230: On And Just Like That: Happily Ever After (Feat. Paul Glover)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Every Outfit Episode 230: "On And Just Like That: Happily Ever After" (Feat. Paul Glover)

Release Date: July 19, 2025
Hosts: Chelsea Fairless (absent this episode) and Lauren Garroni
Guest: Paul Glover, husband of the pod's graphic designer

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Introduction

In Episode 230 of Every Outfit, host Lauren Garroni steps in solo, as Chelsea Fairless takes a week off to recover from a C-section and care for their newborn. Lauren is joined by Paul Glover, offering a unique perspective as the husband of the pod's designer. The episode delves deep into the recent developments of the rebooted series "And Just Like That...", particularly focusing on the episode titled "Happily Ever After."

Episode Duration and Audience Reactions

• Lauren Garroni (00:28): Explains Chelsea's absence and introduces Paul Glover.
• Paul Glover (04:18): Jokes about the episode's shortened length of 32 minutes, which sparked numerous listener inquiries.

Quote:

Lauren Garroni (04:18): "Almost every call to our hotline was some variation of why is this episode so short? I don't understand."

Critical Analysis of "And Just Like That..."

Lauren and Paul discuss their frustrations with the show's direction, particularly how it handles beloved characters and legacy content from Sex and the City.

• Aiden Shaw's Character Development:

  • Paul Glover (02:18): Criticizes the portrayal of Aiden, feeling the character is being deconstructed in a way that diminishes his legacy.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (02:18): "It just feels like confronting the legacy of something that we loved and now has been vandalized."

• Comparison to Furniture Quality:

  • Lauren Garroni (03:12): Uses an analogy comparing the show's decline to generational differences in furniture quality, suggesting "On And Just Like That..." mirrors the trend of buying lower-quality yet more expensive items.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (03:35): "Just like our generation buying furniture today versus our parents."

Detailed Episode Breakdown

The hosts proceed to dissect the "Happily Ever After" episode, examining character interactions, plot points, and thematic elements.

Carrie and Aiden's Relationship

• Unannounced Return of Aiden:

  • Paul Glover (08:02): Remarks on Aiden's abrupt return and his apparent lack of communication.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (08:02): "Aiden is back. It seemed like he was there a little unannounced. Is that how it worked?"

• Symbolism of Luggage:

  • Lauren Garroni (08:15): Notes the recurring theme of Aiden bringing excessive luggage, hinting at unresolved issues.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (08:36): "Multiple references to how much luggage he has brought throughout the episode."

• Sexual Tensions and Portrayal:

  • Paul Glover (22:25): Critiques the imbalance in the portrayal of male and female characters, especially in intimate scenes.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (22:25): "It's the imbalance of size of life between Carrie and these men."

Charlotte and LTW's Storyline

• Charlotte's Health Issues:

  • Lauren Garroni (28:32): Discusses Charlotte's struggle with vertigo post-surgery and its impact on her career and personal life.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (28:47): "Charlotte is discussing how this piece was done in the late 80s."

• Gallery Show Critique:

  • Paul Glover (35:01): Feels the gallery show lacks authenticity and fails to properly showcase Charlotte's professional growth.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (35:32): "They do this in season two when Charlotte dates the actor and he mistakes the fire extinguisher in the gallery as a piece of art."

Miranda's Struggle with Alcoholism

• Miranda's Alcohol Use:

  • Lauren Garroni (46:12): Explores Miranda's ambiguous relationship with alcohol, questioning whether she's in recovery or not.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (46:21): "Miranda ponders at the gallery if she's actually an alcoholic or if her binge drinking was due to life stressors."

• Charlotte's Intervention:

  • Paul Glover (48:49): Criticizes Charlotte's approach to Miranda's potential relapse, suggesting a more supportive intervention would be appropriate.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (48:49): "She has to physically lunge at her friend to try and stop her from taking a sip."

Peripheral Characters and Subplots

• Seema and Adam's Relationship:

  • Lauren Garroni (54:03): Details their steamy interaction, albeit feeling it's underdeveloped and lacks depth.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (54:16): "Seema and Adam are having sex...but I can't indulge in that moment because the show is so bizarre."

• Anthony and Giuseppe's Dynamics:

  • Paul Glover (59:41): Touches on the wealthy background of Giuseppe's family and Anthony's attempts to win favor with them.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (60:07): "Anthony says to Giuseppe that he believes his mother put a mob hit on him."

Themes and Symbolism

Lauren and Paul delve into the various themes presented in the episode, such as the quest for happiness, the struggle with legacy, and the complexities of modern relationships.

• Happiness as a Construct:

  • Lauren Garroni (37:13): Discusses the art piece "Happily Ever After" as a metaphor for the elusive nature of happiness.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (37:13): "Is happiness a myth, a gift, a skill to master?"

• Art and Authenticity:

  • Paul Glover (33:48): Critiques the show's portrayal of art, feeling it fails to capture the essence of genuine art movements.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (33:48): "This could have been one of them had it not been a setup for what happens later on."

Host Reflections and Listener Engagement

Towards the end, Lauren and Paul reflect on their analysis and engage with listener questions, covering topics from graphic design to relationships.

• Graphic Design Passion:

  • Paul Glover (72:31): Shares his journey into graphic design, inspired by childhood interactions and admiration for designers like Ken Barber.

  Quote:

  Paul Glover (72:31): "People come to me and they want their name to look all sick on their notebook."

• Relationship Advice:

  • Lauren Garroni (79:40): Offers strategies for asking out bartenders, emphasizing community over light stalking.

  Quote:

  Lauren Garroni (80:11): "Perhaps you can create some other place other than the bar itself to interact."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Lauren and Paul summarizing their critiques of "On And Just Like That...", emphasizing their disappointment with the show's direction and character development. They tease future discussions and encourage listeners to engage through questions and feedback.

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Notable Quotes:

1. Lauren Garroni (04:18):

   "Almost every call to our hotline was some variation of why is this episode so short? I don't understand."

2. Paul Glover (02:18):

   "It just feels like confronting the legacy of something that we loved and now has been vandalized."

3. Lauren Garroni (37:13):

   "Is happiness a myth, a gift, a skill to master?"

4. Paul Glover (48:49):

   "She has to physically lunge at her friend to try and stop her from taking a sip."

5. Paul Glover (72:31):

   "People come to me and they want their name to look all sick on their notebook."

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Final Thoughts: Episode 230 of Every Outfit provides a candid and critical examination of "On And Just Like That...", highlighting the hosts' deep understanding and passion for the original Sex and the City series. Through insightful discussions and humorous banter, Lauren and Paul offer listeners a thorough analysis, making it a valuable listen for fans seeking a deeper dive into the reboot's intricacies.

Transcript

[Lauren Garrone]

I spent $40,000 on shoes. What's the matter, Morty?

[Paul Glover]

Gray gowns. Beautiful gowns.

[Lauren Garrone]

Fashion has changed.

[Paul Glover]

No, it hasn't.

[Lauren Garrone]

Hi, my name is Lauren Garrone and welcome back to the Every Outfit podcast.

[Paul Glover]

I'm.

[Lauren Garrone]

I am not joined by Chelsea Fairless today because she is taking the week off. And honestly, can you blame her? She has had to shoulder the majority of this season on her own as I recover from a C section and take care of a newborn. What kind of excuse is that? And I think we can all agree that was a lot to ask of anyone. So today I am joined by husband of the pod designer behind the glamorous women having nervous breakdowns. Graphic. A self described Steve Aiden hybrid with hairy tendencies. We'll still see if he self identifies that way. Paul Glover, welcome back to the podcast.

[Paul Glover]

Hello. It's. It's. I'm inside. I'm usually on the outside of the pod, but I'm in the pod now. It's great to be here.

[Lauren Garrone]

Sorry, are you doing your audio erotica voice?

[Paul Glover]

Uh, I wasn't. I wasn't going to, but I sort of feel like I should.

[Lauren Garrone]

You may have to, because, wow, what an episode to invite you into. Do you want to tell the listeners what you said when the episode ended?

[Paul Glover]

I sighed. It was a sigh heard around the world, world. And then I just. It. I said what we're all thinking, like, what a dog episode. Like on the scale of. And just like that, which I've been calling and just like, okay, I should explain.

[Lauren Garrone]

I'm sure there is a generous portion of our audience who has found our podcast because of our Sex in the City or and just like that recaps before you turn off the podcast wholesale because you're like, oh, the host brought her straight husband on and of course he hates. And just like that, we should say your bona fides. You have watched Sex and the City multiple times over. Sure, we met because you left a comment on our Instagram every outfit on Sex and the City.

[Paul Glover]

That's true.

[Lauren Garrone]

So this comes from an equal place of I loved Sex in the City. What exactly is happening on this show.

[Paul Glover]

Right now to have them wheel out these characters and inflict such abuse not only on the. On. On the narrative, but also on their audience's. It just feels like a common kind of millennial and older. If you're anywhere between Zoomer and the age of the actors on this show, living in the lee of a cultural phenomenon that has then been rebooted and just feels sullied like not just this ip, but I feel like it's a common thing. It's like confronting the legacy of something that we loved and now has been vandalized.

[Lauren Garrone]

Vandalized by its creator. Yeah, well, I was thinking particular this week of Sex in the City. I keep calling it Sex and City. And just like that, where it's kind of like our generation buying furniture today versus our parents.

[Paul Glover]

Right.

[Lauren Garrone]

Sex in the City was this thing that was well built. It still endures to this day. Kind of like our parents when they bought furniture in the 80s and the 90s. My parents still have their first set of furniture that they bought when they were newly married in the early 80s. And then cut to us and we're having to buy shittier furniture that is more expensive. And I feel like that's what in. Just like that is exactly.

[Paul Glover]

This is the MDF constructed furniture of what was once real hardwood.

[Lauren Garrone]

So we will dive into the episode Happily Ever After. Was that a threat, that title?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, God, yeah. I think so.

[Lauren Garrone]

So we will jump into the episode in a second. But I just want to say later in the episode we will be diving into some questions that you guys asked us, but honestly, mostly Paul, about Sex and the City, relationships, graphic design and so much more.

[Paul Glover]

People shot their shoot, shoot their shot their shot shoot their. They shot that we've been shot.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay, I think a good place to start is how short this episode is.

[Paul Glover]

32 minutes.

[Lauren Garrone]

It is only 32 minutes, 10 minutes shorter than the previous episode. Almost every call to our hotline when I checked this morning was some variation of why is this episode so short? I don't understand.

