And Just Like That… recap: We’re falling back in love with Carrie as Mr Big’s death is resurfaced

RECAP: In episode three of And Just Like That… the show’s awkward marriage of heyday Sex and the City glamour and new-gen social trends finally delivers a standout episode.

Last episode, we had Carrie’s prissy response to the vaginal wellness ad – this episode, we have her brittle and honest response to grief. This episode feels a lot more like the true Carrie.

We no longer have her voiceover, her column, or two of her best friends – but maybe that isolation is a more accurate portrayal of her stage in life.

For Sex and the City loyalists, the renewed focus on Carrie (amid an already overwhelmingly busy cast) will be welcome, as the show remembers her complexities and occasional indignities that the last quarter-century have done nothing to diminish.

Carrie is suspended in mid-air between two versions of herself, and this episode does a solid job of showing the growing pains of this transition.

And just like that… Carrie finds herself in late adolescence, adrift in a sea of Bergdorf Goodman bags, anchored to her old life only by her friends.

Showrunner Michael Patrick King uses this episode as an atlas of Carrie’s grief, as she finally has to address Big’s loss head-on.

We find a version of Carrie more like her original counterpart, that gimlet-eyed, flinty, flawed writer, who nonetheless understands how to turn the contours of her life into a good story.

As she records her audiobook, Carrie stumbles over the words, ones she hasn’t read since writing them, and ones she hasn’t even properly felt yet.

She sobs through an evocative passage of finding Big on the floor – alone in the recording booth, Carrie has to contend with a smelly sound guy, the perils of good diction, and, finally, her grief.

In season one, his Peloton mishap was a clunky write-around that our characters spent the season dodging, or failing to look fully in the eyes.

In season two, the writers are finally sketching in all the edges of what they failed to address the first time around.

“I think it’s bad for the author to be this emotional. It feels unprofessional,” Carrie sobs in between another reading of the chapter.

Carrie finds solace for her grief once more through her friendship with Seema, the defiantly chic real estate agent who serves as a suitable stand-in for Samantha.

But it’s midway through the episode, when Carrie has a chance encounter with an old friend, the exotically named Bitzy von Muffling (the socialite from season five, whom we last saw marrying her gay husband in the Hamptons), that we feel the true spirit of the original series.

It’s the kind of run-in that makes Manhattan feel more alive, and more like the SATC original (part of why the pandemic-era first season felt so in stasis).

Bitzy bemoans having to show up for a $25 moustache wax after spending $25,000 on a facelift, but she passes on some of her wisdom to Carrie in the sans serif window of the beauty parlour.

Carrie says how confused she finds herself at these feelings of grief, after finding the first 12 months of the process admittedly easy.

“Honey, the second year is worse than the first,” Bitzy instructs her. “That’s the dirty little secret nobody tells you.

“The hole never fills – but new life will grow around it.”

Bitsy tells Carrie to find other ways to enrich the present moment – Carrie interprets this as directions to Bergdorf Goodman.

So, yes, Carrie concocts the excuse of Covid to get out of her audiobook taping (plenty of grist to the mill for those “Carrie Bradshaw is a Villain” blogs), but learns alone with her grief is even more miserable.

And Just Like That… has brought the old Carrie back, replete with new Gucci shoes, but all the same glorious flaws.

She finds there are joys in tossing aside those new Loewe shoes in favour of calling a friend who remembers her as she was, helping her new life grow around that pile of department store bags at its centre.

The revival has found its footing, balancing the trio of new friends, who this season are far more self-effacing than the clunky first season allowed them to be.

And Just Like That… emerges from its creative glut (such as its gauche materialism and handwringing script) by channelling the core characteristics that made it great to begin with.

Carrie’s plotline this episode serves as a metaphor for the show itself – your friends might find themselves going through an awkward period of transition, but, with a phone call, you can still reach the person you grew to love in the first place.

New episodes of And Just Like That… drop on Neon at noon on Friday.