And Just Like That recap: Someone, please give Patti LuPone the mic

This story contains spoilers for season three, episode seven of And Just Like That...

Which song would you sing at this party Carrie is throwing to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday and cheer up Lily, as a cover for Harry’s prostate cancer where poor Richard Burton is somehow roped into the ruse?

I’m going with Madonna’s This Used to be My Playground.

This used to be the place we ran to/ That no one in the world could dare destroy.Credit: Max

As the girls sat and chatted inside Hotfellas – a set so artificial it’s not even pretending it exists in the real world any more – I realised just how much was going unsaid between them. Charlotte can’t mention her gloom over Harry’s diagnosis, and Carrie seems to forget she very recently grieved the death of a husband. Miranda doesn’t know about Harry, so she can’t bring up the fact that Steve – remember Steve? – recovered from testicular cancer in the original series. So much so that he went into business with Aidan, whom we also can’t mention.

Enter: Patti LuPone, playing “Giuseppe’s shrink mother” who has landed from Rome and sent Anthony into a tailspin. (Also never mentioned: Stanford.) She’s having fun with the accent work and the bitchiness the role requires, but when the episode ends after a karaoke party stuffed to the gills with Broadway classics and she doesn’t take the mic, I really have to wonder what we’re doing here.

Patti LuPone, please save us. Credit: Max

For some reason, it’s Carrie she asks to lunch. Not Charlotte. Not Anthony. Carrie, who lies and says, “I write about love and men and women”, over a lunch of four lettuce leaves.

She has advice for Carrie about entering the life of a man with children. At her urging of “don’t waste years trying to be who you think they’ll accept”, we might actually be on a course to something with Carrie.

I’m praying that place is Duncan’s bed, and soon. They’ve begun flirting via compliments about their respective manuscripts about unknowable women. His, because the subject is Margaret Thatcher. Hers, because she’s just called “the woman”.

Duncan (Jonathan Cake) loves The Woman! Credit: Max

Duncan loves “the woman”! It stopped him in his tracks! It has a modern sensibility anchored in a completely grounded and beautifully detailed tableau! “The woman” is vibrant and completely alive! Has there been a gas leak in their building?

Sidenote: speaking of books with fierce women protagonists, Carrie is holding her dress up with a copy of Monkey Grip on the way home from Hotfellas, when she first lies to Miranda about Richard Burton having “dog cancer”. That makes two sightings of Helen Garner books in Carrie’s grip this season. Is she leeching inspiration from our greatest literary export by osmosis?

Carrie spends Charlotte’s perfectly weird party vibrating under his gaze, before of course ruining the fun party debrief with Miranda by being a scold. You told Aidan you wanted to sleep with other people, Carrie! Don’t be stern to your friend who’s encouraging you to do just that. I grabbed my calculator when she insisted that “Aidan and I are over 20 years in”. Mama – I think when like 19 of those years are spent apart, out of contact, while he’s raising three annoying kids with another woman, we have to start the calculations at zero again.

Also in romantic hell is Lily, who got dumped by the poly ballerina we met once. I don’t care, except that it sends Charlotte to a department store to buy Lily a “life-isn’t-over gift”, where she runs into Harry! He’s with another woman! Bonnie, dressed head to toe in Schiaparelli, is very clearly a personal shopper – but an episode-long Charlotte spiral about whether Harry’s out cheating could’ve been fun.

Another subplot this week is Seema getting an eyelash infection from visiting a neighbourhood beauty salon. They don’t say the word “ghetto” but everything else about it is offensive enough that they essentially did. It’s fun to see Tomas Matos again after their breakout role in Fire Island. But like this?

Sarita Choudhury and Tomas Matos in one of the stranger subplots this week. Credit: Max

Also: why is the show trying to tell us a Manhattan realtor who works on commission and just sold Miranda a place $US150,000 over asking is pinching pennies?!

The Seema/Adam storyline really picks up steam in this episode. He goes from plucking out her loose eyelash to dropping that he broke up with his girlfriend the second he smelled Seema’s perfume. By the time he sings Bette Davis Eye(s) for her, the sexiness has kind of evaporated for me – but not for Seema. She declares cabs can, actually, be sexy while going to town in the backseat of one with Adam.

Who did Bette Davis Eyes better this week? Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) or JoJo Siwa?Credit: Max

Before being reamed out by Carrie, Miranda barrels into the house with a silver jumpsuit, two bunches of pink helium balloons filled with confetti, Brady and a karaoke machine. Her enthusiasm about all this makes me worried she’s drinking again.

After last week’s outing to a funeral, the gang is all back together again under more fun circumstances. To appropriate a joke from Vanderpump Rules: this party is a real who’s who: you look around going, “Who? Who?”

Henry, LTW’s youngest, puts on a “full-blown one-boy cabaret” before everyone is cruel to Miranda and leaves her hanging. Joy, get up there! Save your girl from yet another public hazing ritual!

Alexander Bello (notably not Patti Lupone or Chris Jackson) singing in And Just Like That.Credit: Max

Charlotte’s gallery girls “don’t buy gifts for anyone who owns in New York”, which makes me love them. Bitsy Von Muffling is there. Sure! Can we get a spin-off with her and Gia, Giuseppe’s mother?

Carrie’s lie about Richard Burton means people are shoving Harry out of the way to pay attention to the dog. It’s not until the Wexleys arrive and Herbert acknowledges Harry that he feels like “a person at this party”. (Herbert is, of course, played by Chris Jackson from the original Broadway cast of Hamilton. Like Patti, he does not sing in this episode. I’m suing.)

Eventually, Harry collects the girls in the kitchen and tells them the truth. Charlotte is free of the baggage of her secret. The best gift he could’ve given her.

And Just Like That… streams each Friday on Max.

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