‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: Double Standards

Season 3, Episode 7: ‘They Wanna Have Fun’

The woman wondered if she should have invited him to the party.

In this scenario, that woman is me, and the man in question is Aidan. Why, pray tell, did Carrie not invite him to “their” house for Charlotte’s birthday party? Last we left our lovers, Carrie had agreed not to return to Virginia, but Aidan was still free to come to New York. (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence as if this were a normal relationship dynamic, but here we are.)

Perhaps Carrie was more interested in inviting Duncan, her downstairs neighbor, to the soiree instead of her “boyfriend” (still using quotes!). If Aidan isn’t there, she is free to flirt with Duncan. And she does. But more on that in a bit.

The big birthday party that is the center of this week’s episode is really just a ruse to get Charlotte to have a little fun and forget, at least for a night, about Harry’s prostate cancer — which, at this point, no one else knows about but Carrie. After a lunchtime chat in which Charlotte alludes to having a lot on her plate, and a subsequent near-slip of the secret by Carrie, Miranda gets suspicious. So Carrie tells Miranda she wants to throw a big shindig for Charlotte because her dog, Richard Burton, is terminally ill.

Miranda — now a huge dog person, apparently, after the introduction of Sappho and Socrates into her life — is simply heartbroken for Charlotte, and goes wild with the party planning. Decked in a silver jumpsuit and toting pink confetti balloons and a karaoke machine no one asked for, Miranda shows up to Carrie’s house ready to party like it’s 1999. To borrow a phrase from O.G. Carrie, I couldn’t help but wonder, how much more over the top would Miranda’s party favors have been if she knew it was Harry who had cancer?

By the end of the episode, though, she does. Rumors begin flying among party guests until Harry can’t take it, and he summons Carrie, Miranda and Lisa into a back room to confess his diagnosis. (Yes, Carrie already knows, Charlotte admits to Harry; but Harry told his personal shopper! He has no room to be mad!)

Ultimately, Charlotte says, this is the best birthday gift Harry could have given her. That, and the public admission that asking her to keep the secret in the first place was wildly unfair. Because it was.