[Paul Glover]

Release the tapes. The deleted 10 minutes. MPK, if you're listening, we know you have a doctored release and we'd like the unedited version, please.

[Lauren Garrone]

And quite like the MAGA base, we're not going to let this go. I did a liken this to someone this week where someone sent me a text message being like, well, maybe this is what they're really trying to do within. Just like that. And it's very high concept.

[Paul Glover]

And I was like, no, our show.

[Lauren Garrone]

No, I just. I think that this show has made fans of the original conspiracy theorists like, this is our Q anon where we keep going back and we keep thinking, no, no, actually this is the meaning behind everything. And then all of it will make sense.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, Christ, yeah. Like wanting the final word on something. Trying to create some kind of continuous integrity of these characters. Because that's what that would be. The. That would be the implication for them to come out and say that, oh, this was actually the way it was the whole time. Miranda never cared about Steve or Carrie, never really loved Big or some kind of retroactive continuity, otherwise known as retcon to your nerd shit, Lauren. If they want that last word, then they would have had to have maintained that integrity of the story, which we know they have not. Most famously with LTW's dad. The big controversy that has got so much press on the flub.

[Lauren Garrone]

This is true. So much of these things have broken containment in a fascinating way. But having watched the preview of next week's episode, because the confusing part is, it's not like this episode is titled Happily Ever After, Part one. And then next week is Part two, the thrilling conclusion of Is Miranda not gonna Drink or Not? Is Aiden gonna meet Duncan or not? But it seems like the preview for next week's episode is a payoff to a lot of things that are set up in this episode. So I don't understand why it was 32 minutes. When I saw that in the episode description, I got very nervous.

[Paul Glover]

It didn't have, like, a and to be continued ellipsis at the end, did it?

[Lauren Garrone]

I know you were voraciously taking notes so you weren't looking up during the credits, but no, Paul, it did not say to be continued. So this episode was directed by Anyu Valia, who directed last week's episode, the Party bottle episode that wouldn't end. This episode was written by Julie Rotenberg and Eliza Zurski, who are original writers from Sex and the City. So these two writers and Michael Patrick King, the bridge between Sex and the City, Ann, and just like that, the rest are new writers who have mostly written the past several seasons. Paul, you do not listen to our recap episodes.

[Paul Glover]

I mean, I walk in the room and you're talking to Chelsea, and I'm like, save it for the pod. That's good.

[Lauren Garrone]

I was going to say yes, understandably. So you don't listen to the podcast.

[Paul Glover]

Because not all the time. I do a lot. I do plenty of Catch the Tone.

[Lauren Garrone]

But this is all to say that how we recap these episodes is we go character by character. Last week, we dropped all pretense of that because truly, nothing happened beyond that party scene. But we're gonna go back to our format of breaking down episodes character by character. Let's start with Carrie and therefore Aiden. Aiden is back.

[Paul Glover]

Aiden is back. It seemed like he was there a little unannounced. Is that how it worked? Like he just showed up?

[Lauren Garrone]

That's true, yes. He's back for more than two days. And we know this because he has brought a lot of luggage with him.

[Paul Glover]

We did get that little gag, little fan service about like him coming in and wanting to colonize her closet, which. That feels a little bit flavored, like their old chemistry. But then everything else kind of is stunted and awkward and well, there's multiple.

[Lauren Garrone]

References to how much luggage he has brought throughout the episode, which I thought was gonna get paid off. Of course, I have like true crime sicko brain. So I was like, oh my God, is the dismembered body of Bob in the luggage?

[Paul Glover]

The fact that he has not mentioned Bob, especially in context of his little dalliance with his ex wife, like, was Bob watching? Does Bob like to watch? Was that. Was Bob in the room? Ooh, I mean, maybe. Was Bob, you know, was he. Was he helping? Did they take Kathy to Paris.

[Lauren Garrone]

And. Oh, I get it, an Eiffel Tower.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, I mean that would be interesting. That would be the. There could be fucking in this show instead of what we've seen. Or at least you know that Aiden sex life includes somebody other than himself.

[Lauren Garrone]

You are correct. There is a nod to the closet fight from season four. I learned I was listening to this morning at two times speed, the writers room podcast. And Michael Patrick King notes that Carrie brings Aiden not to her main bedroom, but I guess there is a second bedroom that is connected by that galley closet that she has. This walk in closet, a Jack and Jill closet of sorts. And that is Shu's bedroom.

[Paul Glover]

Oh boy. The cat also having scenes in the kitchen. Is that like a butler's pantry like, or what is that? It's not a, like a big statement. Luxury kitchen. I would, I would assume is like I've actually been in the building. Little anecdote. I've been inside the building many times that her apartment is immediately adjacent to which is like an identical layout. And it has a small kitchen, but not that small.

[Lauren Garrone]

It doesn't make any sense. Of all the things to nitpick, I've been told by Chelsea, let's not nitpick that particular thing.

[Paul Glover]

New York real estate. I mean, let's nitpick it. That's what this podcast is about now.

[Lauren Garrone]

So we'll move on from this. But yes, there's a nod to the season four closet fight where aided in this episode. For those that are not watching and are just listening to this, which again, always applause for your mental health. We wish we could join you in.

[Paul Glover]

This, but we're taking it right.

[Lauren Garrone]

He goes where Can I put all of my stuff? And then he just takes his hand and just gruffly grabs her clothes and pushes it aside to create room for himself and she his blue shirt, his blue shirt. We'll get into. Are they blue? Are they black? Is it the color correction? I don't know, but Carrie has put him in an auxiliary closet in Shu's bedroom.

[Paul Glover]

Makes sense for a large man.

[Lauren Garrone]

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[Paul Glover]

God and they apparently lose track of all time. Is it 7.30am? Is it PM? What is like?

[Lauren Garrone]

What is time? Our sex is so amazing. Do you think that Carrie and Aiden are having such great sex that they're Forgetting what time it is?

[Paul Glover]

Fuck no. We've seen what his. His stamina is like. Even all like little. Little drunk. He's like, it still takes him no time at all for him to. To shoot his shot or shoot his pants.

[Lauren Garrone]

Wow, you're calling Aiden a one minute man.

[Paul Glover]

It's car's type.

[Lauren Garrone]

This is a real 180. For those who may not remember, last season, you came on the podcast, engaged an impassioned defense of one Mr. Aiden Shaw. And it's funny because I saved your notes, guys. He wrote his notes out for his defense of Aiden from season two. And I saved it because I thought, you know, we might reference this one day. And we received multiple questions that were variations on what are your feelings of Aiden right now? Best summed up by this question, which was, we need an update on Paul's romance with Aiden. Are you finally over him yet? Wow, you're doing some Foley work.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, I didn't even crumple up the page that you brought. Vintage Aiden is a completely different guy. Well, clearly.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, yeah, you start your notes and I'll hand it back to you. But it just says Aiden Shaw, colon. Cool.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, before he sold out to West Elm, apparently. Maybe to West Elm Cable Caleb himself. He was, you know, he was a creative guy. What did I write? Holy shit.

[Lauren Garrone]

You said that him being tall was a core competency of him.

[Paul Glover]

No, no, I said competency is sexy. Oh, as in women have like a fetish for competency where men can like. Oh, my God, my. I can't believe you fixed that so easy.

[Lauren Garrone]

You know, you sanded my floors.

[Paul Glover]

Although he kind of made her.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, made her allow him to sand. Yeah, her floors. And also I don't think she was very impressed by that.

[Paul Glover]

No, but okay.

[Lauren Garrone]

Seeing that she fucked big while he was doing.

[Paul Glover]

All right, I'm going to. I'm just going to let you in on something about the male brain. When they talk about hobbies that are. You think it's this, but it's actually mostly that they'll talk about woodworking. It's like I wanted to get into woodworking until I found out that, oh, it's mostly sanding. It's mostly sanding because. Not because it's the drudgery necessarily of the hobby, but I think it. There's something in the male brain. Not all male brains and not all people who are woodworkers are male. I get it. But there's probably a majority there. So what I'm trying to say is that there's an innate desire to sand things. I have it. Lots of people have it. I'm covered in dust all the time. I don't even remember doing it. It's just like I wake up and I'm.

[Lauren Garrone]

This is very true. I think you're just trying to not have to justify that. Embarrassingly, you defended Aiden.

[Paul Glover]

But I did. I did.

[Lauren Garrone]

But to be fair, like Miranda, there has been a deucification of Aiden.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, dad, Aiden, he's trying to heal something that happened between him and Kathy. It seems like, to quote friend of the pod and former guest Carly Shortino, my son got into a car accident. I have to not see you for five years. Like, that kind of rationale is so unbelievably ridiculous and shows a full lack of agency in his own life that he's so interested in compensating for some shortcoming or some kind of lack of connection that he has with his nuclear family that he's going to. He's going to overspend in terms of the life that he has with Carrie. He's going to squander so much of that to try and heal that It's. It's tragic because it sounds like Wyatt's mostly cooked. That kid has become what kind of person he might be. And it's not one that fucks with his dad, so it's sad.

[Lauren Garrone]

Although he will sleep in bed with his dad, as we learned in a.

[Paul Glover]

Previous episode, but uncomfortable for everyone.

[Lauren Garrone]

To your point, I think it's less. Aiden tried to heal something in his fatherhood journey. I think it's that he is having a terrible reaction to being an empty nester.

[Paul Glover]

Well, that makes sense. He gave up his whole identity as downtown bar owner, nightlife, tallest guy in the room, woodsy guy, man who would.

[Lauren Garrone]

Wear leather pants to sand a bench.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, and he gave that up to be super dad out on the farm. And then, I mean, his marriage failed, his relationship with one of his sons is strained, and he's now wondering what the fuck is going on. Why am I even there? He even says that in this episode. Right.

[Lauren Garrone]

Aiden, this season really has a why do I even bother Energy. I did say that we're seeing the deification of Aiden, but honestly, this scene makes me think that it's the Petrovsky Ification of Aiden. Because Carrie wakes up and goes, oh, I gotta go to my note session with Duncan. And Aiden lets out this heavy sigh.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, yeah. And he totally manipulates Carrie.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, absolutely. Because Carrie's like, if you've been in a relationship and you hear that sigh, you're like, okay, what's going on?

[Paul Glover]

She's been in a shitty relationship.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. We've never experienced that. Heavy sigh. No, not at all. So Aiden admits. Not even admits. I mean, he is coaxing Carrie to be like, ask me what's wrong. Right?

