This week’s episode—”Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—begins with Aidan barreling into Carrie’s townhouse unannounced; the townhouse whose 19th-century window he recently broke because he wanted to be cute and throw a pebble at it. It’s also the townhouse he basically forced Carrie to move into because he was too traumatized to set foot in her apartment again. Anyway. I won’t make this entire recap about Aidan being the worst, but we do need to devote some attention to it.
This fucking guy aside, this week, our gals are all flirting—or “flirking,” more on that in a second—with temptation. Personally, I think a little affair or a little sip of alcohol might do them all some good. The only people having any fun are Harry, who’s recovering from prostate surgery, but still managed to deliver three airtight big ball jokes in under two minutes, and Seema, who finally has sex with Carrie’s hot gardener, Adam, and gets to have her armpit sucked.
After Harry’s tight five, Lisa and Charlotte go on a stroll so Lisa can reveal she’s been having sex dreams about her hot editor, Marion. We don’t know too much about Lisa’s past, but the way she confessed this, I’d have to guess she grew up in a fucking convent. Girlfriend is stressed, and has possibly never had a sex dream about another human being before? Charlotte, who continues to earn her place as the most reasonable woman on the Upper East Side, says, uh yeah, she’s had plenty of sex dreams before, especially about exes. (Trey??? Though I guess that’d be a sex-less dream, ba-dum-tss.) Lisa—again, acting like she just walked out of an underground bunker on another planet—then confesses that sometimes, she and Marion flirt at work. Le scandal! Charlotte says, uh yeah, “isn’t that what you want when you’re working with someone creatively? A connection?” This inspires her to come up with the term “flirking,” which means flirting while working. Cute! Charlotte reassures Lisa that everything’s OK, and Lisa breathes a deep sigh of relief.
Someone else who’s maybe doing some “flirking” is Carrie. And even if she doesn’t know it yet, Aidan is certainly catching on. After they spend the afternoon in bed, Carrie realizes it’s 7:30 p.m., and she now only has 30 minutes to “freshen” up for her writing session with Duncan—the hot British biographer who lives in the garden apartment beneath her. (Last week, Miranda playfully teased Carrie for being friendly with Duncan at the karaoke party, and Carrie practically slammed Miranda’s head through her kitchen window. Something to think about!)
Aidan asks if the writing sesh will take more than an hour, to which Carrie casually responds, “Hours, probably.” Leaving your long-distance boyfriend in bed to go write in silence with your downstairs neighbor who has a foreign accent? I fear the ~writing~ is on the wall. Aidan, of course, uses this moment to reveal why he can stay a little longer this time; his troubled son Wyatt decided to go live full-time with his mom (Aidan’s ex-wife, Kathy) instead of him. Aidan sighs and, I shit you not, asks, “How did I wind up the bad guy?” Carrie proceeds to ditch Duncan so they can go to dinner. How did you wind up the bad guy, Aidan, my god.
Now onto Seema, who I mentioned is the only person seemingly enjoying their life right now. She and Adam are having sex (hooray!) and he even gives her an orgasm without her having to use a vibrator (double hooray!). He also sucks her armpit—and the next night, while at dinner, they both look on in disgust as a woman at the table next to them applies deodorant out in the open. This leads to Seema learning that Adam does not wear deodorant, and that, while he loved sucking her armpit, he was tasting her with a side of “aluminum zirconia.” Unfortunately, this turns into an even longer discussion about deodorant at Charlotte’s gallery’s art show, where Adam makes a jab at Aidan for wearing Speed Stick (lol) and Aidan asks Adam about Duncan.
Also, after freaking out about her sex dream with Marion, Lisa tries to have morning sex with her husband, but he has to pee, so it kind of kills the mood. Then there is a weird (but hot) moment between her and Marion at a premiere which made me say, Ok, sorry girl, I guess you should be stressed. But, I don’t know! Have yourself a little affair, Lisa! Why not! God forbid a television show on HBO Max give us some drama.
Meanwhile, Miranda might ditch her sobriety because Joy came back from a trip and asked if she could leave a bottle of gin at Miranda’s apartment. She starts thinking maybe her alcoholism was just an overcorrection and reveals this to Carrie and Charlotte at the art show. “Maybe I’m not an alcoholic, maybe I’m just alcoholish,” she tells them. “I think the main reason I started drinking so much is maybe I was unhappy in my marriage, in my career, I was questioning my sexuality.” Honestly, sounds good enough to me! Get this woman a fucking drink. However, Carrie and Charlotte do not think this sounds good.
In the final scene, Miranda sits at her kitchen table, working, and eventually allows herself to pour a glass of Joy’s gin (“flirking!”)—only to quickly dump it out and throw Joy’s special bottle down the trash chute. We hear the bottle smash into a million bits before the credits roll. Could this be the foreshadowing we’ve been waiting for? Could some crazy shit finally start to go down next week? Will someone other than Seema finally get to have wild sex?! Manolo-strapped ankles crossed.
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