Why Aidan’s Visceral Reaction to Not Wanting to Go Into Carrie’s Apartment Ever Again Is Emblematic of New York-Specific PTSD

With the latest episode of And Just Like That…, the one everyone is raving about/saying it’s marked a shift for the better in the series, director Ry Russo-Young opens on a scene of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) in bed wearing a shirt that says, “The Most New York You Can Get.” It’s a fitting way to kick off “February 14th,” as the most New York you can actually get is being incapable of walking down certain streets or going into certain places. Not because it’s too expensive, but because, in another iteration of your life, you were emotionally wounded there. Irrevocably.

They say you can be traumatized anywhere, but, in truth, there’s no more affecting place for experiencing trauma than one, New York City. The “greatest” city in the world isn’t so great when every street corner, every establishment and, yes, every apartment is a potential landmine for unwanted memories bubbling to the surface and causing the long-buried pain to feel oh so fresh. The usual staunch defenders of the city might say that there’s nowhere else on Earth that can give you such “profound” experiences (most of which include, at some point, vomiting on the subway). That nowhere else will “give you the chance” to feel so much…until you ultimately feel nothing at all. Numbness as a defense mechanism. Repackaged as New Yorkers being “experts at minding their own business.” When, the fact is, they’ve been trained to turn off any reaction whatsoever in the name of self-protection. And perhaps being smug about what Carrie once phrased as: “The fact is [New Yorkers have] pretty much done and seen it all. It takes quite a bit to shock us.”

The same goes for Sex and the City-turned-And Just Like That… viewers, who have seen it all when it comes to Carrie’s relationship pattern. Which goes: Big, Aidan, Big, Aidan, Big…and now Aidan again. What with his character being the last man standing after “John” died (and, to an extent, Chris Noth…when his career died). The stale story maneuver to pivot in this direction yet again presumes that Aidan doesn’t have the self-respect to cut Carrie loose for good—the way Carrie didn’t in order to do the same to Big.

Such lack of self-respect is something that’s actually not that far-fetched when considering how long people choose to stay in New York after “making a life” there—the ultimate euphemism for, “Well, I found a job and enough people to get drunk with so why rock the boat and leave?” Except that Aidan actually did, only to be pulled back in by the woman who once asked the question that proves why New Yorkers are the most annoying breed on the planet: “I’m always surprised when anyone leaves New York. I mean where do they go?” Probably to a place with fewer triggers. 

And yet, Carrie is only too down to be the triggerer when she invokes the spirit that is Aidan by reaching out to him via email. Which is ironic for the person who once insisted (in yet another episode when her romance with him was about to be rekindled), “I don’t believe in email. I’m an old-fashioned gal. I prefer calling and hanging up.” In 2023, Carrie is slightly less puerile, but not by much…she still abruptly closes her computer like a scared little girl when she sees that there’s a new message from him in her inbox. This, of course, harkening back to the “Baby, Talk Is Cheap” episode where she does cave in to signing up for an email address (already late to the game in 2001) and AIM account (again, 2001). Her one “Buddy” on that messaging apparatus being “AidanNYC” (this lack of originality certainly suits Carrie’s writing style). And when his screen name appears online, she has a pre-OK Boomer moment when she freaks out and asks, “Oh my God, he’s online! Can he see me?” Miranda, not bothering to explain to her the finer points of how the internet works, assures her that, no, he cannot see her. At least not literally. 

Galvanized, she gets up and heads over to his apartment, having initially told Miranda in an unsent email, “Aidan says he’s not interested, but he seems interested.” This being Rapist Logic 101. Which is further emphasized by her phone conversation with Miranda during which she says, “His words said no, but his kiss said yes” and “I know he still feels it.” Apparently, they both still do decades later. Even if Carrie should be off-put by how Aidan is dressed like Elvis trying to make Army attire fashionable. 

After making their rendezvous for “February 14th,” as though pretending each has no idea what that means, another callback to previous episodes of SATC occurs when Carrie starts to think she’s being stood up. Maybe Aidan is just a scorpion who lured her into his stinging trap of retribution for all the emotional torment she caused him (which is really what he should have done). Channeling “The Agony and the ‘Ex’-tasy” episode where she waits interminably at Il Cantinori for people to show up to the birthday dinner she didn’t want to have, Carrie starts to feel exposed when she sees Aidan is already ten minutes late (this also echoing the season two episode where Samantha gets stood up at a restaurant by a guy who “we’d” his way all the way home). But no, turns out there was a mixup (Il Cantinori/El Cantinoro-style) and he’s simply at the restaurant next door. To be sure, the symbolism of these two still not being in the same place bears noting. Even if there’s the emphasis that they’re now both “on the same page.” 