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

And so he goes, you know, I was just looking down at my phone and I sent five text messages to my son that he hasn't replied to, which immediately after waking up in a. From a post coital, I guess like sex coma is what we're led to believe. He's immediately like, my son didn't write me back. And she's like, okay, what is that about? And he's like, oh, I forgot to tell you, this is why I can stay so much longer, why I decided to live with Kathy. Also because we've established I have three sons and one is still not college age. Homer's with his cousin. That's how we're going to explain this for a month. So basically I was.

[Paul Glover]

It's so much exposition. Jesus Christ. Put something on the screen. They're talking about stuff that they never show. It's like. But then when they do show it, they also tell you.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. I mean, it's so much telling because he's a sad sack. Which we get from John Corbett's performance. He's not being very subtle. But of course he then has to say, what the fuck is wrong with me, why it doesn't want to hang out with me? And it's like, how much time do you have, buddy?

[Paul Glover]

I mean, now that I am a father to a future man, a future teen, one who will have a lot of bad opinions and phases and act out in completely unpredictable ways. He talks about how he had this rich life in New York. I really think this is. If there, I mean, if there is an underlying real logic of this, this character that has been built up. I mean, there's. I'm creating it basically in my head now, but that he's. He gave so much up to be a dad in Virginia.

[Lauren Garrone]

Which, by the way, he wanted those things. Yes. You're hinting at. For those who haven't watched the episode, Aiden is like, what was I doing down in Virginia? I have this whole life in New York, which as the viewer of the show, you're like, do you.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. What? He vanished without a trace.

[Lauren Garrone]

It seems like except for being a silent investor in Steve's businesses.

[Paul Glover]

Right. I can't believe what they did to Steve.

[Lauren Garrone]

Don't worry. Someone asked your thoughts about that. We'll get. We'll get into that in a little bit. So Aiden, then so needily, is like, how long is this note session? Is it like an hour? And she's like, no. I mean, it could go for hours and hours. And he's like, well, do you have anything to eat? And she's like, well, I was gonna go shopping, but, you know, we had the. The sex coma. Which again, it's like post meets groceries. Carrie, I do not believe you are going to a grocery store or have.

[Paul Glover]

Them walk around the block. The idea that it's like, hey, you got anything to eat, dude? Like, you're not in the fucking sticks. You're in New York. Wouldn't you be hyped to go walk around your old haunt and see how things have changed or go talk to people? You know, this life in New York, like, where is it?

[Lauren Garrone]

Is the life in New York in the room with us, Aiden? So Carrie decides to cancel her meeting with Duncan to hang out with Aiden, which is a very Petrovsky in Paris move.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

She is yet again making herself small for a man.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

This time a much taller man.

[Paul Glover]

I mean, I'm a Petrovsky apologist, I think. And speaking of, like, Petrovsky's artwork, there's a whole episode that you guys could do about, like, art in this universe. Petrovsky's obviously based off of a few different real artists, and it even comes up in this episode. But there's this imbalance of size of life between Carrie and these men. Even whenever there's some guy who is trying to put his life back together, probably feeling that his life is small, Carrie will shrink. Is that what it feels like? I kind of think so.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, can she get any smaller? To be fair, she's hanging out with Aiden, who again, because she has this meeting with Duncan were led to believe. And also, as I made the point last episode, this just feels like Inception where things just start. It's all very dream logic where it's like all of a sudden, Aiden's just there. He gave her no heads up. Which, by the way, is shitty in and of itself. It is not mature communication style. We know they don't have that. Speaking of immature communication styles, Aiden then asked Carrie about inviting Duncan to dinner, of which he declines permission to cross the border. Permission denied.

[Paul Glover]

Weird. Hey, why don't we invite Dunkin Donuts to dinner with us tonight?

[Lauren Garrone]

And why would we do that?

[Paul Glover]

Be neighborly.

[Lauren Garrone]

I don't think so. It's not that kind of a neighborhood.

[Paul Glover]

We're living in the same House. I don't even know him.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, I don't even know him, really. I know nothing about him. It's just. It's just all about our books. You know nothing about him. That's right. We just talk about work.

[Paul Glover]

It's a good thing. It could be. I don't know.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay, so re. Listening to this dialogue made me think of something I hadn't thought about before, which is, why isn't Aiden pissed at Carrie and is like, hey, you bought this house for us that has a fucking tenant, A male tenant in the basement that none of us knew about until a few weeks ago.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, the parasite guy. Like that comes with the house.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. I need a storyline where Aiden is trying to evict Duncan. Maybe that's where it's leading to.

[Paul Glover]

Right. Aiden's like, drilling holes in the ceiling and like taking the front door off the hinges and doing all kinds of crazy landlord shit.

[Lauren Garrone]

He's essentially Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights, but in reverse.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

Clearly they are seeding this jealousy storyline between Aiden, Duncan and Carrie, which is supposed to be, I imagine, reminiscent of Big. However, Carrie is still copying the same attitude from the previous episode where she's just so against inviting Duncan into her life and she's so besotten with Aiden clearly, that it's like, okay, there's no tension here.

[Paul Glover]

There's so much reluctance in all of this. You can hear Aiden's reluctance about, like, I guess I just don't really have a life in Virginia. Nobody cares about old dad, that kind of shit. And then Carrie doesn't actually want to be faithful or be in a long distance relationship. Like, she's reluctant about that and so much, and she becomes defensive about any kind of tension she might have with Duncan as perceived by her friends.

[Lauren Garrone]

A very reasonable reaction. I will note that in your notes justifying Aiden's existence and what makes him cool. You do bring up his brick farmhouse and his three sons. And I believe you were trying to link it to the Mel Gibson film the Patriots.

[Paul Glover]

I'm so glad you asked. Something that Mel was tapping into was sort of the Virginia Cavalier class, the landed gentry who were seen as sort of kind of philosopher kings of their own estate. He has a learned man's hobby of chair making, but he's not quite there yet.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay. Anyway, yeah, Duncan doesn't appear in this episode at all.

[Paul Glover]

Right. But in that tweet.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, in the. Yes, the. In the post that the. And just like that social media team did on Instagram to hype up last night's Episode, they show a still of Duncan in Carrie's closet that never appears in this episode.

[Paul Glover]

Spooky. Is it a surveillance footage?

[Lauren Garrone]

No, it's not. It's just a mistake. Anyway, there's this bit about Aiden wearing blue shirts.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, that's what.

[Lauren Garrone]

Which the color correction is so bad in the Gramercy townhouse that the shirts look black.

[Paul Glover]

Are we back to like the like 2014 or whenever that was or like, what color is the dress?

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, absolutely. Also, thoughts on Carrie's weird linen onesie that she's wearing. It's a onesie, but then it's like jort shaped. There's a lot going on. Yeah. Then we have Aiden and Carrie at Charlotte's gallery show, which we'll get into in a second. And Aiden is just fishing for information about Duncan and is only told by Adam the gardener and Seema that he is a, quote Mimi.

[Paul Glover]

So immature sounding like. This goes back to one of the things that I can't stop thinking about whenever I watch this show. It has the comedic tension and if it's meant to be kind of screwball. And its screwball ness is about as developed as an all that sketch, it feels like it should have a laugh track. He's a meanie. That's a screech line. It feels like Saved by the Bell amount of let's throw her a party. This is the same kind of stakes.

[Lauren Garrone]

But at least with Saved by the Bell you would have had Jessie Spano being like, well, he is kind of cute. Right. We've all seen this type of show. We know how this scene goes. It's not a subtle subversion to be like, oh, instead of Seema thinking that Duncan is hot, she's just going to say he's a meanie. It just is bizarre and juvenile and doesn't go anywhere.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. I also felt that opening up at the gallery opening with Carrie just reading out loud the wall text felt so like I've never been to an art gallery before. It did not. Didn't help.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, no, to your point. It was showing and telling. Exactly. That's why, speaking of showing and telling, let's get into Charlotte and LTW's storyline. We often put these two characters together because their storylines often, I wouldn't say dovetail, but they are often together. LTW continues to feel in this season just on the outskirts of the other women kind of existing in her own show within this show.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, yeah. Coming in dressed like a house that's being fumigated.

[Lauren Garrone]

So we start this episode for Charlotte with Harry recovering from his prostate surgery, which has led him to have big balls. I Google searched this because I was like, oh, is this a side effect of prostate surgery? I could not find anything that linked the two.

[Paul Glover]

But what we do know is a side effect of prostate surgery is, sadly, we have to pour one out for Harry's legendary schwants. He's never going to be the same guy.

[Lauren Garrone]

His dick is out of commission.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, sad.

[Lauren Garrone]

But don't worry, I could be wrong.

[Paul Glover]

I mean, surgery's come a long way. I don't know, maybe they figured that one out. Maybe. Maybe you could solve prostate cancer and, like, still have a dick that you can strike a match on.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, male doctors will find a way. But even if his dick doesn't work anymore, it doesn't matter because LTW has brought over a get well present. What kind of get well present? A massage gift certificate, perhaps? No, it's large macadamia nuts from her time in Hawaii.

[Paul Glover]

I don't know why I just sort of felt this as, like, Harry seems like the type of guy who would be allergic to nuts.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, we don't even get that to your point of a laugh track. Like, we almost needed a sad trumpet noise when LTW gave the nuts because he's like, large nuts. We need, like a wah, wah. So we get an LTW and Charlotte walk and talk. We rarely get walk and talks with the ladies anymore.

[Paul Glover]

Walk and talks gives her an opportunity to, I don't know, encounter people on the street, encounter New York life. New York really feels like it is not a character in this show like it used to be.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, she's no longer the fifth lady.

[Paul Glover]

They walk for, like, I don't know, five stoops, you know, like, walk for long. There's not a lot of cab hailing. There's not a lot of, like, waiting in line to get into places. No, like, it just. It's not totally devoid of that stuff, but, like that fucking recreated townhome at Silver Cup Studios that they built. Right. It's at Silver cup because they used to do silver at Silver Cup.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, I think they're at a different place, but, yeah, it's, you know, somewhere in Long Island City. They're shooting this on a soundstage with a blue screen.

[Paul Glover]

That is a squandered opportunity. It's the reason why the show looks completely different. It doesn't have the same feel. Like, maybe I'm just personally missing New York a little bit like a New York summer. But this, of course, doesn't even come close. To scratching the itch. Like, it's so artificial. It's so fake.

[Lauren Garrone]

Speaking of fake. So LTW confides to Charlotte that she has a sex dream about Marian, by the way, something she's telling Charlotte we do not see.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, good point. We could have seen sweaty, you know, like eye candy of this man and her, like, in costume. It could have been fun. Instead, we got nothing.

