‘And Just Like That’ Season 2 Episode 11 Recap: “The Last Supper, Part Two: Entreé”

It’s over! The second season of And Just Like That is over. While the episode ended without any major drama, I’m simultaneously impressed that most of the storylines got wrapped up neatly (the show remembered Nya was a person and gave her not only a prestigious legal honor but also a new man!) while also informing us that Carrie will have to wait five years to get the real happy ending she craved with Aidan. Perhaps Carrie’s toast at her party, where she revealed that she is letting go of all expectations in her life, was the writers’ way of begging us as an audience to let go of the expectations we had for the series.

The writers also, mercifully, gave us the one moment we’ve all desperately wanted this whole season, the Samantha phone call, within the first two minutes of the episode, and sure, it was short, and sure, Kim Cattrall was in a green-screened car and had no real contact with any of her other co-stars, but it was still the balm that we all needed. As Carrie preps for the meal, this Last Supper she’s holding in her apartment, she receives a random call from Samantha in London who informs Carrie that she’s going to miss the big event. She wasn’t officially invited, but apparently Miranda and Charlotte told her about it, and she had planned to fly in for a surprise overnight trip, but her flight’s been delayed. “You were flying in for an overnight?” Carrie asks. “Well, it is your apartment, and I have to pay my respects,” Samantha tells her, and then tells Carrie to put her on speaker to thank the “fucking fabulous flat” for all the memories.

When Carrie asks is she detects a hint of British accent in Samantha’s voice, she responds, “Who’s Samantha? This is Annabelle Bronstein! I’m from Indja!” referencing Samantha’s Season 6 alter ego who tried to get into Soho House with a fake ID. I mean, we all hoped for some surprise and delight with this cameo and it truly delivered.

All this, and the credits haven’t even rolled!

Last week, I wondered who else besides the obvious invitees would be at this 16-person Last Supper, and just to jump ahead, the final guest list included Carrie’s former podcast co-hosts Che and Jackie (Bobby Lee), Jackie’s girlfriend Smoke (not someone whose one-episode dress-making arc warranted a seat at this table, but everyone’s allowed their plus-one, I guess), LTW and Herbert, Nya, Miranda (but no Steve… did I miss the memo where he sent his regrets? Last week he seemed like a definite), Charlotte and Harry, Lisette The Neighbor I Irrationally Don’t Like, Seema and her Marvel director boyfriend Ravi, and Anthony and Giuseppe. Oh, and Carrie’s cat Shoe (As in shoo, or shoe — I can’t explain why, but I hate this name, it feels like a George Glass moment to me. The cat’s in a shoe.. his name is SHOE! I feel there could have been more thought here. Kitty Bradclaw??)

Everyone is dealing with high emotions the day of the party. To start, we’re blessed with a scene in which a very hungover Charlotte learns that Anthony is in her apartment to talk about losing his ass virginity. Harry delivers this information to his wife who got plastered with her gallerina colleagues and threw her phone into a pitcher of margs at the bar, so she is especially out of it, but not out of it enough to explain to Harry why she felt the need to get drunk. Her family is driving her crazy and Harry is not picking up the slack like he said he would. “You are not ‘doing it all.’ I know because you made a few breakfasts and you ran a few errands that it feels like you are, but in fact, you’re doing the bare minimum of what I and other women have been asked, no, expected to do around the house for years and years and years.” It’s a good enough speech about how our partners become used to the load most mothers carry, but the line that really got me was when she told him, “I need your help and support, not your words of help and support.” And with that, she tells Harry that Anthony needs to scram.

Miranda is doing her best to not be the person who never speaks to her exes ever again (would it be the worst thing if no one on this show never spoke to Che again?), so she tries to make peace with Steve by visiting his hot dog and clam bar on Coney Island. “I don’t wanna be someone in your past,” she tells Steve, she wants to be his friend in the present. It’s nice and easy and sincere, and he unloads on her just how difficult the last two years were on him, but he has forgiveness in his heart because that’s how easy-breezy Hot Dog Stevie operates.

Nya has been this season’s least fleshed-out character and that bums me out; Karen Pittman is too good for this role-turned-bit-part they don’t really know what to do with. This week, she learns that she’s been elected to the American Law Institute, which is big, professional news for her, but she’s sad she doesn’t have a man to share this news with. She realizes that sounds pitiful to say out loud, but she’s lonely and that’s okay. Fortunately, the Michelin-starred chef that’s cooking for Carrie’s party is Toussaint Feldman (Gary Dourdan), the hot guy she met at a bar back at the beginning of the season when she was still technically married. This is a welcome development because the chemistry between these two actors was fun to watch. They flirt their way through the dinner and he drives her home, and now that season three is confirmed, I hope we see more of him.

LTW and Herbert come to the party, too, but LTW is struggling after miscarrying her pregnancy. “We lost it,” Herbert quietly tells Charlotte who notices Lisa drinking, but LTW very quickly prevents the conversation from going further, telling Charlotte, “Not here.” Nicole Ari Parker is very good at turning two lines into a whole moment: she doesn’t want to steal focus, and she certainly doesn’t want to unpack her emotions just yet. Even though she barely gets any scenes this week, LTW’s anguish is all over her face throughout the party. At one point, as she excuses herself to use the bathroom and Herbert follows her, she tells him, “Did I wish the baby away?” Her conflict over wanting the baby but not wanting the baby now is so real and she plays it with all the emotions. “It wasn’t meant to be,” Herbert tells her, but that doesn’t assuage the guilt she feels.

