By 
Spoilers below.
It’s Valentine’s Day week on And Just Like That... and no one’s holiday goes exactly as they planned. (Except for Nya. The doctor plans to eat a chocolate soufflé and she succeeds. End of plot line.)
The rest of the team has high expectations for the most romantic night of the year but, like most Valentine’s Days, the reality falls short of the fantasy.
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To start, the story opens with Carrie getting an email reply from Aidan saying he is indeed interested in meeting up, and her heart is all a-flutter. He invites her to dinner on what turns out to be February 14, which Charlotte quickly points out means he doesn’t have a girlfriend. If he did, she would have already told him that Thursday is Valentine’s Day and kept him from going out. Or maybe he knew and invited Carrie on purpose. It’s a case of Schrödinger’s girlfriend.
Miranda is going back-and-forth on some stuff as well, for instance, is she now a lesbian? Che was her first experience with someone who isn’t a cis man, but was it a one-off? Or is she about to embark on a new identity? Once again, Charlotte weighs in to pressure Miranda to pick a sexuality so she can fall in love again ASAP.
Speaking of Che, they drop in to reveal that they’re AirBnB-ing their Hudson Yards apartment since their comedy pilot fell through, confirm Miranda is ghosting them, and then rescue a small dog. Did you know Che used to work at a vet’s office? Well, they will be doing so again.
In another workplace side story, Anthony is dealing with an uprising at Hot Fellas bakery. His hot fellas think they should be able to wear pants in the winter. Their request is denied, but a walk out only happens when Anthony insists no one on his staff can use human growth hormones anymore. (Turns out they all are.) Anthony doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be naive about HGH use, but he says he now wants someone wholesome for a spot on The Drew Barrymore Show to promote his business.
Charlotte scouts the perfect fella in Giuseppe, a gorgeous and tender man selling poems for a dollar at the card store. He’s willing to slide into the tight Hot Fellas uniform for daytime TV, but his natural endowments are not exactly broadcast friendly. Giuseppe’s baguette drives up business immediately.
Continuing to be a busybody, Charlotte is taking Rock to meet with modeling agencies who are interested in meeting them after their Ralph Lauren campaign. Unfortunately, Charlotte’s Dance Mom tendencies turn Rock off the project and they disappoint their mom by saying they don’t want to model anymore. Lily is also annoyed with her mother after she sees her in the kitchen when she should be eating an overpriced meal with Harry somewhere.
Feeling rejected by her kids, Charlotte grabs a brownie and heads to meet her husband, but by the time their table is ready she is tripping. The brownie was in fact an edible and that sent Charlotte to outer space—but she thinks she is having a stroke. (They call an ambulance and she gets hospitalized only to find she was just high.) When her life flashed before her eyes, the stay-at-home mom and wife didn’t like what she saw. Charlotte tells Harry that she is going back to work in a gallery to do something just for herself for a change.
Miranda is also still exploring, and she discovers a gorgeous woman in a red suit doing a reading of Pride and Prejudice. Turns out the lady in red is an audiobook voice actor named Amelia Carsey and she is super into Miranda immediately. They set up a date which also happens to fall on Valentine’s Day. Exhilarated to discover she has some sexual direction again, Miranda gets all dolled up for her night out.
Sadly, Amelia keeps her fabulously tailored suit in the closet and the rest of her apartment is a godforsaken mess. There’s kitty litter everywhere and an enraged cat named Pickles in the bathroom. Amelia’s flannel sheets are soaked in the washing machine, and she doesn’t have quarters so she heads out to the bodega.
Miranda calls Carrie, who is experiencing her own letdown. She’s been waiting for Aidan at the restaurant for half an hour and she’s beginning to think she’s been stood up. While discussing how things change and how they stay the same, Miranda has the epiphany that dating sucks no matter who you’re interested in, but she now has the strength to walk out of a bad date situation and does so.
Lisa and Herbert have a nice night out, but Lisa’s war with her son Herbert Junior’s girlfriend, Baxter, puts a damper on the celebrations. Apparently, neither she nor Herbert object to the teens fornicating, but Lisa insists that Baxter’s lack of boundaries means they’ll do it in the bed the grown-ups share. She sets a booby trap to prove that Baxter is leading her son astray, but it turns out they're doing something even worse: They discover Baxter doing a photoshoot with Lisa's designer purse. There's no coming back from that.
Carrie finally gets a text from Aidan’s new number and he insists that he’s been waiting for her. Turns out she’s in the wrong restaurant. They meet on the street, and the man is looking good. They embrace like no time has passed.
Though it’s been 13 years since they last saw each other, the date goes swimmingly with strong romantic reconciliation undertones. Believing they’re finally both on the same page, Carrie invites Aidan home. However, when he sees her home is the same apartment they once co-owned, the place that witnessed their failed relationship, he freaks.
Aidan tells Carrie that he thought they were back where the started, and now here they are, where everything ended. At first, Carrie tries to argue that not all their memories in the house or of their relationship are bad, but she eventually concedes that it did seem a little too easy.
“Time doesn’t heal everything no matter how much you want it to,” she says.
Just when it seems like John Corbett is only making a one episode appearance, he says fuck it! New York has hotels. It’s on.
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.
