‘And Just Like That’ Season 3 Episode 5 Recap: A Woman’s Right To Shoes

I know there’s a lot to process coming out of this week’s episode of And Just Like That. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) being forced to carry Harry’s cancer diagnosis silently, unable to tell anyone? Heartbreaking. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) AND her neighbor going full frontal? More visual information than I was expecting. But the thing I really can’t stop thinking about is Carrie’s whole real estate situation. I have questions. Is Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) actually Duncan Reeves’ landlord? Did her house come with a preexisting tenant with a lease and somehow she didn’t know she’s making rental income? Or is Carrie’s enormous mansion actually built on top of a privately owned ground-level apartment that also happens to share a yard? Being that many people in this show’s audience have some familiarity with New York City, and many of us understand the basics of New York real estate, this setup needs more explanation.

Is any of that important to the plot? No. But as a nosy New Yorker, I need to understand it. In New York, people don’t need to know all the details of your finances or work, but we do need to know everything about your apartment.

This episode begins with Carrie spying a new neighbor settling in downstairs. And then: A montage of footwear. Carrie from the knees down, walking through her house in all the shoes. I’m just going to say it: This is appalling. Those wood floors look original, and she’s going to stomp all over them, bare, with her heels? She’s going to wear the same shoes that walked down Lexington Avenue all over her house? Are we still really to believe the myth that some women find wearing heels more comfortable than not wearing shoes, or wearing comfy, clean house shoes or slippers? This entire situation is wrong on many levels. And Carrie’s clomping and stomping is keeping her new neighbor awake.

Bucket hat, but make it British.

It’s all made worse because Carrie’s house has no rugs (yet), so when Carrie’s new neighbor storms up to her door and demands answers, she tries to play it off in a cute way, which the neighbor, an author named Duncan Reeves (played by Jonathan Cake, what a name!), isn’t amused by. (“I’m not trying to be amusing, I am amusing,” she jokes. We’ll be the judge!)

“Could you at least remove your high heels?” he asks her, and, well, she refuses, because how very dare he.

When she tells Miranda, Seema (Sarita Choudhury), and Charlotte about this over lunch, at least Charlotte gets real, telling Carrie “Taking your shoes off at home is more sanitary.”

And that’s when Carrie says it. A line we all knew was coming but I still can’t believe it:

“I have rights! A woman’s right to shoes!”

Quick aside – I struggle with a lot of the out of touch jokes on this reboot. The writers of the show tend to be elder Gen X and even (don’t make me type it) Boomers. As a Gen Xer myself, I can say we are a desensitized, boundary-pushing generation who lived through the ’80s and ’90s and laughed at a lot of terrible, very wrong things back then. But so far this season, there has been a physical gag about a school shooting, multiple jokes using “they/them” as a punchline, and now, wordplay about abortion rights. I’m not oversensitive about the politics here – to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld when Tim Watley was converting to Judaism, “I’m offended as a comedian!” Because I think the writers think they’re pushing boundaries, but these “edgy” jokes are just… not funny enough.

BUT I DIGRESS.

How it is possible that Carrie lives in a sprawling townhouse on Gramercy Park and didn’t realize that there would be someone living in that apartment six months out of the year? As her buying agent, Seema reminds Carrie she did tell her about this tenant, but Carrie is still flabbergasted. It turns out, the man is not just some grumpy transient, he’s THE famous historical biographer Duncan Reeves. He’s the Ron Chernow of this fictional universe. His next book (about Margaret Thatcher) could be adapted for the stage, does Carrie not realize she’s hindering the evolution of My Fair Iron Lady?

Carrie does feel a little bad about the situation and brings Duncan a gift basket as a peace offering, but when he offers her a pair of slippers, she scoffs at the gesture. This seems like a bizarre hill to die on, but Carrie’s doin’ it!

Miranda’s got a noise complaint of her own because the neighboring apartment next to her AirBnb blasts some kind of Kirkland brand Metallica all night long. She tries to deal with it by sliding the occasional note under the neighbor’s door so he’ll turn the volume down, but one night he opens the door naked and holding a cleaver and threatens to cut her into pieces if she keeps complaining, and that’s how Carrie and Miranda (finally) become roommates.

As soon as Miranda arrives to the house, so too does an unexpected delivery. It’s the big, dumb table Carrie has been wanting all season! She was so disappointed that she missed out on it when she saw it had sold last week, but what she didn’t realize was that it was sold TO AIDAN. He bought it for her! Even the delivery man agrees that’s a very romantic gesture. As Carrie and Miranda stand outside to accept the delivery, Duncan comes home and Miranda can’t prevent herself from fangirling all over this guy, asking him to sign her copy of the Winston Churchill biography he wrote.