[Lauren Garrone]

And it's something that they did in Sex and the City. I think it's season three or season four, when Charlotte is sexually frustrated with Trey and she's fantasizing about the gardener. We see the fantasy she has with the gardener, and it ends in this comedic dark beat where Trey thinks she's having a bad dream and wakes her up.

[Paul Glover]

Brilliant. Yeah. Like, if they're borrowing all of the wrong things from the show.

[Lauren Garrone]

This is an overused phrase, a chronically online phrase at this point that should be retired, which is reheating nachos. But it's like, I don't even mind. Just reheat your own nachos. Just have LTW have this fantasy sequence. And Herbert wakes her up because she thinks, or he thinks, she's having a terrible dream. But I will say that this dialogue is some of the most interesting dialogue of the episode, which is not saying much. But Charlotte has an oddly mature response to ltw, who's clearly feeling an extreme amount of guilt because she's like, I not only had a sex dream about this guy I work with, which obviously is subconscious, but she admits to Charlotte, I'm actively flirting with this man. And Charlotte is like, you know, I also have sex dreams and about ex boyfriends, but to me, they don't count because I have short hair in them. And also, like, oh, yeah, I flirt with the young guys that are hanging the art. Like, you have to have some chemistry with someone you're working with that closely.

[Paul Glover]

There's a reason why they call it a work wife, not a work sister.

[Lauren Garrone]

Are you saying something about Chelsea, my work wife?

[Paul Glover]

No. What I mean is, like, that particular phrase is framed in sort of a romantic or sexual language of matrimony, I guess, and that they're bound sometimes because it's the ball and chain, and sometimes because you have chemistry. You have an energy that is undeniable. And that's why you're a good pairing for that context.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, they give it a name. Paul Flerking.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, fucking Christ. We could have had, like, a actually funny bodice ripping scene. Just go right up to the Gilded Age set. Like, I'm sure Cynthia's got the keys. Come on. Like you could film something actually. Cool.

[Lauren Garrone]

That's Carrie's voiceover. That's what she's writing. The woman had her bodice ripped.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

Thank God. Charlotte actually doing something at her job. She is setting up a retrospective show at her gallery, which is some Tracey Emin ripoff. Most likely a nod to her piece My Bed.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Because of what I was saying earlier about the being like they've done it with Marina Abramovic and with Petrovsky. Sort of like James Turrell or. Yeah. Olafur Eliasson or something.

[Lauren Garrone]

But even more confusing is the original piece was done in late 90s. Charlotte is discussing how this piece was done in the late 80s. She has this funny line of like, well, before Lena Dunham made it okay for women to be messy. This artist, it's like the gallerist that I like the most. I believe her name is Kai. Is like, I got an art history degree for this. It's like they should know who this artist is. Also, these women are in their late 20s, early 30s. They know who Lena Dunham is. They know what being what.

[Paul Glover]

This could be a conversation. Instead of like Charlotte very fumbly holding court, we could see that she's actually a respected person in her field, even though she's a little bit slapsticky.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, they've taken that away from her because the scene begins with her putting a fake amount of ejaculate in a condom. Per the details of how to set up this performance piece, we should say for those who have not watched the episode and are not familiar with the piece that that they are ripping off. It is a bed, an unmade bed filled with objects.

[Paul Glover]

It reminds me of the scene in Miranda July's you and Me and Everyone. We know where they're at the Contemporary Art center and there's an artist making this installation and it looks like a construction site and there's a mug. And they talk about how there are ready made pieces mixed in with handmade objects. And it's a good gag. And it is just a very slight, very small comment on installation art. And this could have been one of them had it not been a setup for what happens later on. That was really unsatisfying.

[Lauren Garrone]

They do this in season two when Charlotte dates the actor and he mistakes the fire extinguisher in the gallery as a piece of art. Which, by the way, hey, Jeff Koons, he was not wrong for.

[Paul Glover]

Right. Actually, I think Jeff should have made one that was just like it as an homage.

[Lauren Garrone]

I was like, where is Charlotte's storyline going? Because at the same time as she's setting up this installation piece and showing her competency at her job, her Vertigo is back.

[Paul Glover]

Right? Which is there some kind of a consensus among younger people, like people our age and younger, that Vertigo is fake?

[Lauren Garrone]

They think it's just the movie. This happened when they re released Titanic, Paul. Where a younger generation didn't realize that the Titanic was an event that actually happened.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, my God.

[Lauren Garrone]

Charlotte invokes having Vertigo the previous year as if we all know that. And I find that so bizarre. And again, I know this is nitpicking, but this episode is only 32 minutes. I think we've been talking about this episode longer than the runtime of this episode. But for a show to exist for so many seasons, two movies, and now we have a series that is twice as long as the original series. And you are invoking an event that seems pretty important to Charlotte. That we never saw that happen in between seasons, in between scenes, in between episodes is kind of insulting. And I'm like, where could this Vertigo storyline be going?

[Paul Glover]

Can we talk about this gallery show for a second?

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, of course. The retrospective show is titled Happily Ever After. It is by an artist named Katinka Soames.

[Paul Glover]

Henry.

[Lauren Garrone]

Soames. Henry. And I'll let Carrie tell us what this piece is about. I've spent my entire adult life haunted by the elusive concept of happiness. Is happiness a myth, a gift, a skill to master? Welcome to my version of Happily Ever After. So happiness is an iPad and a cleaning rock lady. I totally confirmed.

[Paul Glover]

I think it's interesting, you know, the different versions of us as we evolve.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, just look at us now.

[Paul Glover]

Compared to, say, the 80s.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, think about the things we let go of and the things we hold on to. So clearly that is the thesis of. And just like that.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

Is it done? Well, no. Also, what exactly is going on in this retrospective show where it's a piece from the 80s, but clearly this artist that we never see Such disrespect for the artist. She's clearly made a new piece where there is a model in bed with an iPad.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. If this artist is a performer, it's unclear. Is it about recovery? Is it about, like, event you have, like, some wild years with a mattress on the floor until you eventually just kind of start to resemble pharmaceutical ad?

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, I think the writers have unintentionally created a visual metaphor for the criticism of Sex and the City versus in Just like that, where this original piece from the 80s, much grittier, much cooler. Has got a vibe to it. And then now it's beige. Yeah. The contemporary interpretation of it is just completely neutered. But of course, all of the characters are like, we're so much better off than we were now that we've lost our grittiness.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, but look what else you threw out with that.

[Lauren Garrone]

All right, so we'll talk about Miranda in a second. But Charlotte's vertigo strikes again because she's trying to stop Miranda from taking a sip of champagne. She falls into the performance art piece and lands on the condom. Guys, remember the condom that she was filling with ejaculate?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, no.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yes. It was Chekhov's condom. And when Carrie helps Charlotte back up, there's a condom stuck to her arm, leading one of the gallery girls to say, definitely too much cum. Oh, Christ, let's put that sad trumpet noise again.

[Paul Glover]

I mean, it's not even real cum.

[Lauren Garrone]

Do you think it was cetaphil?

[Paul Glover]

We all know that. Yeah. Cetaphil is the stand. Wait, is cetaphil for oily skin? Very different types of comb.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay. Why you know that? I don't want to know. So back to LTW again. Nothing much happens in this episode. LTW tries to have sex with her husband early in the morning. Which, the way that this scene is shot, it reminded me of the scene from American Beauty. And I hate to invoke him, but Kevin Spacey, where he just starts jerking off next to Annette Benning when she.

[Paul Glover]

When. When ltw's hands start to go south. I was pretty sure she was just going to rub one out while Herbert's sleeping.

[Lauren Garrone]

Which, by the way, I was like, okay, this is cool and transgressive, but instead she wants to fuck her husband and he doesn't because it's so early in the morning and he has to go to the bathroom. Although they make sure so that we don't have in his head that he's taking a shit. It's like, I have to pee.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Which reminds me of that. That request in too much about. Like, when you announce that you're going to the bathroom, you say you announce that you're going to go pee. It puts the image of what you're doing in our heads like that. It really does. And I realized that was the point here. But it's never going to not be on my mind. However, I can sympathize. I can sympathize where you're.

[Lauren Garrone]

Where you deny your horned up wife.

[Paul Glover]

Because you have to pee, which I can Sympathize with sex being awkward if you, you have to pee. I mean, other language about being like, you know, oh, fuck. Oh, God damn it. Shit. Hold that thought. It should be a fucking crisis for him because he's finally having morning sex with somebody he's married to. I'm sorry, that sounds like it's pretty rare. And if she's trying to spice up the relationship, which is what it seems like it's gonna be highly legible to him at any hour. So for him to not be having a real. Have to make a very hard decision at that point. Pun intended. And then also navigating, peeing whilst hard. There's comedy in that. We've seen it play out in the Four Year Old Virgin, but it could be here as well. They seem to have no pride about that kind of a quote. What I'm saying is missed opportunity. Instead of just make it where his mind is elsewhere.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, yeah, we know his mind is elsewhere because he starts just yelling from the bathroom, we need more toilet paper. Oh, and we need this from the market. And this from the market. Through the various guest hosts. When I was on maternity leave. And also Chell and I have talked about it. The wealth that is displayed, that is unspoken. Which would be fine if it also wasn't juxtaposed with the lack of domestic labor that would be in these women's lives.

[Paul Glover]

Right?

[Lauren Garrone]

Like these women, they not only have it all, do it all, they work, they're raising families. In the case of LTW and Charlotte, they're also running errands.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. If the writers thought for any second, like, oh, no, no, we can't have a housekeeper or a nanny be a part of this show because it would feel tone deaf. Then the fucking high rise with the private educations in Manhattan. We're supposed to think that that's not like a display of wealth. Of course it is. Like LTW could be, I don't know, maybe she speaks fluent Spanish to the Dominican woman who works with them, has been with them for years. Something like that, you know, like that could be an interesting way to like soften it, but still have some verismilitude.

[Lauren Garrone]

To be fair in doing this, it would invoke yet another side character in these women's lives.

[Paul Glover]

Yes, yes. Sorry, we need fewer of that. It's only a 30 minute episode after all.

[Lauren Garrone]

So Marion invites LTW to a screening where the Obama's development executive will be as a way to get Michelle Obama into their documentary. I had to watch this scene several times because I was too distracted by the fact that while they are having this discussion, LTW is having, clearly, a sweet green salad. And instead of also ordering a sweet green salad, Marion is eating a papaya.

