And Just Like That …’s Finale Was Perfect, Actually
Last night, the fever dream that was And Just Like That … fizzled out with the most bizarre half-hour of television to grace a screen. After 27 years of fandom, Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda bid us adieu with Bond Vet product placement, pie montages, and many close-up shots of a toilet overflowing with poop. To viewers, it was an emotionally unsatisfying, debasing, and frankly vengeful ending. But to showrunner Michael Patrick King and star Sarah Jessica Parker, it was apparently perfect.
Speaking to Variety ahead of Thursday’s finale, King noted that the decision to end things here “was not made at the beginning of the season,” while also insisting this is the right spot for the story to end. “It’s an instinct,” he said. “Anyone else could keep going. I can’t.”
In a separate Variety interview with Parker, King said the two of them instinctively knew when to wrap Sex and the City, and apparently they had the same gut feeling this time around, notwithstanding the fact that they spent the bulk of this season on the horror show of Aidan Shaw and other bonkers plotlines that evaporated into nothingness. “We both look at each other and go, I think this is where we are,” King said. “The thing I get from Sarah Jessica is this complete willingness to stop when we want to, and not just keep going because we can.”
When asked explicitly about what they chose to include (and not include) in this episode, King and Parker defended their decision to skip out on a scene of Miranda, Carrie, and Charlotte together, and instead spend precious minutes on a toilet crisis. Parker suggests there was actually no need to “paint a portrait of a threesome” in the finale because the “decades of profound intimacy and friendship” among these women are supposedly implicit. Actually, this season has led me to suspect these once tight-knit friends all hate one another and are doomed to stay in each other’s lives out of habit.
“The audience understands, and we don’t have to assure them. Everybody’s well. Everybody’s good. Everybody is solid. Everybody ends together,” said Parker, who added that Carrie’s ending “honors the audience” and “doesn’t just exploit them in some way.” Being assailed with turds? I’ve never felt so honored in my life.
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