It’s Not an Ending — It’s a Disaster

(Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “And Just Like That” Season 3, Episode 12, “Party of One” — the series finale.)

As just another episode of “And Just Like That,” the Season 3 finale is fine.

Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), following an embarrassing encounter at a “solo” lunch with a stuffed dining companion, confronts her paralyzing fears over aging alone and comes out the other end dancing. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) hosts a gut-wrenching Thanksgiving dinner, but still somehow inches her relationship forward with Joy (Dolly Wells). Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) recommit to their freshly devastated, suddenly rejuvenated husbands, while Seema (Sarita Choudhary) concedes one more personal preference to continue her love affair with the grungy gardener, Adam (Logan Marshall-Green).

Yes, I’m omitting a lot, and yes, we’re going to (roto-)root out those droppings shortly, but judged purely as another episode of “And Just Like That,” Episode 12 is par for the course — minor triumphs, major question marks, and lots of lavish looks (save for the lamentable views of Miranda’s lavatory).

The problem, however, is that “Party of One” isn’t just another episode. It’s the series finale, and as an ending to “And Just Like That” — which makes it, by default, an(other) ending to “Sex and the City” — it is, to put it plainly, a disaster. A disgrace. A brimming bowl of shit.

The optics, for starters, are appalling — both what we see and the context in which we see it. Episode 12 isn’t written like a series finale. It’s barely written to be a finale. And yet, HBO and showrunner Michael Patrick King would have us believe this was the plan all along.

When it was announced two weeks ago that Season 3 of “And Just Like That” would be its last, King framed the decision as a creative choice. “While I was writing the last episode of ‘And Just Like That’ Season 3, it became clear to me that this might be a wonderful place to stop,” King wrote on Instagram. “Along with Sarah Jessica Parker, Casey Bloys, and Sarah Aubrey, we decided to end the popular series this year with a two-part finale and extended the original series order from 10 episodes to 12.”

Excuse me when I call bullshit.

Broadly speaking, this is a terrible place to stop, but I’ll come back to that. Character by character, “Party of One” does next to nothing to resolve any of our expansive cast’s ongoing arcs. Are we supposed to assume, because Seema tells Adam, “I don’t miss the gluten,” that she also won’t miss getting married? And that these two attractive opposites will get married? And that this is a decision Seema came to wholly on her own, for her own happiness, and not as a way of settling for a guy she’s convinced herself she loves? (Sorry, maybe she really does love him, but that whole relationship never quite clicked.)

Charlotte and Lisa Todd’s shared fears of getting crushed trying to support their husbands’ wounded egos aren’t given enough breathing room to merit much more than the resolution we get, but is that all we’re supposed to learn from Charlotte’s brush with widow-dom and Lisa Todd’s season-long flirtation with her jacked editor? Marriage is hard? Just keep going? Eventually your partner will fuck you and/or do the dishes?

Miranda, meanwhile, is once again hung out to dry. What about the grandchild she’s been fretting over? I mean, that was a terrible Thanksgiving, and Mia’s (Ella Stiller) equally awful behavior proved why Brady (Niall Cunningham) should have no interest in spending any more time with her than his mother forces upon him, but is Miranda done trying to salvage their disdainful little family? Of course not. Before Joy comes over for leftover pie, Miranda takes solace from the soiled holiday in the points she managed to score with her not-daughter-in-law.

…hooray? Good hosting? I’m siding with Brady? That can’t be where King and his deranged writers’ room wanted to leave us, with Mia, Brady, Miranda, and Steve’s future together (or apart) very much up in the air. Does that sound like a “clear” artistic choice? A “wonderful place to stop”? An ending?!

And speaking of murky waters, yes, it’s time to address the literal turd in the (punch)bowl: In no universe should the ending of “And Just Like That” — a series that’s only consistently respectable elements are the beautiful gowns, gorgeous sets, and stunning NYC locations — include multiple shots of a clogged toilet erupting with actual pieces of shit.

I would argue such a visual doesn’t belong in the show at all (unless, as some suspect, “And Just Like That’s” sole purpose in its final seasons was to fuel its own hate-watchers, in which case the finale’s poo-pocalypse goes off like a starter pistol, starting a race across social media to see who can concoct the most malicious turdplay). But its placement in the series finale only makes the moment that much more abhorrent.

There are less than seven minutes between our last ever glimpse of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing down her palatial hallway in thousands of dollars of head-to-toe pink, and a gurgling geyser of feces spewing straight up into our collectively horrified faces. The dread and rage Victor Garber channels on the viewers’ behalf is both perfectly agitated and woefully inadequate, just as none of the images in between his nightmare and Carrie’s adieu are memorable enough to make us forget the frightful stool pool.

I mean, my god, Michael. What were you thinking?! This is the last jokey metaphor in a franchise built on jokey metaphors! This is what millions of fans will remember from their last moments with “Sex and the City”! This is the show’s legacy!

(Side note: I’ve actually enjoyed Mario Cantone as Anthony and his comic-relief romance with Sebastiano Pigazzi’s Giuseppe, but they barely register in “And Just Like That’s” final half-hour. Anthony thinks his fiancé wants a mother more than a partner, so Giuseppe slaps a pie into his face? OK, sure, given the sheer volume of pies in Episode 12, one had to be wielded like a clown’s prop. But… Anthony is just over it now? They’re still getting hitched? Yes, no — who cares, I guess, as long as we’re laughing.)

That leaves us with Carrie. Oh, Carrie. “And Just Like That” started by killing off your ever mine, ever thine, ever ours, then forced an extended, unwieldy reunion with your annoying ex, before stumbling into a non-conclusion where you’re single in the city once again. I’m sure the powers that be will spin Carrie’s rewritten epilogue as an empowering full-circle moment. She sits down at her computer, looks out the window that always frames her deepest thoughts, and deletes her previous attempt at a postscript. In its place, she types two succinct sentences: “The woman realized she was not alone. She was on her own.”

Great. Wonderful. Your editor will hate it, but that’s OK. What’s not OK can’t be articulated so succinctly: Regarding her episodic arc, Carrie is humiliated at the start of “Party of One,” so it makes sense for her to refuse to feel humiliated at the end. …except the indelible image of the episode is a swirling hurricane of human waste, and even though it’s not her bathroom, not her toilet, not her shit (can you imagine?!), there’s no way to avoid the humiliation, even by association.

Worse still is what it means for “And Just Like That” as a whole. While closing out a show best known for its bizarre choices with a slew of increasingly inexplicable “endings” could be seen as fitting, the series reminds us what we missed out on by ending where it should’ve started: with an ebullient, assured Carrie Bradshaw ready to embrace New York City, her friends, and her life in general, unencumbered by any obligations to the past — no Big and no Aidan, no mourning and no nostalgic clinging.

Doesn’t that sound like a fun show to watch? Doesn’t that sound like the show we thought we were going to watch? Doesn’t it confound basic narrative logic to turn the beginning of something we never got to see into the end of something we didn’t want?

And just like that… it was over. Not a redo or reboot, just doo-doo.

Huh, I guess that is succinct.

Grade: D-

“And Just Like That” is available on HBO Max.