First things first, let me say one thing about this week’s episode of And Just Like That: STEEEEVE!

It’s nice to finally see David Eigenberg, also known as Steve Brady, Miranda’s hard-of-hearing ex-husband, back on the show doing what he does best, talking about fried clams and threatening to punch people (his son). Steve has always been everyone’s favorite, and this week, he delivered a truly feisty family moment, but this episode was full of fun, feisty moments that really solidify the theory that this show functions 1000 time better when Carrie is not obsessing over Aidan.

Clocking in at nearly 45 minutes long, episode 10 is longer than other recent eps, and it packed a lot in, starting with like, chapters and chapters of Carrie’s book being read aloud. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Duncan (Jonathan Cake) are still bouncing their writing ideas off each other, and Duncan is smitten with Carrie’s novel. Carrie is loathe to admit that Miranda was right, there is something between Duncan and her, but she can’t help but respond to the fact that this is a man, one of the only men in her life, who has not seen her as a sexy lil’ thang, but as a cerebral, intellectual writer.

Carrie has made good progress on her book (while Duncan has spent so much of helping her that he’s neglected his own book) and Duncan pointedly asks Carrie is she would have been this prolific if Aidan were still in the picture. It’s an astute observation, Duncan doesn’t know Carrie that well but even he’s able to see that Aidan was a distraction to Carrie’s writing and he was stifling her creative flow.

At Miranda’s new place, it’s a Brady-Hobbes family reunion with a meal cooked by the actual Brady Hobbes. Brady (Niall Cunningham) has cooked a gourmet meal for his parents to drop the news that he plans to go to culinary school. Miranda and Steve are thrilled (“This is ’cause of that show The Bear,” Steve whispers) but their excitement immediately subsides when Brady adds that he’s gotten a girl he barely knows pregnant.

He thinks her name is… Mia something? His parents are shocked. Miranda immediately starts to slut shame Mia (“How do you know it’s yours? It sounds like she sleeps with a lot of people.”) but Steve takes his fury to another level, yelling, “You were just getting your life together and now you fucked it up!” Brady, for one, is super chill, mostly because Mia said she doesn’t need him in the baby’s life. As Steve berates him and he rolls his eyes, Steve threatens, “If you shrug your shoulders one more time I’m gonna fuckin’ lay you out,” so Brady leaves, realizing his parents are too heated to handle this rationally.

Miranda three-way calls Carrie and Charlotte to tell them the news and I am LOLing at Charlotte not being able to hold back when she says of the situation, “That’s my worst nightmare!”

While Steve’s reaction was bad, Miranda’s might even be worse because once again, she gets involved in some pesky hijinks when she decides to visit the salon where Mia works – undercover, without letting Mia know who she is – to scope her out. Turns out Mia is not a hairstylist but a shampoo girl (but her true passion is making a wellness app, because Gen Z), which makes the whole scenario even more bizarre. Miranda probes Mia for information about her pregnancy as she gets her hair washed – in between Mia’s loud farts, which she can’t control. “Honestly, I was gonna get an abortion till I realized the baby would be a double Libra, is that a fucking vibe?” Mia says, adding that she doesn’t know the father, he’s just a fuck-buddy. Miranda loses it after that and asks Mia how she knows that Brady is the father, adding that maybe Mia should take a paternity test. “Why would you ask me that?” Mia says, and Miranda admits who she is, saying, “I’m fuck-buddy’s mother.” This is unhinged behavior on Miranda’s part and so, even though I don’t condone waterboarding, Mia spraying water all over Miranda seems kinda justified.

When Miranda apologizes and suggests she just wants to get to know “this little boy or girl,” I knew what was coming. This show has given in to the media preoccupation with gender, and the writers still have no chill when it comes to taking jabs at anyone who recognizes the nonbinary, so Mia responds, “Little boy or girl? You’re so binary,” as she fart-walks away. This whole scene is ridiculous in so many ways, but it’s infuriating that they’re still using gender as a punchline to underscore a generational divide, and even more infuriating that they’ve made Mia into a caricature whose “woke”ness is only overtaken by her flatulence.

There is so much about Anthony and Giuseppe’s relationship that confounds me. I love them together, but for a couple that’s as serious as they are, there are too many strange quirks that don’t make sense. Are we really to believe Anthony has never been to Giuseppe’s apartment and never knew his roommate was an asexual puppeteer? This is information you lead with. Plus, if Giuseppe’s mother Patti LuPone owns three villas and wants her son to live a rich lifestyle, why is he sharing this apartment at all? (I haven’t forgotten that Giuseppe is trying to get by as a poet, but the continuity of Gia blaming Anthony for her son living in squalor makes no sense.) Anyway, I know that no one, not even the writers, can probably explain the “Why?” of any of this, but it all helps to set up the fact that, after a gas leak in Anthony’s building, he and Giuseppe are forced to go to to Giuseppe’s apartment, where we learn that his roommate Andrew carves wooden marionettes and performs with them in Central Park for money.

Thing is, Andrew’s latest puppet looks exactly like Giuseppe (“I’m his muse,” Giuseppe admits) and Anthony worries that this means Andrew is into Giuseppe. Though Giuseppe assures Anthony that Andrew is asexual, when Giuseppe walks in on Andrew jerking off to the marionette with his likeness, it makes Giuseppe realize there’s no better time than the present to move in with Anthony. Huzzah?

