And just like that … it ended on a turd.
Literally. The series finale of HBO Max‘s dramedy And Just Like That — the oft-gloomy, obsequiously apologetic sequel series to iconic millennium rom-com Sex and the City — climaxes with fully formed fecal cylinders exploding out of an overflowing toilet. So much for bowing out with dignity.
Episode 12 barely mustered enough energy to close out the current season, let alone the three-season series in full. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) hosts Thanksgiving in her newly purchased apartment, only for half the guests to ghost the proceedings. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), who was expecting all her close friends and loved ones to join, is left to entertain several tedious characters she (and we) barely know. There’s Miranda’s listless adult son Brady (Niall Cunningham), who got more screen time and plotlines when he was an infant on SATC, and some rich bore played by Victor Garber, who, incidentally, incites the excrement event I will now forever associate with this denouement.
Even worse, we’re introduced to several detestable new Gen Z stereotypes in Brady’s pregnant hookup (Ella Stiller) and the tactless friends she brings to the gathering, including someone we are repeatedly told is named Epcot, as though that were actually a funny joke. Throughout the episode, directed and co-written by Michael Patrick King, Carrie ponders the state of being alone after decades of chasing men and, in the final shots, dances by herself in her expansive, clinically white Manhattan manse.
With exactly nothing going on and precious screen time devoted to frippery like an elite bridal fashion show and obnoxious idiots we will never see again, the concluding episode mirrors And Just Like That itself: frequently pointless, often meandering and bloated with fantasy wealth.
When the show first debuted in December 2021, I was hopeful about its post-SATC weltschmerz and potential to redraw its main relationships after the heinously shallow SATC feature films and Kim Cattrall’s refusal to return to the franchise as legendary libertine Samantha Jones. No, you can’t go home again, as AJLT regularly reminds us, but you can create a new home in changed circumstances. It only took one subsequent season for the show to squander all opportunities to radically evolve the dynamics of its core trio.
Instead, the show morphed into a thudding retread of SATC with weaker, more diluted storytelling/joke-telling and an obtuse obsession with flaunting its characters’ seemingly infinite riches. By season three, AJLT became the kind of unhinged Franken-show that refuses to interrogate what it means for Miranda, a middle-aged non-profit lawyer, to not spend a single moment sweating the financials of offering 150K over asking price for a two-bedroom NYC apartment. It became the kind of decaying SATC-zombie that could reduce an entire arc about prostate cancer to a crass gag about whether a beloved character will ever get an erection again — replete with the horrifying image of his own teenage daughter smiling wryly at the thought of her parents finally having sex. (Poor Evan Handler — all his warmth and comic timing wasted on Harry Goldenblatt’s sad penis-talk.)
AJLT’s third and final season gets a few things right. It excises some characters from its sprawling universe to allow for a more focused narrative. It meaningfully explores Carrie’s tolerance for emotional and geographical distance in her rekindled relationship with Aiden (John Corbett), only for her to realize that she can’t accept his trust issues when he chooses to be present. It has Carrie question her identity as she grows into someone who may no longer seek romantic companionship. It takes away money and influence from Seema (Sarita Choudhury) so she can find happiness more organically.
Still, the audience spends an inordinate amount of time hearing about the woes of a New York City comptroller’s campaign, and that I can never forgive.
Loose threads abound: We will never know if motormouth Anthony (Mario Cantone) ever marries his improbably hot Italian poet boyfriend, Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi). We’ll never know if soon-to-be-grandma Miranda finds long-lasting happiness with Joy (Dolly Wells), the drama-phobic BBC journalist. We’ll never know if femme-forward Charlotte (Kristin Davis) ever finds peace with her youngest child’s androgyny. We’ll never know if Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) permanently ceases her flirtation with the cute editor of her interminable documentary. We’ll never know if Seema marries her crunchy landscaper boyfriend (Logan Marshall-Green).
And yet I couldn’t help but wonder … does anyone care?
Watching the humbling of a character as haughty as Seema solidified for me a could-have-been plot point that might have more successfully launched AJLT: Mr. Big (Chris Noth), who had a fatal heart attack in the pilot, should have died broke. Carrie should have discovered her Wall Street prince had gambling debts or had gotten snookered by a Bernie Madoff-like conman. She should never have been allowed to bask in her unearned inherited luxury as Charlotte and Lisa bask in their unearned marital luxuries. In the 2020s, Carrie’s problems — such as “downsizing” to a Manhattan brownstone from a Manhattan penthouse and not knowing how to decorate it for half of season 3 — basically render her beyond redemption.
This is a character who once realized her lifetime earnings were stored in a rapidly depreciating designer shoe collection. How can we take Carrie seriously as a writer — as the final half of the third season asks us to do while she writes a historical fiction novel — when her lifestyle no longer depends on her work? How are we supposed to view her legacy as the “voice of a generation” when her happily-ever-after was totally dependent on marrying a mega-millionaire?
AJLT tries to end on a wistful note as Carrie contemplates her future: “I’ve never lived alone without the thought that I wouldn’t be alone for long. But I have to quit thinking ‘maybe a man’ and start accepting ‘maybe just me.’” After the disappointing holiday meal out, she enters her abode and revels in her bittersweet privacy. May we all know the loneliness of a Gramercy Park dream house.