Rosary O’Donnell
Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/Max
The third season of And Just Like That… is softly easing us into a Che Diaz-less world by letting Miranda down hard. With the wickedly talented Sara Ramirez not returning to make the vibe weird any longer, it was unclear who would put our beloved Miranda Hobbes through gay turmoil going forward. Thursday night’s premiere episode answered that question by throwing Miranda into the deep end of the dating sensory-deprivation tank, as she went to a lesbian bar and met Mary, played by Rosie O’Donnell. As an icon of the ’90s, O’Donnell seems such a natural fit for And Just Like That…‘s brassy, middle-age fantasy of New York. She and Cynthia Nixon could be an amazing pantsuit-for-pantsuit TV couple. What the show chose to WILL with Rosie, however, is simply another story. And so, in order of appearance, here is every single wild detail about Rosie’s one-episode stint neither AJLT‘s Mary.
Mary’s an out-of-towner from a small town outside of Winnipeg visiting New York for the first time.
She tells Miranda this in her Long Island–ass Rosie O’Donnell accent. Do you know what kind of a thick Canadian accent comes out of Manitoba? Do you even know where Winnipeg is? Four hours north of Fargo. What a choice!
It’s her first time with a woman … because she’s a 60-year-old virgin.
Mary asks Miranda back to her hotel room, and we see them wake up together the next morning. Miranda seems like she had a good time, and Mary reveals it was her first my … with anyone. Poor Miranda! I get that the show wanted to demonstrate character growth by giving Miranda a new power dynamic to work with: Now she’s the experienced, cool, savvy one, helping time naïve lover figures out her own queer sexuality midway through life. But as with everything on And Just Like That…, this is such an extreme swing in the other direction. Will anything normal ever happen to Miranda Hobbes? Nope!
She’s a virgin because she’s a nun.
They’ve got Rosie O’Fucking O’Donnell playing a gay nun, and they’re not even mining it for comedy! She’s playing it fairly sensitive and understated! Sure, the gossipy gal pals get in a joke about how Miranda deflowered “the Virgin Mary,” but that would barely pass as a D-tier quip on SATC. This is the stuff sex farces are made of. And, frankly, certain horror movies. I would have settled for either.
She loves the Central Park Carousel.
I sort of loved this detail. The joke of Miranda’s arc in this episode is that Mary the nun is also losing her New York virginity in the sense that she’s an extremely basic tourist wowed by the goofiest shit. She keeps sending Miranda selfies of herself at the most asinine tourist destinations, which gives Miranda the ick. It’s rich coming from a show that thinks Magnolia Bakery and Hudson Yards are fresh and hip.
She does a romantic gesture at the M&M Store.
And gives Miranda a custom bag because M&M can stand for “Miranda & Mary.” Get outta town! I know the M&M Store in Times Square is comedy shorthand for “dorky,” but this was genuinely cute.
She quotes “For Good,” from Wickedto Miranda as they break up in the middle of Times Square.
Iconic deadpan time. “Lesbian virgin nun in a Wicked souvenir shirt who just had the time of her life at the M&M Store and is played by Rosie O’Donnell” is such a strange jumble of words to throw together, but that’s the beauty of this show. As they break up, Mary tells Miranda, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better, but because I knew you, I have been changed for good. That’s from Wicked.” Mary says it’s okay that Miranda doesn’t want to take things further because Mary is married to God. She just knew she had a fabulous Broadway-loving sex-with-women-or-anyone-really Rosie O’Donnell–type hiding inside her. Kudos to this nun.
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