It’s inevitable that Miranda and Che would also run into one another at a dinner party held in a studio apartment, so when Miranda arrives, she confronts Che immediately to avoid making a scene at the party. “I thought we ended well,” she tells Che who, you recall, did an entire bit in their stand-up act about Miranda’s identity confusion. If I didn’t say it last week, I’ll say now how bizarre it is for someone whose whole existence on the show was based around being accepted for how they identify, to write an entire stand-up set built around taking potshots at someone struggling with their sexual identity. Che does apologize to Miranda about the jokes, but adds, “I thought they were funny.” They end on a good note, referring to their relationship as “a good train wreck,” and somehow I feel like I have survivor’s guilt that I was a witness to this crash.

Anthony, still not allowing Giuseppe to penetrate his butthole, learns at the party that Giuseppe is considering moving back to Rome. The poetry and publishing scene, Giuseppe explains, has become “impenetrable.” Anthony knows that Giuseppe is coding his language, so he asks, “I won’t let you fuck me, so you’re leaving the country?” as they hide in Carrie’s closet later. “This is about more than your ass,” Giuseppe says. “You’re always making excuses to not let me in everywhere. You young. Too old, Poet. Sphincter… This is not about your ass wall. This is about your other walls.” Giuseppe gets all the best lines, we must protect his role on this show at all costs. Anthony admits his issues but tells Giuseppe he loves him, and that’s a start to finally relaxing that sphincter.

Seema, who has never had a real relationship where “I love you” meant anything, is struggling. Now that she and Ravi have both said it and she feels like it has made him distant. He spends most of the party on the phone coordinating his latest film shoot in Egypt (“Can’t you just build the Great Sphinx out of foam in Yankee Stadium or something?” Seema asks.) and Seema views it as him looking for a way to get away from her and out of the relationship. Ravi seems like one of the more emotionally available men on the show, and expresses to her that she’s just plain wrong. He has no fear of commitment or love, he wants Seema, but sometimes people gotta work, too. If anyone understands that, it’s Seema.

At The Last Supper, Carrie asks each of her guests for one single word that represents a thought they all plan to leave behind moving forward. As they go around the table, everyone says something that relates to their story (Miranda and Lisa both say “Guilt,” Charlotte states “Limits.”) and Carrie says “Expectations.” This is powerful coming from her, as someone whose goal in life was to marry Big, the man she deemed perfect for her, and yet this year she learned he wasn’t her end-all. And now, with Aidan, who we haven’t even mentioned yet here, she also has to temper her expectations. After the real party ends, he shows up at her window and then he does the unthinkable: he enters her apartment. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but he flew up to see her and tell her that he needs to focus on spending time with Wyatt and his other boys. Wyatt wasn’t just drunk when he crashed Aidan’s truck, he was on shrooms too. “He needs a lot of watching, that one.”

To Carrie’s surprise, Aidan isn’t planning to come back every other week, as he had been, and he’s not going to be moving in to her new place, nor does he want her coming to Virginia to see him. But it’s not a breakup, just a very long extension of what they’ve already been doing for the past twenty or so years.

“I can’t believe we’re back here again,” Carrie says, burying her head in her hands, referencing all of the ways their romance has never been fated to work. “We’re not back here again,” he assures her, he just needs time. When Carrie asks how long he needs, he tells her five years, until Wyatt is out of his teens. Look, I have kids and I prioritize them over everything, but this seems extreme to me. To each their own though, I’m certainly no Country Lurch.

“I thought I’d let go of expectations,” Carrie says. Old habits are hard to break.

And so, the season ended as it began, with a whole bunch of scenes of our various characters in intimate situations. Seema and Ravi having sex in bed. LTW and Herbert spooning. Nya cooking a meal for Toussaint. For Anthony, it involves allowing Giuseppe access to his back door. For Charlotte and Harry, it involves setting up Charlotte’s new iPhone, which is a true portrait of marital intimacy. Miranda, having been asked to speak live to the BBC about detained migrants, gets cozy with her sexy new colleague Joy at a bar. And Carrie and Aidan have sex in her new place, and you know it’s love because she’s not wearing a bra.

After Carrie and Shoe bid farewell to Aidan in the morning, Carrie gets a call from Seema, who tells her they’re finally going to take their girls’ beach trip because Ravi’s off working in Egypt for five months. But this trip isn’t to the Hamptons. The two hit the beach in Greece and drown their temporary singleness in Cosmos, and I hate to use this phrase, but I love that for them.

This has been a heck of a season. We’ve endured far too much of Che’s sitcom and bad standup (to the writers, who I respect and appreciate, I say that with love and also beg you never to have Che tell another “joke” again), we’ve watched Carrie realize her great love was not actually Big, we’ve seen Charlotte evolve into a pot-brownie-eating working woman, Miranda finally regressed back to being the Miranda we like, and the show gave Mario Cantone a significant other we all love and hope never moves to Rome. Much like the kid from Steve’s prom whose head got smashed like a watermelon after riding the Cyclone, I’ve had my ups and downs on this roller coaster of a season. And just like that… I think I might actually miss it.

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.