LTW has spent the entire season in filmmaker mode, worrying about her documentary, but this week, her storyline is about family. As busy as she is with work, she’s doing her best to be present for her kids, which is why she’s babysitting her daughter Gabby’s hamster, Shirley. But when Shirley goes missing and is loose in the apartment because Gabby let her out, LTW loses her cool and yells at Gabby, “Why did you do something so stupid? I’m furious at you!” and she says all of this just in time for her mother-in-law, Mother Wexley, to walk in and judge her for it. Look, I think almost every parent has reached their breaking point and I appreciated seeing this show’s version of parents flipping out this week. (Kind of interesting that Steve, a dad, is allowed to threaten Brady with physical violence, but when LTW just verbalizes her fury, she is made to feel far worse than Steve is made to feel – ah, the double standards of motherhood.)

Mother Wexley, who is visiting so she can be present for Herbert’s comptroller election which is FINALLY here, scoffs at at Lisa, saying, “This is how you speak to your children? My God, just as I suspected. Good luck with Mommie Dearest,” Herbert attempts to defuse the situation, telling Lisa she shouldn’t be mad at herself for losing it on Gabby. “You’re human,” he repeats to her. But ironically, after Herbert loses the election, his mother is even more acid-tongued, snapping at him, “How could you ever enter a race if there was a chance you could lose?” Herbert is angry that he lost, angry to hear is mother’s lack of support. Lisa tries to turn his own words back on her, telling him, “So you didn’t win. You’re human,” but he’s not hearing it and he walks away.

I’m very into Seema learning that Adam lives in an incredible, rent-controlled artist’s loft, as much as I hate the TV convention of people living in rent-controlled artist’s lofts in 2025. But as Adam shows Seema around the apartment he was raised in, the specter of his dead mother lurks in all his decor. She was a sculptor, so her work is on display, and Seema quips, “I wish I could have met her,” so Adam… introduces her to his “mother,” a.k.a. a houseplant that has taken over his kitchen. Adam explains that when he was seven years old he gave his mother a houseplant that has continued to grow and spread all over the walls.

It’s a charming and poignant moment, and Seema later ruins it when she accidentally pushes it out the window. This woman’s smoking habit is truly a menace, she already lit her bed on fire this season, and now it caused this? Adam, so woo woo, seems agitated at first but then repots some of the plant clippings, getting them to take root, and he gifts them to Seema for her office. His last name is Karma after all, and this is just one more symbol of the cyclical nature of life.

A now-vertigo-free Charlotte has, by far, the weirdest and least consequential story line of the week, which is that she keeps trying to use the Zoom energy healing session she won at a school silent auction and it keeps getting interrupted. I don’t doubt that someone in the writer’s room on this show genuinely won, or at least bid on, a Zoom energy cleanse at a school silent auction (I can admit in this safe space that I myself once won a guided meditation that came with a free crystal at a school PTA auction so this feels very realistic). But after numerous failed attempts at finding a peaceful place to Zoom, Charlotte eventually asks Carrie if she can do the video call from her cavernous, empty house. Though Charlotte has squandered most of the allotted time that her brusque energy healer Rhonda (surprise! It’s Susie Essman!) has held for her, she breaks down and starts to cry as she admits that she’s reached her emotional limits, carrying Harry’s cancer secret. Rhonda, up to this point, has refused to turn her Zoom camera on, but when Charlotte breaks down, she appears onscreen and apologizes for being rude. “You can forget people are people on Zoom,” she says, offering Charlotte some extra time on their call.

We’ve established that Duncan is very good at “seeing” Carrie – the man’s job is to observe people, when you think about it, to get at the essence of his subjects, and so even though he’s not writing about Carrie, he’s been taking mental notes about her. When she invites him up to her writing room, he points out things that others don’t. “You write in front of a window! How interesting,” he says. Yep, it’s her trademark! Aidan only ever broke her window, that chump.

He meanders through her closets looking at her dresses, all the shoes, and doesn’t chide her or make fun, instead he observes how they tell a story about who she is. “You are just a fairy tale!” he exclaims. And then he asks her to come with him to a publishing party. Carrie is reluctant to attend because that will mean that Aidan and Miranda’s speculation that she’s into Duncan will be true, but she eventually decides to go. After Carrie meets Duncan’s editor Imogen, who is also his ex-wife, she and Duncan head back home, and he suggests she come back to his place. Carrie keeps trying to pull away from Duncan so she says no, and a moment later changes her mind, racing down the stairs and passionately kissing him.

They sleep together, and Duncan tells Carrie he’ll be leaving New York soon. Carrie’s not upset, the last thing she needs is another man to distract her. But the beauty of the relationship with Duncan is that he never distracted her from her work – he’s the first man who ever actually understood it. When he asks Carrie how her book is going to end, Carrie jokes about killing off “the woman,” but Duncan rejects that, instead suggesting that “she lives, she’s such a unique character, it would be such a shame to end her.”

As the episode ends, autumn begins… and just like that, a new season turns over a new leaf for Carrie. Aidan is gone, but so is Duncan. The woman hasn’t been killed off, in fact it seems like she’s got chapters left in her yet.

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