[Paul Glover]

Sexily eating a papaya.

[Lauren Garrone]

Again, speaking of reheating nachos, they did this when Charlotte dates Mr. Pussy and he's aggressively eating the fruit, which, again, it's like, I understand what you're doing. We're all supposed to understand, like, ltw can't concentrate because, you know, this could be what Marion looks like when he eats pussy.

[Paul Glover]

I guess she could be having the daydream flashes of the bodice ripper in that moment.

[Lauren Garrone]

Of course, instead of thinking of how sexy and the tension between them, all I can think about is, where did this man get a whole papaya delivered for lunch?

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. The sweet green secret menu. It comes in a hexagonal box. Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

LTW has the harvest bowl. And she's like. He's just flipping through her phone on sides and he's like, oh, I'll take a whole papaya. How did he cut it? Whatever. This is where Chelsea would be like, let it go, Lauren.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

So she's too aroused during the screening because their knees touch and has to leave the screening, which, I'm sorry, is incredibly unprofessional.

[Paul Glover]

Would papaya be in season at this point?

[Lauren Garrone]

Chelsea would yell at you. So she goes to the grocery store because remember when Herbert told her all the things that they needed for the house and the daughter needed her special fizzy soda? So she's at the grocery store when the Obama development executive calls her and asks her about the documentary, which, again, it's like, I'm sorry, is this leading to a Michelle Obama cameo at the end of this season?

[Paul Glover]

There's no fucking way. I mean, if it did, like, Christ. What is so aggravating about this is the stakes. Like, we don't see Marion with the development executive seeing the ships pass in the night. The stakes of what she's missing just get resolved immediately by him handing the phone to the woman. And she's delighted to speak with her. Even when she's in the bodega. That costs her nothing, essentially. We should see that she's, you know, fucking up because of her anxieties around this sexual tension. That would be actually interesting. But instead, you know, she has a freak out and nothing bad happens.

[Lauren Garrone]

No. And then her storyline just ends. It ends in that bodega.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

On to Miranda. Miranda's storyline. This entire episode is this. Joy brings over a bottle of gin and Then realizes Miranda doesn't drink, but Miranda says it's fine. We learned that Miranda never technically told Joy that the reason she doesn't drink is because she's an alcoholic. Miranda ponders at the gallery if she's actually an alcoholic or if her binge drinking in season one was due to life stressors like her late in life, career change and sexuality. Then Miranda almost drinks at Charlotte's gallery show, but doesn't. And then Miranda almost drinks Joy's gin at her apartment, but then doesn't.

[Paul Glover]

When Miranda goes into the speech about essentially that she might be able to.

[Lauren Garrone]

Be a moderate drinker, as she phrases it, alcohol ish.

[Paul Glover]

Right? They love a ridiculous neologism like flirking.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, they being the show, they not alcoholics.

[Paul Glover]

Finding the novelty in. In a little, like, portmanteau like that is just such cringe. It's like a deeply ingrained part of the cringe DNA of this show. But anyway, when she goes on to talk about her rationalizing, perhaps she could be one of these people who's able to have a drink every now and then in polite company or in an intimate setting, is her recovery a priority to her anymore? Because that's kind of the only way that I think people who are making full recoveries are able to operate is their sobriety is a precious gift. It's something that they are putting first and foremost in every aspect of their life. And for her to start kind of poking holes in it before her friend's very eyes, and none of her friends know what to do. Charlotte's only idea is to literally physically lunge at her friend to try and stop her from taking a sip. Like in the moment when she's doing that, kind of, like rationalizing that she could perhaps start drinking. Like, I don't know, a mature friend who's been around the block who actually knows people who have had substance abuse issues would be like, let's talk about this, you know, or maybe it's another friend who has experience with recovery of their own. I'm going to invoke some other hobby of ours, which is watching a lot of ER and the way that Dr. Carter talks to Abby whenever Abby's been.

[Lauren Garrone]

Drinking, you know, in season eight of.

[Paul Glover]

Er, you know, classic just comfort watch of er, Even though it's not that comforting, it's actually really fucking grueling.

[Lauren Garrone]

Anyway, well, you know, after Abby reports Carter for stealing, what was it, Fentanyl for a character, which leads him to go to rehab, and then Abby falls off the wagon by casually drinking which her boyfriend at the time, Luka Kovac, is totally fine with. But, yes, Dr. Carter is the one.

[Paul Glover]

You can see that, like, he's. He's taking all of that, like the weight of being a WASP and just shoving it down, trying to crush this, like, this terror inside him to be able to actually let out a cogent response to discovering that she's been drinking, which is like, hey, let's get out of here. We should go to Bill's. Which is a euphemism for a meeting. And it's a way to kind of have a little bit of a hint so you don't put that person who is currently slipping on blast. Everyone in the room. You can kind of keep it a secret between knowing alcoholics.

[Lauren Garrone]

But, Paul, Carrie has her novel to write and Aiden's in town. She can't also be going to an AA meeting. It's funny that this is your perspective of like, well, yeah, clearly Miranda an alcoholic, because I'm the opposite of just like. Again, because we have so much history with this character. And this is not a behavior that popped up until literally season one, which post pandemic, a lot of people drank more like, maybe it was an overreaction. Maybe she is someone who can have a drink or two.

[Paul Glover]

But you have to take people's word. I mean, there was a lot of mountains made out of molehills during lockdown, and recovery was one of them. I remember anecdotally somebody telling me, well, something that you're not supposed to say about these meetings, but that these AA zoom meetings had like over a thousand people and it was just for, like, that one geographical area in New York. But anyway, what I'm thinking is if these friends really love her and they know through.

[Lauren Garrone]

They don't.

[Paul Glover]

They don't. Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

Being like, they are basically strangers to each other at this point. But go on.

[Paul Glover]

Sounds like. Sounds like you got to take step one again. And a lot of people in recovery have to take step one again over and over, sometimes daily.

[Lauren Garrone]

Miranda did take step one. She threw Joy's gin down the garbage chute in her apartment. And we heard it crashing, which she's definitely going to get a letter from the HOA about that.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Also, what is. It's a real gin. You looked it up, right?

[Lauren Garrone]

It is a real gin. Friend of the show, Evan Ross Katz, let me know that, because Joy makes this whole big deal where, by the way, we didn't even get into the fact that Joy shows up. She's like, I've just come back from Canada from Quebec. And I thought I'd stop by. Also, I brought my favorite gin that you can only get in Canada. And Evan Ruskin's this morning was like, that's not true. You can absolutely get it in New York.

[Paul Glover]

The fact that she's hiding it from Joy, it all signals towards a relapse arc. Instead of her recovery being something that she's proud of, it's something that she's ashamed of. And when you're ashamed of something that might be the reason why she drinks, I don't know. But there's a lot of logic that I'm putting on this that probably isn't there.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, I think that Daddy, MPK and the writers want us to understand that her shame is not from her drinking, but her shame is from having to fuck Steve all of those years.

[Paul Glover]

God. Fuck, God. Jesus Christ.

[Lauren Garrone]

What exactly is she going to tell Joy when Joy comes back and is like, hi, love, can I, you know, can I have that gin? And by the way, do you have tonic? Which. That's when Joy realizes that Miranda doesn't drink because she doesn't have a tonic. And as someone who spent the better part of 10 months not drinking due to pregnancy and made a lot of mocktails, you would have tonic water. I mean, not a pregnant person, because you can't.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, you can't have tonic. No quinine for.

[Lauren Garrone]

For a pregnant lady, but you would have a lot of non alcoholic mixers to make mocktails also.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Fever Tree, a British product, they seem to fully colonize our country again, but through soft drinks.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yes. As someone that loves Fever Tree sparkling grapefruit, I did love its appearance in the episode also.

[Paul Glover]

What an insult to Joy. Like, an insult to Joy the concept and also Joy the person. Because, like, not only do I think that you are a liability to my life in your flagrant unattended bottles of. Of special gin, but that I don't respect you enough to have the capacity to understand that recovery is something that's important to me, and you are someone who is important to me.

[Lauren Garrone]

But that's the thing is we learned that Miranda has not been truthful to Joy, which, to be fair, they've only been together six weeks. And I would assume that Joy believes that Miranda doesn't drink because sometimes people are off alcohol. And she wasn't like, oh, I'm actively in recovery. That's why I don't drink anymore.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

And I mean, Miranda does make the point. Do I need to be defined by my darkest chapter? Which is fair, that is.

[Paul Glover]

That's all stuff that she could explore with this person in this new person in her life. Like, if Joy were to look at Miranda and be like, ew, you're damaged. You're sullied by this period, then that's not a partner for her.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, I would like Joy to look in Miranda's eyes and go, is it just me or are our hair colors merging?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, yeah. What's happening between Rebel Wilson and her girlfriend is happening again.

[Lauren Garrone]

Excuse you. Her wife.

[Paul Glover]

Excuse me. Yeah. What did we did Get a absolutely bang on American accent from the actress who plays Joy.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, you were looking down and taking notes and you were like, who said that line? And I was like, that was Dolly Wells doing an American accent. It was great.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. I mean, bang on. On. That's even. That's a very British thing to say, Paul.

[Lauren Garrone]

You're very angry.

[Paul Glover]

Bang on.

[Lauren Garrone]

We also, I should note, we. Fever Tree gets a shout out. Pepperidge Farm gets a shout out because we get a very lazy reference to, I guess, Miranda eating cake out of the garbage because she's eating a cookie instead of drinking the gin. But that's not even the thing. It's like she goes purposely to eat a cookie, and then she discovers the gin, and then she pours the gin, but doesn't. Whatever it does. This is all stupid. Let's. All right, let's wrap this episode up there.

[Paul Glover]

Dog shit episodes.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay. Seema's in this episode, and so is Adam.

[Paul Glover]

Karma.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yes. So Sima and Adam are having sex. I guess we're supposed to believe that this is hot sex. He's about to come, but she's about to come, and he's like, you go first.

[Paul Glover]

They're on their sides. He's hidden it from behind. Seems like everyone's having a good time. You can't see Seema's hands, so I'm gonna assume that she's helping herself along as well, because he also licks her.

[Lauren Garrone]

Fingers after the big O, which would.

[Paul Glover]

Which would make sense. Like, if she comes and she's got wet fingers, she puts them in his mouth. That's hot. That's fun.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. But I can't indulge in that moment because the show is so bizarre. And instead I'm thinking, wait, did he not orgasm? Oh, is that gonna be the storyline that, you know, we're gonna learn? Because he has said in past episodes that he practices yoga.

