And Just Like That … Series-Finale Recap: The Epilogue

Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO

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It’s quite a bold move for a show that’s been heavily criticized throughout its three-season run to feature a toilet overflowing with crap in its series finale. It is not so much inviting the comparison as begging for it. Then again, And Just Like That … never seemed to care much about what other people thought of it, nor of the realities of time, space, or how humans interact with other humans. Sometimes, that lack of caring worked to the show’s benefit; many, many times, it did not. “Party of One” mostly has examples of the latter, and as far as a series finale goes — though, let’s be honest, it only feels like the writers knew this was a real good-bye during that two-minute, slapdash final montage — it mostly served to bum me the hell out.

Carrie Bradshaw might be the most miserable single woman on the planet, and it is an unfortunate thing to behold. Now, to be fair, she’s seemed pretty miserable for most of And Just Like That …, but especially so in this final season. And, yes, you could argue the woman has been through some things with Big dying and Aidan becoming dead to all of us in a spiritual sense. And, yes, when your life doesn’t pan out exactly the way you may have imagined, there is an adjustment period. But still, this is Carrie fucking Bradshaw! Once a shining example of a happy, fulfilled single woman! She’s always been a romantic, but we were sold this entire story about how her friends have been her greatest love. In the finale of Sex and the City, when Big tells Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha that they are the loves of Carrie’s life, he means it. And we all know it is exactly right. It seems like And Just Like That … does not have the same ethos. I guess we should’ve known it as the episodes went on and we spent less and less time with the women as a group, but this post-Aidan Carrie is infuriating and, honestly, heartbreaking. It just feels so wrong to have Carrie this distraught about a life without a partner; it feels even worse for the series to portray being without a partner as something to be this distraught about.

The first scene alone is especially egregious. Carrie walks into a restaurant for what I have to assume is the first time ever in her life, because she does seem quite confused by the whole thing. When she sits in her booth, they bring over a stuffed-animal version of their mascot to sit in the seat across from her so she isn’t alone. Now, because I love you, I did look into it, and as insane as it sounds, it seems that seating their mascot with solo diners is something Haidilao will actually do, but they ask if you want it; they don’t just assume. Furthermore, it’s wild to have to explicitly state this, but most places do not do this! People eat alone all the time! It doesn’t have to be weird or sad or with any type of stuffed companion. Carrie should know this by now. More importantly, And Just Like That … should show this. Instead of having an empowering moment to kick things off, Carrie chalks it up as another example of how society has deemed being alone tragic, regardless of time period. And instead of her challenging that theory, she mopes around in it. At this point in the episode, Carrie is so sad about being alone, I would not be surprised if this series ends with her wrapping herself up in that giant-ass winter coat she wore in a blizzard that one time and hurled herself off the Empire State Building. The woman said, “Good-bye, cruel world,” et cetera.

Instead, we press on to … an equally troubling discussion about marriage at a wedding-gown runway show that Lisa has brought Charlotte, Carrie, and Seema to because, yes, we love to be on the nose, baby! First, Seema and Carrie chat. Seema has just learned that Adam isn’t into marriage. He thinks it’s silly and has never felt the need for it. Seema doesn’t know how to feel about this. On one hand, she loves Adam more than she ever thought possible. On the other, she grew up dreaming of her wedding day, of the celebration and the romance. Now she’s wondering if the only reason she wants to get married is because she was programmed to want it as a kid. And, yes, in case you were wondering, Carrie does make a “grooming” pun here. When Seema asks her friend why she decided to get married, Carrie tells her because “it meant I was chosen.” It is wholly unhelpful as far as advice goes. Seema wonders if feeling chosen is someone else’s responsibility or her own. This feels very of Sex and the City, no?

Right next to them, Lisa and Charlotte are talking about warning the young women in the crowd that marriage isn’t all pretty wedding gowns. Right now for Lisa, it’s confusion and holding her tongue and dealing with her husband’s disappointment. For Charlotte, it’s cancer. Lisa wonders if marriage is ever about them or only about their spouses. But when she wonders if knowing what she knows now would change her mind about getting married, both she and Charlotte would absolutely do it again. They smile because they love their lives!! This is very And Just Like That … thinking. Neither point of view is wrong, but perhaps the whole discussion would be more interesting and more fruitful and would drive home the point that there are many different and valid ways to think about marriage and partnership if these four women were having this discussion together. Instead, by dividing it into two separate conversations ending on this idea that getting married is the way to go, it seems like the series is subscribing to that school of thought, even if it isn’t. But the episode never really discusses this further, so nothing matters. This whole thing is easier to take if you remember that one small trick!

