\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSPOILER ALERT: <\/strong>This piece contains spoilers for \u201cParty of One,\u201d the series finale of \u201cAnd Just Like That<\/em>,\u201d now streaming on HBO Max.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThis is how the world of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) ends: not with a bang, but with a geyser of human feces.<\/p>\n \n\tTechnically, the last we see of TV\u2019s most iconic antiheroine is Carrie strutting through her gargantuan Gramercy home while blasting Barry White. She\u2019s just embraced the idea, via the epilogue to her historical novel-in-progress, of being not \u201calone\u201d but \u201con her own.\u201d It\u2019s an apt exit for a character who, between boyfriends, helped glamorize the idea of liberated singeldom for a generation of viewers. But for \u201cAnd Just Like That,\u201d the sequel series to \u201cSex and the City\u201d that concluded its three-season run on Aug. 14, the most indelible, on-brand image from \u201cParty of One\u201d came a couple scenes earlier: Carrie, her good friend Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and, for some reason, Victor Garber scrambling to deal with a toilet clogged by a lactose intolerant Zoomer named Epcot (Spike Einbinder). No gory detail was spared, down to the anatomically correct turds.<\/p>\n \n\tShowrunner Michael Patrick King, who directed the finale and co-wrote the script with Susan Fales-Hill, has said that the decision to end \u201cAnd Just Like That\u201d came from him, not HBO Max. Yet Carrie\u2019s storyline was very much the exception in having the air of a satisfying send-off. Miranda\u2019s arc is quite literally pregnant with potential new developments, with her first-ever grandchild (!) still unborn. The last line delivered by Seema (Sarita Choudhury), the de facto successor to Kim Cattrall\u2019s Samantha Jones, is \u201cI don\u2019t miss the gluten,\u201d about her Thanksgiving pie. And after spending the entire season building up to what seemed like an inevitable Michelle Obama cameo, Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) was left with just the vague possibility of a voiceover for her docuseries-in-progress.<\/p>\n \n\tOther characters got slightly more closure, albeit not in a way that seemed to foreclose any future possibilities. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) came to terms with her younger child\u2019s gender identity \u2014\u00a0a genuinely empathetic, sensitive subplot on a show that could often take a hostile stance toward kids these days \u2014 and finally overcame prostate cancer\u2019s effect on her sex life. Anthony (Mario Cantone) broke off an engagement but kept his relationship, and all it cost him was a pie to the face.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYet the cumulative feeling given by \u201cParty of One\u201d is not that of a fond farewell. It\u2019s an overpowering, inescapable strangeness \u2014 <\/em>the same strangeness that\u2019s hung over this show from the start, with the gaping absence of Samantha and characters bewildered by the passage of time. \u201cAnd Just Like That\u201d improved on this score over time, settling into itself to the point that this critic found the venture more than worthwhile. But maybe it was only right for the show to end in the offbeat, uncanny way it began, even if doing so meant fictional people we\u2019ve known for more than a quarter century got a somewhat abrupt goodbye.<\/p>\n \n\tAt no point in \u201cParty of One\u201d do we get the type of scene that has defined this franchise in the popular consciousness: four friends gathered around the table of a trendy restaurant, gabbing about life and love. In its place, we get Carrie in a robot restaurant, befuddled by technology and staring forlornly at a stuffed toy named Tommy Tomato. The humor is intentional; perhaps the contrast is as well. After all, it would be very Carrie \u2014\u00a0a frequently terrible friend to the last \u2014\u00a0to see to her own affairs while leaving everyone else twisting in the wind.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYet it\u2019s the shit I keep coming back to. (I apologize if this is graphic, but the episode itself pulls no punches, and neither will I.) \u201cAnd Just Like That\u201d liked to lay its protagonists low, often literally: Charlotte wilting from vertigo; Miranda collapsing, nude, while clawing her way out of a sensory deprivation tank; Carrie slipping on her bare hardwood floors; before any of those, Mr. Big (Chris Noth) falling off his Peloton as he suffered a fatal heart attack, the show\u2019s macabre inciting incident. \u201cSex and the City\u201d wound down with Carrie choosing Big, whatever her voiceover said about the most important relationship in one\u2019s life being oneself. This time, she really is <\/em>on her own \u2014 and solo life isn\u2019t always pretty. It\u2019s a more internally consistent ending, if a less romantic one. Whether or not you like what that means, \u201cAnd Just Like That\u201d remained true to itself to the last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for \u201cParty of One,\u201d the series finale of \u201cAnd Just Like That,\u201d now streaming on HBO Max. This is how the world of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) ends: not with a bang, but with a geyser of human feces. Technically, the last we see of TV\u2019s most iconic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[7167,1557,9378,1085],"class_list":{"0":"post-15878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bizarre","9":"tag-finale","10":"tag-fittingly","11":"tag-review"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}