“Part of me still lives here,” Carrie tells Miranda on the phone wistfully. Yeah, babe, maybe don’t sell your iconic apartment for a man. At that moment, Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) exits said apartment and invites Carrie to a Friendsgiving the following week. Though she’s been absent for most of this season, Lisette has always served as an avatar for younger Carrie, and it’s fitting that she just got out of a relationship (seven months–her record) at the same time Carrie split from Aidan (22 years–her record, if we can count a marriage in the middle).
Other than trying to get out of Thanksgiving, Harry is still obsessing over his penis, which hasn’t been able to get hard after his surgery. Potentially even weirder is Charlotte’s obsession with Rock’s (Alexa Swinton) costume for Thoroughly Modern Millie, which has them leaning into the femme side of her nonbinary identity. “Rock in the Millie costume is so grown up and so pretty, and I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that,” Charlotte confesses to Carrie and Miranda. Is this how Charlotte is going to go out? Retreading mourning her daughter’s gender identity, the way she did back in season one? I’d hoped for more.
Carrie has also turned in the novel she’s been working on all season to her editor, who loves it—except for the ending. Carrie has left her protagonist alone in her garden at the end, which would be a tragedy in 1846, but maybe also in 2025? Will AJLT let Carrie finish her story on her own? The editor wants an epilogue that makes the reader feel good at the end—an ask that makes Carrie chafe. “I like the ending,” she says. “I thought it was honest.”
She misses her old apartment and she’s wondering if the new house—finally decorated in her own taste—is right for her. After all, she bought it with a plan that won’t happen. When Seema (Sarita Choudhury) tells her the owners of Duncan’s basement unit are willing to sell so she can own the entire house, Carrie is fairly devastated by the revelation that Duncan won’t be returning. “Why am I so upset right now?” she asks Seema, who doesn’t have a clue. The woman in the garden doesn’t want to be alone!
Carrie admits to Seema that she’s nervous to go back to the old apartment for Lisette’s gathering. “What if I miss it?” she says. “The chipping woodwork, the shitty kitchen, the warped floors?” Seema asks, and Carrie nods. Only one way to find out!
She returns to the apartment—the scene of so many of her memories (and of ours). But Lisette has not left the property untouched as a shrine to the Sex And The City days. No, she’s erected a wall and divided the apartment in two so that a male roommate can live there with her. Except for that closet, the space is unrecognizable. “I hated coming home to an empty apartment,” Lissette says. As if that weren’t enough, she adds, “Doesn’t it bother you, living in that big house by yourself?” Carrie laments that whoever said you can’t go home again was right, and she means that literally in the apartment, but also for us. Try as we might through this series, we could never return to Sex And The City.
Stray observations
- • Carrie’s old neighborhood bakery isn’t taking preorders from regular people, but they will from Carrie because she was a good customer during the pandemic. “You’re two croissants a week at best,” the owner says snidely to another woman complaining, and that struck me as an amazing burn from a small-business owner.
- • Anthony (Mario Cantone) and Guisseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi) are engaged! I could not care in the slightest, but Anthony confesses to Carrie that he’s having second thoughts because ever since the pair moved in together, he’s doing a lot of cooking, cleaning, and caretaking. “I don’t know if he wants me to marry him or mommy him.” Are they going to wrap this up in one single episode? Also, did anyone else find the bit where the newly-out school principal hits on Guisseppe to be deranged and out of place even by the standards of this show?
- • Of course Brady finds out about Miranda inviting his baby mama to Thanksgiving and of course he is outraged by her insanity. He appeals to Joy (Dolly Wells) for support, but she just sits there shell-shocked, clearly rethinking everything.
- • Herbert (Chris Jackson) is being a gigantic baby about losing his stupid local election and being snippy with Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) and the kids. It feels like Lisa’s work crush was dropped mid-season, but are they about to resurrect it in the last 30 minutes of this show because her husband is being a dick?
