Warning: Contains spoilers for “Under The Table,” the latest episode of And Just Like That…
Because of its origin as a spin-off of the beloved Sex and the City, the audience for And Just Like That… may have a higher-than-typical proportion of hate-watchers. And to be fair to this community, they do have some solid reasons to find it annoying. Its title is kind of dumb. Not everyone is conversant enough with the Discourse around it to hang with its many meta-references. This season in particular, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is mired in a largely joyless storyline about her sort-of boyfriend Aiden (John Corbett) and the troubled son he seems not to be helping by letting him run his parents’ lives, when this is supposed to be a comedy.
The latest episode, however, remembers that, at least for a moment, and gives us one of the funniest things one can see: a person who is, unexpectedly, naked. And then another one!
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After a season of denial about her sexuality followed by a season of denial that Che (Sara Ramirez) wasn’t actually a great partner for her, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has finally really committed to her divorce by selling the Brooklyn brownstone she formerly owned with her former husband Steve (David Eigenberg); we don’t hear what they got for it, but considering they bought it before Brooklyn was Brooklyn, we may reasonably assume that even just her half of their undoubtedly eye-watering profit gives her a lot of housing options.
Still, New York real estate being what it is, Miranda’s been taking her time finding a permanent situation and making do in an Airbnb. At first, her problem with her neighbor across the hall is merely that they’re loud — a problem so typical that Carrie is also embroiled in it, though from the other side, getting complaints from Duncan (Jonathan Cake), the tenant in her basement unit, about how much noise she makes tiptapping around her hardwood floors exclusively wearing heels. (Telling her friends at lunch that he asked her to take them off causes a server to drop a tray, so: guess that staffer watches the franchise.)
Miranda takes the reasonable first step of sliding a note under her neighbor’s door asking that they lower the volume; the neighbor responds, just as reasonably, by complying. So far, so civil! (Carrie’s being a lot less accommodating to Duncan, by the way, handing him back the old-lady slippers he’s ordered her from Amazon by telling him she’s allergic “to whatever this is.”)
But when you share walls with strangers, you can never predict how things are going to go. A request that seems polite one day might feel aggressive the next. This is how it shakes out for Miranda, as a second note gets a very different reaction.
“I will fucking cut you to pieces” might look hyperbolic in print, but when it’s growled by a completely naked man wielding a cleaver, it lands with a little more intentionality.
Smash cut to Miranda and her luggage showing up to stay at Carrie’s gigantic Gramercy Park mansion, apparently the first time they’ve been roommates since they shared a place on Bank Street back in the ‘90s. Carrie immediately has to tell Miranda to take her shoes off, out of respect for Duncan downstairs. Otherwise, though, surely Miranda — who’s come straight from a situation where she was the victim of residential inconsideration — will do her best to be as inconspicuous as possible here…right?
Wrong.
Yes, Miranda hooked up earlier in the evening, but not there. Even if she doesn’t normally sleep in pajamas, she can’t just go wandering to the bathroom totally naked in someone else’s house! Miranda arrived with several bags — none of them contained a robe? Or a T-shirt? UNDERPANTS?! But never mind the logic: It’s worth it for the callback.
Over the course of the episode, we get a reference to the Sonia Rykiel Domino bag Miranda borrowed from Carrie at some point and lost; this event was, apparently, traumatic enough that Miranda is wary of borrowing a designer scarf from Carrie now. Carrie insists, but not even Miranda would say it’s therefore partly Carrie’s fault when Miranda uses it to sop up Mexican Coke Miranda’s just spilled on Carrie’s new $7,000 dining table. The Coke, by the way, was Carrie’s last, and Miranda helped herself to it after eating Carrie’s last yogurt. The two agree that, for the sake of the friendship, Miranda should probably get serious about finding a new home and, in the meantime, somewhere else to crash.
But given the accumulation of evidence against Miranda as a neighbor, it’s hard not to wonder what she wrote in that second note to the guy at her Airbnb. Maybe he had a point. And maybe it really was so urgent that he couldn’t get dressed before making it.
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