Damn, it feels good to have hints of actual romance in And Just Like That…

The show’s lack of a passionate courtship is particularly glaring when compared to HBO’s original series. Sex And The City centered on four friends embarking on fun adventures, sharing juicy dating stories, and forming genuinely heartfelt connections in NYC. AJLT trades this in for boring, confounding arcs and treats its women like caricatures of themselves, as if getting older has revamped their personalities for the worse. Miranda is a mere shadow of her former self, and everything about Charlotte feels exaggerated. Seema remains underused, although her sparkling chemistry with Logan Marshall-Green’s Adam has elevated this season. As for Carrie, her long-anticipated reunion with a former boyfriend turned into a complete disaster. But this was bound to happen because Carrie and Aidan were often on shaky ground. She cheated on him with Big (Chris Noth), and then in SATC 2, they shared a kiss in Abu Dhabi despite being married to other people. They were doomed to fail, and gosh, did this sequel series capitalize on that for far, far too long. 

Watching Carrie and Aidan struggle in season three felt like screaming at a brick wall every week. It’s like when your best friend falls for a total loser and doesn’t want to see it, so you want to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Except this friend is in her mid-fifties, wealthy with a gigantic Gramercy apartment, and has made a career out of writing about love but refuses to open her eyes. Admittedly, it’s easy to see why she might crave stability post-Big, especially since she’s adamant on deleting any memories of her dead husband, referring to him as a mistake at one point. Aidan represents the life she might’ve missed out on. Thankfully, the rose-colored glasses lifted in “Present Tense,” and she dumped him on the sidewalk. And “Better Than Sex” allows her to make the most out of her single status.

It begins with Duncan’s appreciation of her “fairytale” closet. Yeah, he’s in awe of her, as evidenced by the effusive praise of her writing. (Come on, man—there’s no way her book is good if she’s ending it by repeating her sentence thrice for impact.) He invites her to a publishing party and sees Carrie in her true socializing element, SATC-style. Who else cheered when she swapped that gray skirt and blazer set for the Vivienne Westwood gown? Though, as she says to Seema earlier in this episode, she appreciates that he’s the first man who sees her for her intellect. It’s a profoundly sad sentiment from someone who was married for more than a decade and then spent months with another person from her past. But this is also the kind of sweeping statement a person with a huge crush might make. So it’s not surprising when Carrie rushes back to Duncan at the end of the night after rejecting his initial invite, giving him a rom-com-worthy kiss to seal the deal.  

The most notable aspect of their rendezvous is when they’re lying in bed, acknowledging that they’re a mess but that they helped each other out over the past few months. By the time “Better Than Sex” wraps up, Duncan is already back in London, and Carrie is free to reminisce on their connection and enjoy her sunny backyard. Considering how everyone else’s arcs are still absurd, at least this dreamy, no-strings-attached hook-up seems like exactly what Carrie needed. It’s also what the show needed to liven itself up. And for the first time, it doesn’t feel like AJLT is holding its audience hostage, but allowing them to actually enjoy its protagonist’s journey.