The rest of the episode is mostly a mix of the most annoying Thanksgiving dinner ever held (and I do include the very first one in that list) and quick scenes to let everyone wrap up their story lines. Speaking of the latter, Harry is hard, so he and Charlotte finally get to have sex again. It’s a Thanksgiving miracle. Charlotte also resolves all of her feelings about Rock when Rock informs their mother that they’ll “be a lot of different people” in their life. Lisa has a quick conversation with Marion in which they both agree their relationship has to stay in the edit bay, and that solves everything; she goes home to Herbert and tells him she loves him whether he is in a Tom Ford suit or a sweatsuit, and they both agree they’ll get through this rough moment. Anthony brings up his fears about being a mother to Giuseppe, and Giuseppe smashes Anthony’s face with pie before they kiss and make up. See? Life is actually so easy!

The Thanksgiving dinner situation, unfortunately, can’t pin its problems on time constraints. Why oh why are we spending our last precious moments here with this group of people? Instead of using Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda’s as a way to get everyone in the same room for a little bit before we say good-bye, it winds up being just Carrie, Miranda, Mark Kasabian, Brady, and his baby mama, Mia, who arrives with two of her insufferable friends. Miranda has to leave because one of Joy’s dogs swallowed something sharp and needs surgery, which leaves poor Carrie in her fabulously impractical skirt to deal with Mark — who is definitely there because Charlotte is trying to set them up, even though Carrie is not at all interested — and with the fact that someone in the And Just Like That … writers’ room really, really hates Gen Z.

Nothing much is gained from this situation. Mia is still terrible, but she does eventually come to Miranda’s defense when Brady lashes out some more, which points to Mia letting Miranda be involved with the baby, so that’s nice. Otherwise, the only other thing of note is when Mia’s friend Epcot — yes, Epcot — who is lactose intolerant, eats a whole bunch of cheese and winds up clogging the toilet. Unfortunately, it is Mark who uses the bathroom last when it overflows with all of Epcot’s shit. On the bright side, Mark gets out of there so quickly Carrie doesn’t have to have an awkward conversation with him about not wanting to date. Alas, it does mean the evening ends with Miranda on her hands and knees, scrubbing up a stranger’s excrement. With everyone leaving that dinner as fast as humanly possible, it does leave Miranda and Carrie alone to talk — about the Mark situation, about how Miranda ended up here in this exact moment — and though the scenes are short, they are a nice reminder of the reason we fell for these characters and their relationships in the first place.

Speaking of falling for someone, this finale is not without some romance. The two scenes with Miranda and Joy, first in the vet’s office and then later when Joy comes to have pie, are quiet and lovely and all about how they are part of each other’s families now; I think these two crazy kids are gonna make it. Then there’s Adam. We did not get enough of Adam on this series. After Seema stresses about the marriage situation to Carrie, Carrie wants to make sure Adam isn’t going to break her friend’s heart. She visits him while he’s working in her garden and asks him if he thinks of Seema the same way he thinks of Thanksgiving — “just a Thursday.” He tells her no way, “Seema is definitely not just a Thursday. She’s special. She’s a lifetime.” A lifetime?? We all deserve to have someone describe us as a lifetime. For what it’s worth, when we see Seema in her jeans hanging out with Adam’s family on “just a Thursday,” she seems to fit right in. She looks happy.

When Joy shows up at Miranda’s, Carrie decides to give them a little privacy, and so she grabs her pumpkin pie and heads home alone to her gorgeous house. Carrie doesn’t walk through the door a changed woman, suddenly ecstatic to be single, but you can tell the day’s events have reminded her that she isn’t alone; she has a lot of people in her life. Perhaps too many people, some might say. And so she cranks up that karaoke machine, puts on a little Barry White, eats some pie, and fixes that dreadful epilogue to her book. Now it reads, “The woman realized she was not alone, she was on her own.” Then, as if to twist the knife just a little deeper, to remind us of how good we had it (as if we ever forgot), do you know what music plays over the closing credits? It’s the theme song to Sex and the City, as if to say, Yeah, we know that was better, too.

• Rock’s “I’m going to be a lot of people in my life!” line is so unnatural and forced it made me want to cry. But you know what was worse? Lisa telling Marion that she just got an email from “Terry Kirk, your friend at the Obamas’ production company.” Wouldn’t he know who his own friend is? AJLT, your exposition is showing.

• Oh, in case you were wondering, no, Lisa has not finished her doc, but it does look like Michelle Obama is going to narrate it.

• I did appreciate getting one last Miranda and Steve scene. It’s nice to see them as friends, and when they talk about how they’ll do whatever it takes to be involved in their grandchild’s life, I did get a little misty!

• Carrie brings up her marriage to Big twice in one episode! She did not forget!