people in Miranda’s life, but peps up when she finds out dogs will be involved. Curmudgeonly, or just British?

• The chemistry between Seema and Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) has been bubbling for weeks, reaching the crescendo of “Betty Davis Eyes” that had me blushing almost as hard as Carrie watching them grow increasingly intimate. Adam doesn’t do it for me, but let’s just say I know several people who would let him put his dirty finger in their… eye.