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Sex and the City used Fendi Baguettes, Manolo Blahniks, and Birkin bags to make a bigger point about being an upwardly mobile unmarried thirtysomething in a world where that was not the norm. Recall how in season six, Carrie loses her Manolos when she’s asked to take them off at a “baby welcoming party,” but gets the hostess to buy her a new pair after she reminds her of all the life milestone gifts she’s bought her over the years. The show normalized women spending hard-earned disposable income on wearable status symbols instead of child-rearing and homes in the suburbs. Some of their peers chose wellness retreats and overpriced juice, but Carrie etc. treated wearing shoes and carrying purses as though a spiritual experience, which was mostly believable and just about always fun.

Now we have And Just Like That, where fashion items feel like obligatory garish accoutrements instead of spiritual outlets. The original series succeeded because it depicted a woefully under-exposed female archetype, but also because it captured a well-defined slice of culture and society in Manhattan, an “in” crowd of women who knew what the hot purses and nightclubs were before most people did. But just when it seems like And Just Like That might be closing in on the frontier of fashion culture the way the old show did, like a bucket of ice water to the face, we bear witness to Charlotte wearing a Burberry plaid shirt and apron at the same time. Here’s your third episode character-by-character recap!

Carrie

Carrie bumps into her cool jewelry designer downstairs neighbor Lisette wearing a blouse with what looks like tiny seashells dangling from it, like Charlotte crafted it in between dog walks. Being a Youth, Lisette wears athleisure, including biker shorts and an oversized windbreaker paired with over-the-knee floral boots. Her look is less “Hadid sisters stepping out” and more “Emily in Paris trying on shoes she doesn’t buy.” We learn Lisette is part of a showcase of jewelry designers to watch put on by Bulgari, which feels like a placement Bulgari paid for. Carrie tells Lisette she’s showing in Bryant Park which, as the former home of fashion week, is “hallowed ground.” Sure Carrie, religious experiences were had when editors and buyers watched the BCBG show there in 2007.

The big thing Carrie has to do this episode is record the audio version of her next book, a memoir about Big dying called Loved & Lost. We get a glimpse of the galley which has the most cliché black-and-white rocky coastline photo on the cover and was likely designed by AI.

Whenever Carrie’s in the recording booth and tries to read the part about finding Big in the shower, she can handle the part about arriving home to “Beethoven’s concerto still ringing in [her] ears” but can’t get through what comes next about finding him in the shower. Weirdly, the producers don’t seem all that sympathetic? They sort of regard her with the same disinterest Charlotte shows her kids.

Carrie then bumps into her friend Bitsy, a fellow widow who tells her that she pre-ordered her book (good woman). While Bitsy’s pink printed top with the one long sleeve and necklace that look like a pool noodle for ants were so loud it was hard to focus on anything else, this was actually one of the better, more human scenes of the series! The show rarely allows us to feel Carrie’s isolation as the lone widow of her friend group. Bitsy gives her advice that none of her closest friends can, which is that the second year after losing one’s husband is worse than the first, “because you feel farther and farther away, and it’s just awful.” She tells Carrie to do whatever she needs to do to make herself feel better.

The humanity of this scene is quickly undone by the next, in which Carrie bursts into her apartment with five Bergdorf bags filled with shoes, shoes being the thing that usually lift her spirits. She sits on her bed, the shoes splayed out around her on the floor, and tries on different ones. Then, she picks up the galley of her book and attempts to read chapter 3 wearing a sparkly orange open-toed mule on one foot and a patent leather pink Gucci pump on the other. When the shoes fail to propel her through the text, she calls the audiobook people and says she has Covid, which was notable given And Just Like That has barely acknowledged Covid until this episode even though it’s been an animating force in viewers’ daily lives for the entire duration of the series. Carrie then gets to sit at home for a while. During this time, she wears a see-through crinoline as loungewear and plays with her shoes, which seem to have been whittled down to the Loewe balloon heels that were talked about so much leading up to this episode I thought they would get more fanfare on the screen than Carrie wearing them during a phone call.

Again, the writers of Sex and the City and And Just Like That have refreshingly never made Carrie the kind of person who turns to religion, yoga, meditation, cleansing or anything woo woo when in need of inner strength. But the shoe scene falls so flat because it is neither funny nor spectacular. The old Sex and the City would have both given us a proper shoe montage and woven the shoes-as-emotional-support thing into the story better. Instead, we bear witness to a depressing form of consumerism as an antidote to the boredom of having such vacant friends.

Charlotte

Next to Seema, Charlotte has the worst storylines of the series. To attend a meeting at her kids school, she wears an Oscar de la Renta pouf-sleeved dress she will one day be devastated to discover that neither of her children want. Administrators reveal that the students made a MILF list, which they say “has put the entire Arbor community at risk.” (Note how the school is named as though a middle-of-the-road private equity fund and the last mom on the list — Cassette Spence — as though a nineties Vogue staffer.)

