The final episode of "And Just Like That," titled "Party of One," closes Carrie Bradshaw's journey and the gang's in a way that's, at the very least, strange. If the last shot tries to be symbolic, with Carrie walking confidently through her massive apartment to Barry White, finally embracing the narrative that she's not "alone," but rather "on her own," what really sticks in your memory is that bizarre scene where Carrie, Miranda, and Victor Garber try to deal with a clogged toilet caused by a lactose-intolerant young woman. That grotesque, cartoonish choice pretty much sums up the offbeat tone the show leaned into across its three seasons: a fragile balance between wanting to honor the legacy of "Sex and the City" while at the same time twisting it into something disjointed and disproportionately odd.
Carrie's farewell does feel somewhat coherent, since she's always been a character floating between glamour and loneliness, but the way the other storylines wrapped up leaves the impression of something chopped off mid-sentence. Miranda, for example, ends with a storyline loaded with open-ended possibilities, like the imminent birth of her grandchild; Seema, who had become the spiritual successor to Samantha, signs off with a throwaway line about not missing gluten; Lisa, after a whole season teasing a Michelle Obama cameo, is reduced to a vague promise of narrating her own documentary series. Charlotte gets a bit more dignity, dealing sensitively with her youngest child's gender identity, while Anthony gets a lighter, if comedic, ending, breaking off an engagement but keeping his relationship. But as a whole, none of it feels like a true conclusion.
The biggest problem is that the episode fails to deliver what's always been the heart of this franchise: the friends gathered around a table, trading witty, funny takes on life. Instead, we get Carrie sitting alone in some futuristic restaurant, surrounded by robots and staring at a stuffed animal, like the show wanted to underline, almost cruelly, her disconnection from the present. Sure, "And Just Like That" has always liked to put its protagonists through humiliating moments (Charlotte fainting, Carrie slipping on the floor, Big's sudden death) but ending on this kind of weirdness feels more unsettling than nostalgic. If in "Sex and the City" Carrie chose love with Big, here she chooses, once and for all, herself. Is it consistent? Yes. But it lacks emotion, it lacks that sense of a proper goodbye the audience expected after following these women for so many years.
And it's impossible not to comment on what's really behind this so-called "ending." Michael Patrick King insists the decision to wrap it up was his, but it's obvious we're looking at a cancellation disguised as closure. HBO Max is trying to sell the idea that this was all planned, when it clearly wasn't, and that feels disrespectful to the legacy of one of TV's most important franchises. "And Just Like That" was announced as one of the streamer's flagship shows at launch, a prestige bet to bring in subscribers. Ending a story of this size without real care, without the honesty to call it a proper final season, cheapens the work of the actresses and the characters that shaped generations. The audience deserved a farewell that was announced, grand, and worthy of the journey that started back in the '90s. What we got instead was a rushed, awkward cut that leaves behind more of a taste of disregard than of celebration.
