No, Carrie Bradshaw, You Don't Want That Hideous Table!

“SOLD.” Thank God!

Is Aidan anti-vax? Why do Charlotte and Harry have such a small bed? If Tate and Lily were both babies in Season 6 of Sex and the City, why is Lily still in high school while Tate is graduating college? Will Carrie ever give “The Woman” a name? These are just some of the questions that continue to plague me as I watch And Just Like That. But the question that swirls most consistently is around the 1970s “mid-century Italian wood and glass dining” Vladimir Kagan dining table that Carrie Bradshaw fell in love with while browsing 1stDibs.

Carrie sends a voice note to Aidan about the table that she describes as perfect for the couple because "it's got woodwork like you, style like me, and it's a little weird like us right now.” (It’s also got glass, like the glass her boyfriend’s son shattered at their home in the latest episode of the series.) Aidan correctly responds with a thumbs down emoji, likely panicked to see such an image populate his screen.

But she didn’t stop there. At lunch with Miranda and Seema, she tells them that she’s taking a quick poll of the table.

“Gorgeous,’ Seema, who works in luxury Manhattan real estate, tells her. “That’s interesting,” Miranda remarks without an ounce of contempt.

Later, in the bathroom at the Mexican restaurant Miranda forced them to return to in an attempt to bed the tableside guacamole server, Carrie is at it again.

“I sent you a passionate plea as to why I think that very special table is the essence of us and your reaction is to send me back a stupid emoji? Mm-mm. No way.”

Yes way! $6,750 for that table? They should give you that amount of money as compensation for having to store that table anywhere outside of a Delta One Lounge.

And it’s not just me that thinks so! "This horrific table is terrorizing me,” It's Not the End of the World author Jonathan Parks-Ramage tells me, saying that the table (which recurs in Episode 4) is becoming a new character on the show, much to his chagrin.

“But let's go beneath the table and talk about what is really driving us all crazy about this: It is such a betrayal of Carrie's character! She has better taste than this! It's a table that Carrie Bradshaw would never choose in her right mind. I mean she is so wildly rich now, she could afford a dining room table that serves both dinner and cunt. But instead she has selected what appears to be a conference table shipped directly from the pits of hell. I mean truly, it is giving shitty corporate conference table, like something you would eat your Sweetgreen salad on while watching your co-worker deliver a Powerpoint. It is not a dining table.”

Something that Parks-Ramange mentioned in our conversation that had been swirling in my mind since Carrie bought that soulless Greek revival townhouse is why she wouldn’t hire an interior designer. She’s not only insanely rich; she’s insanely well connected. Surely Carrie doesn’t think she’s going to singlehandedly fill this mansion herself with things she finds on 1stDibs.

“I could see sitting us there, having a whole life,” she tells Aidan in Episode 4, blithely not acknowledging the bizarre grey area of their relationship status (something SJP has referred to as a “sabbatical” in interviews) or that she’s calling it their home despite him not having a key up until the conclusion of Episode 4 and him not being on the deed of the home, a home paid for largely from the inheritance she received from her dead husband, a man she cheated on her now boyfriend with. Also, lest we forget that last season, Aidan wasn’t even comfortable entering Carrie’s apartment, yet he’s strangely okay with this bizarre set-up. I’d say “make it make sense,” but that’s asking too much.

But there’s another important detail I feel we’re overlooking here: Aidan’s occupation. Aidan is quite literally a furniture designer. Not just that, a successful one. So successful, in fact, that he sold his company to West Elm. Why not have him design a table himself, or, at the very least, let him take the lead on finding a table that they could truly have a whole life sitting at? It almost feels downright inconsiderate to send a furniture designer something as bewildering as this and not follow it up with a “JK.”

And it’s not just Sex and the City fans revolting. Interior design experts, too, are scratching their heads. After reading Elle Decor’s Deputy Editor, Sean Santiago’s piece titled, “I Miss Carrie Bradshaw's Old Apartment (And Everything It Stood For),” I had an inkling he’d have thoughts.

“In this era, I think Carrie would be shopping for a young designer, and I don’t know why, at this price point, the writers wouldn’t have given her an arc where she visits different women at their studios to find a table like she would choose a pair of shoes. She would have a gorgeous little lunch with the gallerist Nina Johnson, who would have flown in from Miami for the meeting, and they would visit Katie Stout’s studio where she would be making a beautiful table with a matching chandelier. SATC worked because it spoke to her context, but AJLT feels so divorced from her new reality; the show is out of its depths trying to speak truthfully about who this character is in this moment.”

Fortunately, in the end, Carrie was spared by another buyer who unwittingly saved her from a decision that could have been as cataclysmic as Wyatt Shaw during a game of Apples to Apples. But I remain shaken and spooked by Carrie’s mere interest in a table as soulless and austere as the one she almost put in her home, a home that I hope will one day be furnished.

Like Aidan, I give this table a big 👎.