[Paul Glover]

Does he practice kind of yoga?

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. Does he practice tantric yoga? Is this going to be a, you know, a throwback to the sting days of tantric Yoga and tantric sex. And actually he doesn't orgasm and he hasn't orgasm in years. And that's going to be something that, like, Seema wants to overcome or makes her feel a weird way about. No, this is not referenced ever again. I guess they were like, you know what? This one's for the ladies, guys. They're not orgasming.

[Paul Glover]

We will talk about a used condom. We will talk about Aiden in his jack shack.

[Lauren Garrone]

His jack truck.

[Paul Glover]

Yes, his truck. But not the fact that Seema's having great sex with a man who doesn't bust.

[Lauren Garrone]

This might be the first and last time we have a straight man on this podcast. So they then go to dinner and we learn, yes, that Adam's last name is Karma. And when I first watched this episode, I. I did not understand what was going on in this scene because, no shade to the actor Logan Marshall Green. He is choosing to be a little marble mouth in his portrayal of this character. I thought his last name was Carmel. And I was like, what's the big joke around this? I had to rewatch this scene with subtitles to learn. Oh, no, his last name is Karma because his mother changed it to Karma.

[Paul Glover]

When he was in seventh grade. Right.

[Lauren Garrone]

Specifically the seventh grade.

[Paul Glover]

So triangulating back to imagine, he's roughly 40 in this. In this show, his character, you're what, 12? In the seventh grade?

[Lauren Garrone]

Sure. I mean, the actor is 48.

[Paul Glover]

So, wow, he looks good. Nice hairline.

[Lauren Garrone]

So, yes, this is something. Again, this is a carryover from the previous episode where Seema is being a bitch for unknown reasons. She's like, well, that's something I should have known about. And it's kicked off in this scene where we learned that Adam doesn't wear deodorant. He's one of those freaks in the summertime who uses those rock crystals as deodorant.

[Paul Glover]

He does refer to smelling her when he was up in her armpit business and that she smelled of aluminium, aluminum, zirconium, which, like his sort of crunchy, kind of like natural vibe. Like, it really. Has it come up that much? Other than this one thing, other than.

[Lauren Garrone]

That, it is tied to his career, which seems like, yeah, all of this works for your Persona, but I'm a real estate agent, so I need to smell nice.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

Is she worried his stink is going to get off on him? By the way, we should mention, for those that are not watching the episode, how they get on this topic is because they are having dinner at a relatively nice restaurant and a woman eating alone. And I think we're led to believe because of what she's about to do. It's the reason she's eating alone. She publicly puts on deodorant.

[Paul Glover]

The Seinfeld version of this would be where he.

[Lauren Garrone]

Jerry's on a date.

[Paul Glover]

Elaine starts seeing a guy who doesn't wear deodorant, and then he starts wearing deodorant. And then she gets the ick because he doesn't smell like the pheromones are gone or some shit.

[Lauren Garrone]

That might be a storyline. You wouldn't know because you've never watched Seinfeld, which is.

[Paul Glover]

Hey, it sounds like I have.

[Lauren Garrone]

I know you constantly have Seinfeld Stolen Valor because I've showed you. Anyway, Seema continues to be this Samantha Standing character. But I'm not understanding what they're trying to do with this because it's done much better with Samantha and Smith Jared when she learns his name is Jerry Jarrod.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

And it works because she's a PR person. He wants to be an actor.

[Paul Glover]

Right.

[Lauren Garrone]

She sees him perform. He has talent. I'm gonna rebrand you as Smith Jared. We also learn that Jerry Jarrett is an alcoholic.

[Paul Glover]

God, I was just about to say, like, one line of dialogue. Yeah. I was really fucked up for, like, 10 years back in Seattle. Done over. That was all he had to say about his past.

[Lauren Garrone]

And she has the joke line of, no wonder you drink because you were born Jerry Jared.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. And so Joy could have had that banter with Miranda and they leave it. There could be the stress of coming out about this to her, which they have built up, which maybe they'll release by Miranda saying, like, hey, you know, I'm in recovery. And Joy's like, oh, that's wonderful. You know, so am I or some shit. Well, no, because she drinks, but whatever.

[Lauren Garrone]

I thought you were gonna say that Joy could be like, let's get the same haircut. I know how to fix this. The Seema storyline does not matter. It's not like she wants Adam to change his name. To be fair, I genuinely thought for the majority of the season, Adam's name was Adam Gardner.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Which is probably how he saved in Carrie's phone.

[Lauren Garrone]

And for reasons unknown, Anthony Giuseppe and Giuseppe's mom, played by Patti LuPone, make an appearance.

[Paul Glover]

And they're loaded.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yes. They briefly appear. So we get this lore dump that Giuseppe's family is incredibly wealthy. We learn this because she wants to buy him expensive and, like, pretty bad art, but art that a boomer who had a lot of money would want to buy. Like, A Keith Haring, a Basquiat. We should say Victor Garber is back in a blink and you miss it moment. As an art gallery owner who desperately wants to sell very expensive art to.

[Paul Glover]

This rich woman, aren't they running out of herrings and Basquiats?

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, they need these large scale pieces for Giuseppe's new loft that he was will be moving into so that he no longer has to stay in his tiny apartment. But it doesn't matter because he spends all of his time at Anthony's apartment.

[Paul Glover]

Well, they'll just put the Lars Ulrich collection of Basquiats in the Hot Fellas headquarters.

[Lauren Garrone]

God, such a deep cut. Specific reference. One of my favorite comedies is the. It's not a comedy, but it is the documentary Some Kind of Monster about the making of of the Metallica album Some Kind of Monster where they invite a documentary crew, the documentary crew that did the West Memphis three documentary. And the band falls apart while making it. There is a hilarious scene which is on YouTube. I'll put it in the episode description where Lars Ulrich truly kind of 10 years before Jay Z and everyone else, every other celebrity got on. Basquiat is selling his Basquiat paintings. And it's just very dumb about it and it amuses me to no end. Anyway, Anthony says to Giuseppe that he believes that his mother put a mob hit on him, that he was going to the store the other night and he and a car was following him. And Giuseppe encourages Anthony that the way that he can ingratiate himself and thaw this iciness between the two of them is for Anthony to cook for Giuseppe's mother, which I thought was a joke because Giuseppe's mother, as established, is an Italian American woman or I don't even know if she's an Italian American woman. She's an American woman from Buffalo who spent majority of her life in Italy. But I would never cook for someone who has spent most of their life in Italy.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, because Italian American food is better than food in Italy.

[Lauren Garrone]

Hot take.

[Paul Glover]

No I think would really happen with this show is that Giuseppe and Anthony will come up with this idea to cook for her like they did in this episode. And then we never see it. Just doesn't happen.

[Lauren Garrone]

Only time will tell if this thrilling setup is paid off in next week's episode. So unsurprisingly, this episode ends with Carrie writing about the woman yet again. After what seemed like forever, the woman felt happiness had arrived at her doorstep, remarkably and quite unexpected. Like a magnificent red bird which suddenly appears in the garden. You hold your breath and remain very still, not wanting it to fly away again.

[Paul Glover]

Ugh.

[Lauren Garrone]

I have a real question. Is Carrie's book good?

[Paul Glover]

According to Duncan, it stopped him in his tracks. Or it took his breath away.

[Lauren Garrone]

But there doesn't seem to be any plot. It's just a woman wondering things.

[Paul Glover]

Well, she couldn't help it.

[Lauren Garrone]

Again, she is the woman. This is the very bizarre tension of this season, specifically where all of her friends, as noted by Miranda when she discovers her manuscript last week, and us as the audience, we understand she is the woman. This is auto fiction. She's writing about her own feelings. And, you know, the woman is happy again because her lover, Aiden, like a red bird, is back.

[Paul Glover]

Terrible simile. I mean, to not even name the type of bird.

[Lauren Garrone]

That was your pandemic hobby, right? You got into bird watching.

[Paul Glover]

Who didn't?

[Lauren Garrone]

Not I.

[Paul Glover]

Well, you know, you got into.

[Lauren Garrone]

I got into podcasting.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, right, right. That's how we got here. And that's all we got. 32 minutes over. Done. Bye.

[Lauren Garrone]

So the preview of next week's episode. It seems like it doesn't matter that Carrie put the kibosh on inviting Duncan over for dinner, but because the woman wakes up and Aiden is having coffee with Duncan. You know why? Because he lives in their house.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, they share the little garden terrace. Thank you, Adam.

[Lauren Garrone]

Karma, not gardener.

[Paul Glover]

Right.

[Lauren Garrone]

All right. That's where we leave this episode.

[Paul Glover]

We get it. We did it. We got through it.

[Lauren Garrone]

We did. We somehow spent twice as long talking about the episode than the actual runtime of the episode, but we did it. Do you feel up to answering some questions?

[Paul Glover]

Let's do it.

[Lauren Garrone]

I must say, the first round of questions are related to Sex and the City.

[Paul Glover]

Come on. No, just kidding. Let's do it.

[Lauren Garrone]

The first of which is, how the fuck did you come across Sex and the City? Someone wanted to know. Hbo, I think what they are asking this is. And if I had to guess, a girlfriend introduced you to the show.

[Paul Glover]

Indeed. The concept of like a comfort watch, which is not really a male tendency, but yeah, you spend a ton of time around women like I have in my life, and you get sort of brought into the fold of what those comfort watches are. And throwing on an episode of Sex and the City is a surefire way to do it. Imagine. It's a kind of a mutual touchstone for a lot of you out there. But yeah. So just it being on all the time, I was a quick convert.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah. Paul is very girlfriend coded. That's something that I realized when we were dating. I think the moment that really took me aback is I was talking to a friend. You overheard me talking to our friend Katie. And I don't even know what it was, but I was like relaying something. Was like something. And I was like, you don't want to do it? And you were trying to understand and then you just went, oh, it would be like getting a facial at the European Wax Center. And both Katie and I stopped in our tracks and we were like, one, yes. But two, how do you know about these things?

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, I always wondered what like European Wax center is. Like. It's a chain. It's like.

[Lauren Garrone]

It's a franchise.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. It's like next to the Edible Arrangements or the check cashing place or something like that. And no disrespect to whatever happens at a European Wax center, but I was just. I don't know, I pulled that out of nowhere. And you never forgot it.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay, so speaking of your love of Sex and the City, what is the best first low key episode to show my fiance who is a cool, stereotypical straight male?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, shit. Well, I. There's something that I have to have to confess. I have no memory of the titles of the episodes, so it's like I'm.