Wanna know who else likes Duncan Reeves? Samantha Jones, that’s who! In her first appearance (via text) this season, Carrie reaches out to Samantha (living in London, you’ll recall, how could you not) to ask if Samantha knows anything about Duncan. Samantha responds that she hears he’s a lot of fun, to which Carrie writes back, “He’s living under me.” And have you ever formed a thought before your brain even knew what it was doing? Because in the nanosecond it took me to read Carrie’s text, I instinctively knew that Samantha’s response would be “I wish he was under me.” I can even hear Kim Cattrall saying it even though it’s a text and Kim Cattrall’s not on this show. Let’s assume she uses voice to text and these words are lingering in the air somewhere in London.

It was fun to laugh at Harry back when he was pissing himself two episodes ago, but it turns out that his recent fixation on his own mortality has been legit; he reveals to Charlotte that he’s been to the doctor and has prostate cancer. Charlotte starts to spiral out, but Harry reassures her that the cancer was caught early and he’ll be fine, he just doesn’t want to be known to everyone as “the cancer guy” so he begs Charlotte not to tell anyone.

Charlotte and Lisa have planned a weekend of glamping on Governor’s Island, but it’s not the trip they hoped for. Lily, Harry and Rock refuse to leave their tent, Herbert and Lisa are constantly bickering, and Harry’s secret cancer diagnosis is eating away at Charlotte.

After Herbert accuses Lisa of getting a little too close to her hot editor Man Marion, Lisa takes some time with Charlotte to cool off, and the two women confide in each other. Because, see, Lisa does have a crush on Man Marion, which… is clearly complicated. It might just be a work crush, but it’s clearly making her uneasy. Lisa can sense something is eating away at Charlotte but since she’s sworn to secrecy about Harry’s condition, she silently holds back tears and doesn’t tell Lisa what they’re going through.

Miranda and Carrie might be in their 50s but their roommate dynamic is pure freshman year of college. Miranda – so put together! so smart! – is actually the worst person to live with, it turns out. She walks around naked, she covers Carrie’s new table with paperwork and then mops up a spilled Coke with the scarf Carrie lent her, she eats the last yogurt. (“You don’t eat yogurt,” she dismisses when Carrie’s like “Where’s my yogurt?” but, like, this is Carrie’s house, who else’s yogurt would it be? Miranda, congratulations, you’ve successfully made me take Carrie’s side about things for the first time!)

Seema, who has had nothing to do for weeks on this show, is anxiously awaiting news of whether she’s getting a loan from the bank to start her own real estate firm. As she nervously smokes in Carrie’s backyard, she chit-chats with Adam, Carrie’s gardener who asks her for a drag of her cigarette. “I thought you were all green and organic,” she tells him. “Yeah, but I’m not a freak about it,” he responds. I am into this dynamic very much. Just moments ago, Seema was telling the bank officer that she couldn’t live without her driver, but now here she is flirting with a man whose mud-caked shoes would absolutely destroy her car’s floor mats. When Seema learns she hasn’t been approved for the bank loan, she’s disappointed that it didn’t work out, but Miranda, knowing she needs to get out of Carrie’s place, hires her to find her a new apartment. It’s a win-win for everyone, in that Carrie will get her house back to herself, it promises Seema a broker’s fee and it gives Miranda the chance to be a real adult character character again.

And what of Carrie and Duncan’s relationship? When Duncan, wearing noise-canceling headphones, doesn’t hear his fire alarm going off, Carrie runs into his apartment to… rescue him? Or at least stand there with her fingers in her ears while he takes his burning pot off the stove. (I took Carrie’s side once this episode, and apparently, her inability to actually be helpful in a situation where her house could have burned down has zeroed things out.) And that, my dear, is the beginning of their beautiful friendship. Two writers under the same roof, digging their heels into their work.

Honorable Mentions for And Just Like That Season 3 Episode 5:

• “Are you always reading texts while we’re talking?” Carrie asks Miranda, who is obviously distracted during a phone conversation. “Just when we’re on the phone,” Miranda responds, and Carrie is somehow flabbergasted. That’s what friends do! I don’t know what universe of undivided attention Carrie’s living in. Heck, I’m reading texts while I’m writing this recap.
• “It’s a man’s name, too, Chalamet,” Marion the hot editor tells the kid in the seat next to him on his plane.
• I didn’t feel sad when Big died, but if they take Harry, so help me.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.