Do kids these days even know the meaning of the term MILF, which originated in American Pie in 1999, years before they were born? (Vogue.com ran a story headlined, “And Just Like That… We’re Saying MILF Again?”) Who cares, it gives LTW and Charlotte something to do other than stand in their closets. They have no concern about the list aside from wanting to make sure they rank on it. LTW obtains a copy, and they’re happy to see they’re numbers two and three, but unhappy to learn they rank behind a stepmom whom they agree should have been disqualified by virtue of being a stepmom.

After Charlotte hears Carrie has Covid, we see her in her kitchen wearing a Burberry plaid shirt, tying a Burberry plaid apron around her waist, creating an outfit none of us will ever unsee.

What elaborate, apron-necessitating cooking project might she be about to embark upon? Just the thing Carrie will need during Covid: Basmati rice.

LTW

Charlotte’s franken-Burberry aside, LTW wins the episode for most distracting clothes. To the school meeting, she wears an odd eighties two-toned power suit, perhaps to foreshadow how retrograde this plot line is going to get. She wears a silky printed suit by Rick Owens to film Nya for her documentary, for which she employs a sound guy who feels free to stick his entire hand down the front of Nya’s shirt. She tells Nya, who’s interested in the sound guy, this means he likes her because he didn’t stick his hand down the shirt of the circuit court judge she interviewed the day before. Then (is this a continuity error?) she’s back in the two-toned suit to join the other moms in ogling Milo H., the teen student who allegedly made the list, in a scene unfortunately executed with more joy than Carrie’s shoe-buying spree.

Miranda

Miranda’s story line with Brady this episode gave me hope for the series morphing into something that can make the audience feel things. Unfortunately, that was preceded by silliness involving Miranda making the mistake of buying an Android phone, which she can’t work, which interferes with her running lines with Che. If you ever doubted Miranda’s love for Che after she blew up up her life with Steve to move across the country for them, allow that doubt to be assuaged by Miranda willingly playing Tony Danza calling Che “my little cannoli” over and over and over.

Then, wearing her second bucket hat in as many episodes, Miranda pops into a tattoo parlor. She wants to remember who she is in this moment, the bucket hat-wearing, Android impulse-buying, mega-fan of Che’s comedy she has become in L.A. and never go back to being an uptight corporate lawyer ever again. Ricky, the tattoo guy, suggests “some fun robots” including the housekeeper from the Jetsons. Miranda calls Carrie, who is appropriately horrified, and tells her that if she’s going to get a tattoo, get it where no one can see it. Also, she tells Miranda she needs to get back to New York.

After Brady calls Miranda saying that Luisa broke up with him and he’s in Amsterdam where a car almost hit him and he wished it had, Miranda starts panicking over his mental state (understandable). She tells Brady to call her back and sneaks her phone into Che’s taping (again, what year is it that a sitcom is taped in front of a live studio audience?) where Brady calls her during the “little cannoli” scene. The producer that tried to put Che in the zoot suit is furious, as though they just failed to capture an Oscar-worthy moment on par with Schindler’s List. Miranda, who looks lovely in a green jumpsuit, finds Che on the studio lot to tell her she’s going back to New York to see her son. Here, we are left with the sense that Che is not just bad at comedy, but also relationships. Miranda, who is genuinely in crisis, apologizes profusely for everything, and Che is just kind of like, “Whatever, your kid will get over it.”

Seema

Like a number of actors on this show, Sarita Choudhury is so great, and I get annoyed that this show gives her so little to do! Last episode, Seema’s story line involved getting over her problematic hair dresser so that she could get a blow out. This episode, a mugger snatches Seema’s mustard-colored Birkin bag, leaving her to stalk secondhand sites for it. That makes this the second episode where one of these women expends more energy on online stalking one of their beloved fashion items than they do on their careers or relationships.

The costume designers and writers seem to be working in tandem to make Seema defined by the brands she likes more than the personality she could have. When she’s robbed, she wears a caftan-y Fendi dress with black streaks down the front that feels like the sort of thing you would buy because it’s Fendi but not necessarily because it’s great. When Carrie is faking Covid, she shows up wearing a Louis Vuitton monogram-print face mask that she says “is chic but definitely not up to code.” She then accompanies Carrie to Lisette’s jewelry showcase, where Lisette wears hooded evening wear, making her one of the ten customers who currently exist for hooded evening wear.

Even though this is a jewelry showcase put on by a major brand, there is no security — which defies logic since these brands are well known to send security guards to stalk the Anne Hathaways of the world when they loan them diamonds — and a dude robs the joint seemingly without any weapons. Seema pulls a gold gun from her bag, which scares the guy off. Just when we get scared that Seema might be one of those women who owns guns, we learn that LOLZ it’s just an extra-sassy lighter!

Later, Seema steps out of her luxury brown sedan only to encounter a Pomeranian she wants to kneel down to pet on the sidewalk, at which point she notices her bright mustard Birkin basically unscathed stuffed under a fence. I’m sorry, but Seema isn’t bending down in the sidewalk to pet someone else’s purse dog. To remove a scuff from an Amina Muaddi shoe? Yes. To touch hand to dog? No.

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