[Lauren Garrone]

Going to treat them.

[Paul Glover]

They're like their friends episodes. Or I just say, like, oh, the one where the. Whatever.

[Lauren Garrone]

That's what I'm here for. I probably know what the episode title is if you just describe it.

[Paul Glover]

Sure. What is a low key episode?

[Lauren Garrone]

If I had to assume, and we've answered this question before Chelsea and I gave our answers. And I can tell you, I suggested as a way to indoctrinate a boyfriend into committing to watching Sex and the City, I don't recommend. Starting in season one, I recommended.

[Paul Glover]

Who's answering this question?

[Lauren Garrone]

No, I'm just letting you. I recommended Are we sluts Because. Yeah, yeah, it's a great thematic episode. Steve's in it, Aiden's in it. But you don't have to know a ton of lore. Like to recommend something in season six. You would just need to know. So, so much backstory with all these characters.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, it's true. I kind of think that Aiden's introduction could be pretty good.

[Lauren Garrone]

So that's. If there's smoke, there's fire.

[Paul Glover]

Okay.

[Lauren Garrone]

Where he's kind of a dick about not wanting to see her because she's a smoker.

[Paul Glover]

Like a classic thing that boyfriend and girlfriend could differ on.

[Lauren Garrone]

This is true. The episode after is the one I recommended where Carrie is actively trying to bed Aiden and he doesn't want to.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Or we could get into. Get into some Steve. Like when they go to Steve's apartment for the first time, like, there being a differential between a woman of a career and a man of some jobs. You know, that kind of thing.

[Lauren Garrone]

And what did Steve say in that episode, Paul?

[Paul Glover]

That he modeled his apartment after Travis Bickles in Taxi Driver.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, no. I thought we were gonna get your Steve impression, which I don't know why. Everyone loves my Steve impression. You actually legitimately do a good impression.

[Paul Glover]

Of Steve that he's. He's finally doing it. Opening up my own bar.

[Lauren Garrone]

Which brings us to our next question. Do you feel sorry for the treatment of Steve? I think we know the answer to that. But more importantly, what do you think he's been up to this season?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, he's living his best life. He must be like, I'm picturing him that he's now like, the mayor of Coney Island. Like, his business is rocking. It's summertime. He's right there on the boardwalk.

[Lauren Garrone]

He's got his boy Brady. They're living together in a loft, which is something that is said in a. In a throwaway line in one of.

[Paul Glover]

These episodes, which is pretty cool. I mean, he also like Coney island, one of my favorite places in New York is like a kind of a working class paradise. It always has been. It's like, who works really hard, has just a little bit of time off. You go there because it's great. People watching. There's something for every age. It's a little bit weird, it's a little bit dirty, it's a little bit dangerous, and it's fun, and there's a.

[Lauren Garrone]

Lot of women for him to meet.

[Paul Glover]

I was about to say he's definitely crushing as basically the mayor of the boardwalk. And I'm imagining him being, like, a little bit tatted up late in life. Tatted up because there's a lot of great places to get tattooed down there.

[Lauren Garrone]

Do you think he has good tattoos or bad tattoos?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, no, definitely not. But it's okay because he's got a personality.

[Lauren Garrone]

Do you think he's got, like, a shamrock?

[Paul Glover]

He probably might have overdone it.

[Lauren Garrone]

You think he's maybe got like a Ben Affleck back piece? Like a phoenix rising out of his butt?

[Paul Glover]

He didn't overdo it in the sense of his, like a full color back piece or something with realistic looking flames? I imagine he has a little more taste than that. I'm just imagining him getting a bunch of, like, you know, some sailor Jerry style. Maybe the like steeplechase face or a Tilly. Tilly, That's. The guy's the. The smiling mascot of Coney Island.

[Lauren Garrone]

All right. Very authentic. I could almost like smell the same. See, from everything you're describing in Coney Island. All right, last Sex and the City related question. Favorite boyfriend of the week or if you could be a Sex and City boyfriend, who would you be? You can be a mashup of people Again. You.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, yeah. Hybrids are allowed.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, again, do you still feel that you are a Steve Aiden hybrid with hairy tendencies? With everything you've seen these characters do through in Just like that?

[Paul Glover]

I don't know. I don't identify with like. This is so hard. I'll get back to you on this one. Okay, well, the answer. Well, that. Well, this is a two parter, right? You asked if I could be a boyfriend of the week because, like, of the. The second tier men of Sex and the City, there are the people who were on multiple, multiple, multiple episodes. The. The Vaughns, the Burgers.

[Lauren Garrone]

Vaughn was. Was a one and done.

[Paul Glover]

He was a one and done.

[Lauren Garrone]

Was he premature ejaculator?

[Paul Glover]

You would be right towards stories.

[Lauren Garrone]

You would get the sense that he would have been introduced in an episode where he's like the perfect boyfriend. And then in the following episode we learn like, oh, he's got these premature ejaculation issues. But no one and done.

[Paul Glover]

Wow. I guess it's just because Justin Theroux.

[Lauren Garrone]

Has been on twice.

[Paul Glover]

Yes. Okay, I take it back. Second tier. I'm gonna go with Ray the jazz man as a fellow adhd. Just catch.

[Lauren Garrone]

He was on two episodes.

[Paul Glover]

All right.

[Lauren Garrone]

He was. Was introduced as a. As a dreamy fella. And then in the following episode, while his, you know, dick game was unparalleled and made Carrie orgasm before she said, ever said I love you. Which I guess is a rarity for her. I guess his ADHD did him in. Kind of ableist when you think about it.

[Paul Glover]

I agree. I agree.

[Lauren Garrone]

You have to love and give your ADHD boys their breath.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Even if it's jazz.

[Lauren Garrone]

Even if you were in the middle of a conversation and he was. Leaves the room and just starts playing the bongos. Why are you looking at me that way? I wasn't referring to you.

[Paul Glover]

Sorry. I was thinking about bongos.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay. Graphic design questions. I thought this was.

[Paul Glover]

Yep. Just kidding.

[Lauren Garrone]

I thought it was very sweet. The Fuckettes. If they know two things about you, they know that you are a graphic designer and that you are from New Mexico. And we Got questions about both those things.

[Paul Glover]

I love this. The people who have. I mean, there are a lot of really lovely questions that you were reading to me as they came in. And you could tell that, like, some of these folks are ones that I met in the merch line on tour. And I had nothing but really fantastic interactions with everyone who came through. And shout out to you if we met at the merch table. That was so much fun. And Lauren knows this about me, that I as kind of an extrovert who needs a bunch of human contact to recharge the social battery. It did me some good. So look forward to doing it again.

[Lauren Garrone]

You miss the merch line, don't you?

[Paul Glover]

I'm fucking. I love it. Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

I need to like, create. We need to do pop ups just so you can get that contact high of manning the. The merch line. Okay. What made you want to become a graphic designer?

[Paul Glover]

I know the moment is a very cute story. I was probably six years old and I grew up in New Mexico and there were the sort of cooler, bigger kids who were sometimes scary, who were the cholos. And they had super hot moms and like their, their dads drove cool cars like that kind of a kid on the playground. And one of them, I don't remember his name, but I had a little bit of reputation in the classroom as the kid who draws, the kid who had, you know, who would make cool lettering. And one of them, who I would normally have no interaction with on the playground just due to those hierarchies of nerd like me and then the cool cholo kids, he came up to me with his notebook and he said, hey, can you write my name all sick on my notebook? And I looked at him and I was like, I can totally do that for you. And essentially that's what I still do. People come to me and they want their name to look all sick on their notebook or whatever else.

[Lauren Garrone]

Or we're like, hey, we keep saying this phrase, glamorous women having nervous breakdowns. Can you make it look, look like an old romance novel?

[Paul Glover]

And I even took a class, kind of related. But one of my heroes, Ken Barber, who's designed so many recognizable logos, like the agent provocateur script, very sexy lettering. He taught a class that I took on the lettering of romance novels. And it's totally came through in this design for sure.

[Lauren Garrone]

It paid off very well. This dovetails nicely. Notes on the HBO logo changes and why I assume they are referring to the HBO Max. To Max. Back to HBO Max, which was purple and now it is black.

[Paul Glover]

We meet again. Most of the ire, I think that comes from these very subtle changes in the corporate world that we hear of fetching astronomical prices is backlash because we think it's a waste or because it's like, oh my God, you paid that for that. That kind of a feeling. And I'm not really defending necessarily that corporate behavior, but it does make a little more sense to me, having experience in this field is that yeah, they're changing the logo, but they're also developing all of the rules and ways to implement that logo across all the thousands of little tiny things throughout the company and the business. That said, they can maintain a continuity and that takes a ton of time and can be really wasteful. Admittedly, it still seems kind of like not that much money after you spread it out and everybody gets their, their chunk and has their finger in it. So on top of just the price and outrage about the price of these corporate logo changes and the notes about the logo itself, I mean, HBO's logo, thank God, really hasn't been altered that much. I saw somebody found some mistakes in the logo, like they're slightly off that they tried and point out and then fix. There's a lot of look, I fixed it videos online. But I think it's a great logo. I think they have, they're smart not to, not to mess with it. Max itself that kind of like softened sans that they put next to it doesn't really look that great. I think it's trending just to go back to HBO and whatever corporate restructuring it takes to do that I think is a smart move.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, it's very clear that the next move is going to be like, you know what, we're going back to HBO and we're going to have a sub channel that has more like B level content called Cinemax. Okay, some New Mexico questions. Tell us your favorite special things about Albuquerque and do you miss it?

[Paul Glover]

I do. Special things about Albuquerque are its strangeness. I think it's a city that has always been sort of geographically a stop on the way to some other dream. There's a joke that New Mexico is where people would break a wagon wheel and on their way to California and then they just got stuck. And there are lots of examples of that. But it isn't to say that it is a consolation prize for some other. Some aspect of manifest destiny of before. It isn't. It is a beautiful physical space to be in with fabulous weather, a unique history of so many influences that are from the indigenous world. Of the Spanish speaking world and the English speaking world coming together for a really long time, really unlike anywhere else in this country or on the continent. And has developed not only into my own heritage as somebody whose family has been there for generations, but also the way that we speak there, our food, our customs, our architecture. I think that spending enough time in New Mexico, not just Santa Fe, which is often people first stop or first vacation.

[Lauren Garrone]

It was mine.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. But spending some time in New Mexico to experience the kind of serenity I think is there, the grittiness also there. The fact that the two can exist simultaneously is fascinating. And allowing yourself to kind of understand why it's a crossroads of some really important events that have occurred.

