“And Just Like That” Miranda Is in Gay Love, Get Out of Her Way

Quick life tip from your lesbian dad Heather Hogan: If someone says to you “I’m a fucking narcissist!!!” and then chases that declaration with a request for you to follow them across the country, the answer is: NO. No no no no no! I don’t care if they look like Sara Ramirez. I don’t care if they sing like Sara Ramirez. I don’t care if they are so good in bed they make you forget your own name. Do not pursue a narcissist to a second location! (Honestly don’t seek them out at a first location either, but especially don’t add miles to it!) Miranda Hobbes apparently cannot hear me screaming this — or anything! — at her because that’s exactly what she decides to do in And Just Like That‘s season one finale.

See, Hollywood has called Che and told them that they’re the next Roseanne (WHAT) and so Hollywood has invited Che to make a pilot. They’re very excited, and so they have thrown themselves a going-away/celebration party, with even their grandmas in attendance. There’s a band. They perform “California Girls.” Everyone cheers at everything that comes out of their mouth, as usual. Miranda is as confused as Che’s family. She keeps asking them what is happening, and what is Che singing about, and what is a pilot, etc. But these women also don’t know. Miranda wonders, after Che’s performance, if, perhaps, they could have found a minute to maybe text Miranda this information; they did have time to find backup singers, after all. Che says “Blah blah yeah but what if you come with me to Los Angeles?”

It’s an automatic yes for Miranda.

Well Samantha was gay first, and don’t you forget that on your little cross-country trip.

Dr. Nya Wallace is bummed to hear it, not just because she and Andre are taking a little break to see if a baby that doesn’t exist is worth calling their relationship quits, and so she’d hoped to hang out with Miranda and her terrible son to reinforce her stalwart stance on not being a mom, but also because she wrote Miranda a glowing recommendation for an impossible-to-get internship and Miranda’s leaving that opportunity behind too. Carrie also cannot believe Miranda is abandoning her career dreams — and that she’d rather go sit in an audience and laugh at Che than come with her to Paris to scatter Big’s ashes — but Miranda just keeps hollering I’M IN LOVE I’M IN LOVE I’M IN LOVE every time someone tells her she is completely unrecognizable right now.

I don’t even really know what to say about it, at this point. I do believe it’s realistic for Miranda to behave like this because sometimes love and lust do make perfectly reasonable people go completely berserk, and Miranda has been waiting her whole life to realize she’s queer, and she’s been miserable for so long. But that doesn’t make this any easier to watch or any less of THE WORST IDEA I HAVE EVER HEARD! Miranda doesn’t know it yet, but she is VERY lucky she’s going to have good friends around to pick up the pieces of this MESS when it’s over.

How do I know it’s going to be a mess? Well, for starters, I still haven’t seen any proof these two know a single thing about each other. And there’s the way Che did a whole Broadway play about this unilateral decision they made about their fledgling relationship. And also because of the way they just… drop their entire podcast and the people co-starring and producing it because “it did what they wanted it to do.” I hope their pilot gets picked up? Do they know how many pilots don’t ever even see the light of day ’cause it’s almost all of them! Carrie’s fine with Che’s decision. She goes out playing the widow card one last time, and anyway, she’s richer than the Queen and for all the clowning I did on her writing career in the original series, she did hammer out an entire book about her dead husband less than a year after he died. That’s seriously impressive.

I couldn’t help but wonder: Had I really wasted my last widow card on a podcast called X, Y, and Me?

Jackie is less fine with it, and he doesn’t even invite Che to his surprise pop-up wedding because of his hurt feelings. He does invite Hot Podcast Producer (HPP) Franklin, though, and he’s got an idea for Carrie. After staring at her lovingly from behind the glass all season, and waiting until she exhausted her supply of widow cards, he has decided she should do her own podcast. It’ll be a call-in show like Delilah, only instead of yacht rock love songs, it’ll be Carrie giving advice. He says, “I mean you’re great at it and also you could voiceover an entire TV show! You sound so nice in my ears!” He wants to be her solo HPP. She’s flattered, truly, and kind of shocked to realize that he is actually a very good looking fella.

First, though, she’s gotta figure out what in the woo-woo heck Big is doing inside her reading lamp. He keeps flipping it on and off in the most annoying way at the most inconvenient times! She takes it to the lamp store to get it fixed — ’cause this is NYC, and yeah, there’s lamp repair shops — and is kind of disappointed to find out it’s just a wire and not a ghost. But then! Even after it gets fixed! Big keeps messing with her! One night she’s like, “Blink if you can hear me.” And it doesn’t blink. And then, just as she’s given up and is trying to go to sleep, it does blink. And that’s how she knows it’s Big, because it’s being such a brat. Big’s brother invites her to lunch and tells her that since it’s been a year, he’s thinking of commandeering Big’s ashes and adding them to “the family crypt in Connecticut.” She really doesn’t want that, even if he can “squeeze Carrie in” now that he’s getting divorced.

