‘And Just Like That …' Season 3, Episode 9 Recap: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
The moment I think a lot of us have been waiting for finally arrived this week, and honestly, I'm spiraling.
While most of me was running a victory lap as I watched Carrie rip into Aidan and leave him dumped on the street, a sliver of me felt a heartbreak I'll cop to having not expected, despite having rooted for this outcome all season.
Perhaps it has to do with how much of the past was brought into the present this week — a development telegraphed by the episode's title, 'Present Tense.'
If you're a longtime watcher of this whole shebang we call the 'Sex and the City,' there was a lot of fertile ground here for you in terms of callbacks to the original series. And if that was an intentional device used by the show's writers to tug at my heartstrings and make me feel things about Aidan I thought I had let go long ago, well, it worked.
Let's start with the smoking. Smoking was practically a tertiary character in this episode, beginning with Aidan and Duncan's morning coffee and smoke (Duncan only, of course) on the terrace. Carrie walks in on them, and her face immediately drops. Apparently, she tells Seema later, she drew a 'clear boundary' with Aidan, asking him not to engage with Duncan at all. Not even speak to him. But there was Aidan, chit-chatting away with his new pal while Duncan puffed on his pipe.
Why the boundary? This is never really defined. As demanding as Aidan has been this season — requesting five years of celibacy from Carrie while he worked out his Wyatt issues — this rule from Carrie felt like, strangely, too much. To have no interaction with the downstairs neighbor is as unrealistic as, well, a five-year, no-contact relationship. So I guess they're even.
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