[Lauren Garrone]

You love to. You are like the dad from my big Fat Greek wedding, connecting everything back to Greek heritage. You're like, you know who was born in New Mexico?

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Or did you know that that was invented in New Mexico? Yeah, I'm definitely like that. And I love seeing New Mexico be recognized around the world. Certainly Breaking Bad did a lot of that for me when I first moved to New York. When I'd say that I'm from Albuquerque, they'd be like, oh, my God, Breaking Bad. And then of course, I'd go on and on about that, but.

[Lauren Garrone]

Well, you would go on about the fact that you were an extra in some episodes of Breaking Bad.

[Paul Glover]

That's true. On season one, before anybody knew that it was any good, I was a college student and I had signed up for, like, the Mexico Film office cattle call of extras. And I got a call that said, hey, they're filming a new series with the dad from Malcolm in the Middle. And it's about methamphetamine. And I was like, wow, that sounds fucking awful. I don't really feel like going to class today, so. Yeah, let's do it. Why not? I arrived a little bit late to base camp, which shout out to anybody who works on set. I'm sorry. It's a very annoying thing. But it resulted in me sharing the van ride with Bryan Cranston himself, seated right next to me.

[Lauren Garrone]

He and I touched thighs like LTW and Marion.

[Paul Glover]

That's true.

[Lauren Garrone]

Were you just so overcome with amorous feelings, you were like, I gotta get out of this van.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, that papaya is not sitting well with me.

[Lauren Garrone]

Red or green?

[Paul Glover]

Both.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay.

[Paul Glover]

Absolutely both.

[Lauren Garrone]

Best New Mexico burrito joint, the handheld.

[Paul Glover]

Versus, like a smothered platter style burrito is like kind of two totally different things in my head. I don't know what I like more. Depends on the context. But like getting a burrito at a restaurant when it's smothered in red and green and has sides, that's a wonderful thing. The ones they do downtown at Cecilia's are famous. It was on. It's. There's a guy Fieri, like standy, like, pinned to the wall down there. And those are fantastic.

[Lauren Garrone]

That's your recommendation?

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

All right, well, let's get into some relationship questions. We have a straight man. This perspective we so rarely have on the podcast.

[Paul Glover]

So the one backed by popular demand.

[Lauren Garrone]

Advice to ask at a bartender who could be Steve to my Miranda.

[Paul Glover]

How to ask out a bartender. Don't do it at the bar.

[Lauren Garrone]

It's tough because. And I think we have done the rewatch episode where Miranda first sleeps with Steve because there's a little bit of a logic leap which anyone that has dated someone or tried to ask out or sleep with someone that where you meet them in a bar or restaurant, especially in New York, they're there till 2am, 4am you can't wait around for them.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. And it did have some. Some accuracy that it was because it was so early and the bar was pretty empty that they could even hear each other speak. That. So that makes sense. But asking out a bartender, when I say at the bar, I mean physically, like, bellied up to a bar. Not really a place where you're gonna pierce through the environment. But perhaps, you know, people that this bartender knows, perhaps they work at multiple bars. Bartenders do that a lot.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, she should show up at the multiple bars he works at. That won't be seen as stalking.

[Paul Glover]

No, no. But I mean, maybe two bars, I could see that being cute where you maybe you know that that bartender is going to be there, but it's an, oh, my God, I'm just killing time before I meet my friends. And it's right when the bar opens. Maybe you can get a word in edgewise and be a memorable face. But if you can be introduced to this person by one of their friends or some kind of a mutual link, then that would be so much better.

[Lauren Garrone]

I think she would have tried that if that was available to her. My first reaction was like, ooh, put your number on a matchbook. And then I was like, oh, no one has matchbooks because everyone vapes. Then I was like, put your number on a vape. Put your number on a vape. Slide it over. Then I was like, oh, just put your number on a receipt when you're closing out. And then I was like, oh, everything are.

[Paul Glover]

Oh, yeah, no, that's just.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yeah, well, no, but I feel like we don't even have receipts anymore because I think bartenders, even at, like, the diveus bars, just hand you the terminal now.

[Paul Glover]

Right. And something that would be helpful is like, what. What's your job? Do you also work in service? Are you a bartender? You work in a restaurant. If you. If you're also in the neighborhood, you work similar hours. Like, I think it's pretty classic to have a kind of service exchange. Like if you're a barista and they always come in to get a drink as you're closing and the bar is opening, like that kind of a thing, you could. Could create some other place other than the. The bar itself to interact.

[Lauren Garrone]

So your suggestion is. Involves. Any scenario, involves light stalking?

[Paul Glover]

Well, I don't know if it's not light stalking, it's community.

[Lauren Garrone]

When you get arrested, when he has a restraining order, just use that as a defense. How is newborn life going for Morty?

[Paul Glover]

Morty's great.

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, we are biased, but I think we got the best baby.

[Paul Glover]

The search is over. The best baby has been found.

[Lauren Garrone]

I assume they're asking your experience, our experience with having a newborn.

[Paul Glover]

I miss him right now. What's he doing?

[Lauren Garrone]

I mean, having a newborn in 2025 is a police state, so we can.

[Paul Glover]

Just whip him up right here and take a look and see that he's being attended to.

[Lauren Garrone]

I will say that this week has been tough.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. A lot of growth spurts may be going on.

[Lauren Garrone]

Having a baby, I wouldn't say is harder than I thought it was going to be, but it is as hard as people have said it is going to be.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah. Also what they said was that the good feelings and connection that you feel and just like what happens inside you as you become a parent. I mean, I'm on that train for sure. The feeling I get when I look at him and I just think about him and I think about his life and I think about how he's made of you and I. And it's just. It's overwhelming sometimes.

[Lauren Garrone]

Absolutely. I showed you when I was pregnant this quote that Rob Delaney the comedian had said where. And I think it's the best quote about parenting, especially if you're on the fence. I think more than ever, we are aware of all the bad parts of having a child. You're exhausted. You don't have a village. It's emotionally draining. It's financially draining. And his quote sort of hits at all those points of, like, you've been tired before. You've not known what to do before, but the part that you don't know is, yes, how. How revealing, how beautiful it is. But to be fair, right now, he is just a potato.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, he has a bit of a personality. He's just so picturesque. Like his. His face just got the best face, the cutest one. Sometimes, like, I imagine a lot of other parents have experienced this where they see other children, other babies. And I had this gut reaction. Like, recently, I see like a baby on TV or something. I'm like, what's wrong with his face? It doesn't look like mine and yours mixed together. What's wrong with it?

[Lauren Garrone]

I think the most surprising thing thus far about specifically newborn life is, you know, I was aware that they need to eat every two to three hours, but you really live and die by the time you feed them, put them back down, do activities. It's an hour of that, three hour in between feedings. So you're really living life in those two hours that they are sleeping. And if they don't sleep, then there goes your opportunity to do anything.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah.

[Lauren Garrone]

It's the reason why I didn't hear a good portion of this episode is a fussy baby in my ear.

[Paul Glover]

That also is when you and I are trying to have a conversation or talk about strategy. Just like, what the hell to do with him whenever he is caning bloody murder. I'm like, what?

[Lauren Garrone]

It is the craziest thing. We will be right next to each other. And if he is crying, we cannot hear each other.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, he'll see. He. He seems to cry right on the verb of a sentence. Or like you telling me to do what?

[Lauren Garrone]

Here's a very straight male question. Who do you got for mlb? Al, mvp? Judge or Raleigh?

[Paul Glover]

Raleigh. The. The big dumper. Just because, I mean, Aaron Judge is an incredible ball player, but I'm not a fan of the organization.

[Lauren Garrone]

What is the organization?

[Paul Glover]

The New York Yankees.

[Lauren Garrone]

Oh, that's right. Because you're a Mets boy.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, because I like the pain, I guess.

[Lauren Garrone]

Also, speaking of paying Dodgers for the.

[Paul Glover]

World Series again, maybe it's against the Mets.

[Lauren Garrone]

I don't think that's happening.

[Paul Glover]

That's all right.

[Lauren Garrone]

How did it go when you went to a Dodgers game? Dodgers v Mets?

[Paul Glover]

Oh, yeah. It ended like it. You know, like you. You know, like it usually does. But it was a long, long game. Like, it looks 10 innings. So it held on for a long time.

[Lauren Garrone]

Okay. I hate almost all men's cologne, but my husband likes it. Is there a decent scent for a cologne?

[Paul Glover]

I Think that you might be surprised to kind of ignore the gendered scent binary. There are lots of fragrances out there that kind of defy that categorization as being like, this is a man's cologne.

[Lauren Garrone]

Yes. I think what you're referring to is the fact that I was, I was very surprised when we moved in together that your go to scent is the Margiela Jazz man. Is it jazz man or am I just invoking Ray?

[Paul Glover]

You're invoking Ray, the ADHD king. Yeah, Jazz club.

[Lauren Garrone]

Jazz club.

[Paul Glover]

Because replica is all about, you know, bringing back a scent of memory to a specific place in time.

[Lauren Garrone]

But that was a scent that I used to wear.

[Paul Glover]

Well, it's a good one.

[Lauren Garrone]

So our suggestion to you is if not Margiela Jazz club, perhaps one in the replica collection.

[Paul Glover]

Yeah, that's a good. But even more broadly, like a buddy of mine wears black Opium, which is traditionally, I guess thought of as a, as a more female coded. But on, on a man, it makes a lot of sense. So finding just a scent that works or that is cool, or if you want, find something that you do like or rather find something that your, your husband likes and identify the notes. Fragranta.com is a great place to go and learn about the different kind of build of these fragrances. And then you can be like, well, what if it had all these, you know, similar notes except for you drop the musk or you drop the vetiver or something like that. That would be interesting in a way to find something that works for the two of you.

[Lauren Garrone]

Again, you're very girlfriend coded and I'm very lucky to have you.

[Paul Glover]

Well, I'm, I'm thankful to all of the women I learned from throughout the years.

[Lauren Garrone]

All right guys, that does it for us. If you are yearning for more straight male takes. Paul will be joining me.

[Paul Glover]

My number is.

[Lauren Garrone]

Paul will be joining me on our after show and just after that. And he will be answering more hotline and Instagram questions as well as taking our exit survey. You did prepare for that, right?

[Paul Glover]

What? There's a test?

[Lauren Garrone]

All right guys, we'll be back next week. Or at least I will.

[Paul Glover]

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