Hi, Big. It’s me. I spent one of the million dollars you left me in your will for the luggage up-charge to fly this dress here in my suitcase.

Finally, after a very nice but lackluster date with her widowed teacher buddy and his beautiful hair, Carrie decides it’s time to give Big’s ashes the home they deserve. She’s taking him to Paris to toss him into the Seine, which is surely illegal, but it’s time to move on. She wears the orangest dress with the pinkest gloves you have ever seen in your entire life. I don’t know anything about fashion, but everyone on Twitter loves this dress. It looks like a very tasty sherbet, or something one of my Animal Crossing villagers would wear while running around my island doing airplane arms. Carrie doesn’t do that. She simply goes to her bridge with her diamond-studded Eiffel Tower purse/columbarium, thinks about the finale of the original series and how Miranda chastised her for chasing love across the ocean and prioritizing romance over her career, and lays Big to rest.

Then she texts Samantha, who says that yes, she would like to meet Carrie for a cocktail tomorrow night. But off-screen because Samantha lives inside Carrie’s phone now the way Big lives inside her lamp. I hope Miranda comes back in a Diet Peach Snapple bottle.

Charlotte, I borrowed this outfit from one of your Madame Alexander dolls; I hope that was okay.

And that leaves us with Rock’s they-mitzvah, which Charlotte has been planning from basically the second Rock was born. Two rabbis have already quit on them, so it’s time to call in the greatest character of the entire season: Rabbi Jen (played pitch-perfectly by Hari Nef). When she shows up to work with Rock, she quickly realizes they have not been studying the Torah, like at all. They are not ready for their they-mitzvah, and even if they do it in English and try to distract everyone with Anthony’s sourdough challah, it’s going to be a disaster. Charlotte has pulled off bigger things than this through sheer force of will and smiling like a serial killer, so she insists they move forward. Rabbi Jen says that’s fine, but she’s got a wedding in Bushwick on the same day, so she’s gotta have a hard-out at 2pm. With that settled, Anthony takes away Rock’s PlayStation controller and tells them it’s time to learn to be the star of the show.

It seems like they’re going to go through with it, a full pink suit and pink sneakers on the big day, the whole place dressed like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory — but at the last minute, Rock tells Charlotte they don’t want ANY labels. They don’t want to be a girl, a boy, genderqueer, a Jew; they don’t even want to be a New Yorker. It’s this last thing that really sends Charlotte and Harry over the edge. They both gasp like their ship is glug-glug-glugging underwater and Charlotte almost needs to be born away to a fainting couch. Luckily LTW is there in one of her completely maniacal outfits to tell Charlotte that everyone who parents a teenager is barely keeping their head above water, and that it’s going to be okay.

I don’t want to go to Jewish summer camp; I want to go to Rabbi Jen’s spin-off!

In the end, Charlotte simply takes over for Rock, with Rabbi Jen by her side. (This after Rabbi Jen emerges from a bathroom stall while Miranda and Carrie are having it out about Che and Paris, and tells them that she has pieced together what’s going on here, based on the context clues provided in their screeching, and while she understands these are hard things to deal with, Miranda and Carrie must protect their precious bond of friendship! They do what Rabbi Jen says, as we all should.)

And so, Charlotte becomes a woman. And Miranda turns her hair red again and follows Che to Hollywood. And Carrie starts her podcast, which is called Sex and the City, and smooches HPP Franklin in the elevator after the first episode is done.

The funniest thing about watching and recapping this series has been seeing straight people react so strongly to gay characters — “Miranda” has been trending nearly every single Friday — while gay people have mostly been trying to figure out where Lisa Todd Wexley got that safari jacket with the arm pocket for her hairbrush. Well, good news! For the bargain price of $1,275 — originally $2,500! — it can be yours. It even comes with the brush.

I can’t believe I’m going to Hollywood with my gay lover and getting rid of my stupid son on the same day! What a win for Miranda Hobbes!

Thank you for reading these recaps, my friends. It’s been a hoot being out of recap retirement, and it’s all because of you. You made it so fun. May you find your own HPP, if you’re looking, or the safari jacket of your wildest dreams. You put whatever you want in that arm pocket, baby. You deserve it.