Carrie Bradshaw may be satisfied with the ending to her story, but many And Just Like That… fans are not.
The series finale for the Sex and the City spin-off hit HBO Max on Thursday night (Aug. 14), seeing Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) finding solace “on her own.” However, the lead-up to that conclusion involves a haphazard Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon), where Mark Kasabian (Victor Garber)—who Charlotte (Kristin Davis) invites to set up with Carrie—flushes the toilet, which proceeds to overflow with crap.
Those who tuned in couldn’t help but wonder why the series ended this way, as one critic questioned why they “made the 33-minute finale emotionless and shit-filled,” and even called last night’s episode “just one of the worst episodes of television I’ve ever seen.”
“Why am I saying farewell to some of my favorite TV characters of all time and seeing a toilet overflow on my screen?” someone wrote on X on Thursday night.
“Why have I seen 2 men pee this episode and now a sea of turds,” another asked.
“Add that to the worst series finale list,” another chimed in.
Others wished, like the ends of both the flagship series and the Sex and the City movie, that And Just Like That ended with the girls together, or at least featured more screen time with the girls together. Evan Sarah Cooper, the viral video star who rose to fame during the first Trump administration, had to weigh in.
“A show about womanhood & friendship… and the main characters don’t even share screen time all together in the end? Such a letdown,” someone else wrote.
In tandem, others questioned the focus on storylines outside of the show’s main cast, claiming that the series finale “had no business spending so much time on Brady, his insufferable baby mama and her parody of a Gen Z friend group…”
When asked in an interview with Variety about the show’s “pie-in-the-face sensibility,” in which the reporter cited the toilet scene, showrunner Michael Patrick King explained that “whenever anyone in this universe, Sex and the City or And Just Like That, stands on a soapbox to make a speech, the soapbox breaks.”
“We cannot take ourselves too seriously,” he added. “For the gorgeousness of Carrie’s pink, sparkly top and tulle skirt — that’s the high — the low is a toilet filled up with shit. Because guess what? Being single, there’s a lot of shit, and relationships are a lot of shit. It’s the comedy, with the drama, with the romance, with the fairy tale. I guess it’s a response to the fairy tale.”
King, who issued a statement on Aug. 1 that Season 3 of And Just Like That would be the show’s last, told Entertainment Weekly that he did not want news of the series finale to dominate press and talk surrounding the season, and to mess with fans’ perception of Carrie and Aidan’s (John Corbett) relationship (which does come to an end).
Nonetheless, fans did praise the choice for the original Sex and the City theme song to play during the end credits.
Seasons 1-3 of And Just Like That… are streaming on HBO Max.