The love that millions of people have had for the iconic characters of Sex and the City that persisted through hate-watching its sequel And Just Like That has now turned to utter disgust for many viewers after the series finale Thursday night.
Gorgeous images of the fashion, the beauty, the glamour, the sex, the cocktails, New York City hotspots – all wiped out by the sight of literal shit overflowing in a toilet bowl? And this was after we saw not one but two men pissing. What was the message here from the writers and producers? A big FU for criticizing the storylines of the three seasons of AJLT?
So Carrie Bradshaw is just fine being on her own. Big deal. She rewrites the end of her novel that used to say the woman was alone to the woman is now on her own. Wow, what a revelation.
This didn’t feel like an epic series finale. It felt like a slapdash attempt to wrap up the stories of the main characters with a happy ending. There’s speculation that despite showrunner Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker’s August 1 announcement that it was time to end the show, that it was actually canceled because of low ratings.
And no wonder. The hate started from the very beginning when Chris Noth’s Mr. Big, Carrie’s long fought-for husband, was killed off by a heart attack while riding a Peleton. She didn’t even think to call 911 right away. Fans would’ve preferred seeing the marriage evolve from their incredibly rocky and very passionate relationship over the years.
(Noth was involved in some sort of Me Too situation at the time, although not with anyone involved in the show, and that could’ve been a factor in his on-screen demise.)
Another lame storyline was Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda falling for the non-binary comedian Che, who luckily was also dispensed with– but not before a lot of air time was wasted in a very unfulfilling manner.
And of course the elephant in the room was Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) not reprising her role. She was just heard in a brief phone call at one point. Word was that Cattrall had bad blood with Parker and she also wasn’t being paid enough. But perhaps she had the foresight to see that this was not going to end well. Still, she was dearly missed.
The sassy sexpot role was taken over by a character called Seema, played by Sarita Chaudhury, and she was very entertaining until she took up with the grungy gardener and decided to do whatever he said, after listening to him complain about how he’d never get married while taking a leak in front of her in the bathroom. Lovely.
The series’ other new character, Nicole Ari Parker, though saddled with an annoying husband and children, vividly portrayed the challenges of a career woman, even being tempted into having an affair with her very attractive male editor.
And then there was poor Charlotte (Kristin Davis), saddled with some gruesome scenes dealing with husband Harry’s prostate cancer diagnosis yet remaining loving and loyal until the final episode when they got to have sex again. Hooray.
If only this finale had ended on such a climactic note instead of gross shots of excrement.
And let’s rewind to that scene: Three completely obnoxious friends of the pregnant girl Miranda called an idiot march into the Hobbes home and start insulting everyone on Thanksgiving? Poor Brady, who got her pregnant, leaves cooking the turkey behind to go get her some seaweed and cucumber and then returns and it is revealed that she’s actually eating the cheese after all? Why was this even necessary? The whole scene could’ve been removed. And thus the shit avoided.
But no. We can’t un-see it. Or the stupidity of naming the character Epcot, and repeating the same Disney joke four times.
And I couldn’t help but wonder, to coin a famous SATC phrase, if it could have been intimated that Duncan, the first man that Carrie said saw her first for her intellect, was at least coming back to New York for a time. After all, London is just over the pond.
That would’ve made the ending of And Just like That a little more palatable.