Though they never were before, least of all in season four, when Carrie, again, practically begged him to ignore his better judgment and be with her. “You broke my heart!” he finally screams after she makes the selfish case for them getting back together in “Baby, Talk Is Cheap.” Perhaps aware of the power she holds over him when, minutes later, he gives in and runs to her apartment (after she childishly runs away from his because he rightly berated her) to bone, Carrie can make the connection that she is the Big in his life. The one great love he can’t say no to…no matter how poorly she treats him. And there’s something to be said for the parallel to how NYC residents also view New York. No matter how toxic, unhealthy or straight-up miserable it is, its status as a “great love” means it can do no wrong, regardless of the repeated joy it seems to get from burning those who “love” it so much. If by “love” what is meant is delighting in masochism and calling it “making a sacrifice for something wonderful.” 

After their sexual reunion in “Baby, Talk Is Cheap,” Aidan asks Carrie, “You wanna do this to make up for the past? Relieve your conscience?” She insists that no, the reason she wants to get back together is, “I still love you.” He pretends he needs to think about it, but the next morning, he’s outside her window, calling out, “Okay let’s give it a shot.” “You wanna come up?” she replies. Even then, he avoided it, insisting he has to take Pete for a walk. Perhaps knowing, in some way, that Carrie’s “single girl” apartment was going to be his bane. And that’s what it still ultimately is. For Carrie will always see herself that way: someone who can just flit about like the twenty-something NY “it girl” she can’t shake from her self-perception. 

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t pre-fathom how jarring it will be for Aidan to see the apartment again, taking him there after dinner. Not realizing where they are until he gets out of the cab, his face falls as he remarks, “When you said go back to your place, I just thought you had a different place… At the restaurant, I just thought, ‘How great. This feels really great. We’re back where we started.’ But this is where we ended. With the fuckin’ wall I couldn’t break through and those floors, remember, that I redid? It’s all bad. And it’s just, it’s all in there.”

Carrie soothes, “Okay yes, it’s the same place, but we’re not in the same place.” Constantly assuring him that she’s different (therefore, “it’s” different) and better every time they’re about to start things up anew, Aidan can’t quite grasp the veracity of that declaration when she’s continued to live in the same apartment. So unaffected by all the shit that went down there. He finally says, “I can’t go in there again with all that.” Aidan’s trauma response is the culmination of the number New York (and those who flock there) can do to a person. So much that said person can’t even seem to grasp the way they feed on the psychological deterioration it causes after a while. Which is why Aidan then whips around and announces, “Hey, fuck it. This is New York. They have hotels, right?” Aidan’s sudden desire to bang in hotels in lieu of ever going back into that trauma epicenter called Carrie’s apartment also provides an interesting full-circle moment in that Carrie had her affair with Big in hotels throughout Manhattan during season three (side note: another callback to the original series is when Carrie uses the cheesy “Great Sexpectations” pun that served as the title of SATC’s second episode of season six). 

Alas, like those who move back to New York after leaving it, Aidan ignores all the reasons he left (both the city and the relationship) so that he can learn the hard way, yet again, that Carrie, the so-called embodiment of the city (see: “The Most New York You Can Get”), will only cause more pain. For what could possibly go wrong if he refuses to set foot in the apartment she would never abandon? This made peak evident in season four’s “Ring A Ding Ding,” when Carrie is faced with the very real possibility of losing her underpriced abode as she, funnily enough, is forced to buy it back from Aidan after their relationship ends, again. 

Yet what Carrie is most upset about isn’t Aidan, but the apartment. Pacing the “living room,” she gives the voiceover, “As I thought about leaving the apartment I had lived in for the past decade, I realized how much I would miss it. Through everything, it had always been there for me.” So yes, Carrie 1) loves her apartment too much to ever leave and 2) has the type of Stockholm Syndrome that would never allow her to see that the apartment is the source of the trauma she refers to with “through everything.” There’s a reason Aidan is smart enough to believe that no amount of sage could get rid of the energy in that place, and that Carrie’s apartment is nothing but “bad juju.” Of course, so is New York itself, with all the places one is initially so fond of while they’re at an emotional crest falling prey to the invariable emotional dip once such places become tied to pain.