Season 3, Episode 12: ‘Party of One’

Of all the mind-boggling choices the writers of “And Just Like That …” have made this season, perhaps the wildest is forcing us, the audience, to watch a disgusting toilet overflow in the ostensibly final moments of this decades-long franchise.

This week’s episode — which, as we learned only a few weeks ago, is to be the series’s last — was a cool 34 minutes. That’s comparable to the lengths of the original “Sex and the City” episodes and down from the roughly 45 minutes most of this season’s episodes have clocked. I’ve noted in previous recaps that the shorter, tighter episodes are better paced, but this time things felt rushed, as if all the characters and their story lines needed more time.

Everything and nothing happened in this episode. The finale of “Sex and the City” included a romantic Parisian backdrop, a long-awaited confession of love, a bewildering slap and momentous lines like “Go get our girl” and “Carrie, you’re the one.” This finale, which ended not only the series but also, most likely, the entire story, included no such pivotal moments. Instead, it simply tied up most of the conflicts in neat little bows and faded to black.

In some ways, the ending was satisfying; there are no loose ends left. But what could have been compelling plot points are barreled through, check, check, check, like items on a to-do list.

Taking place on Thanksgiving Day, everyone, for the most part, could be thankful for a happy ending:

Seema, in the course of a single conversation, dismantles years of programming that made her believe she wanted marriage. She relaxes instead into a relationship with the wedding-averse Adam and enjoys gluten-free pie with his family while wearing jeans.

Lisa puts the kibosh on the illicit romance budding between her and Marion, and despite acknowledging the patriarchal structure of marriage, she decides that is OK, and performs an impromptu vow renewal with Herbert in their bedroom.

Joy’s dog Sappho, who falls ill from ingesting a Lego, lives. Since Sappho and her other dog, Socrates, are like her children, she is suddenly reminded of the value of family and surprises Miranda by showing up to spend time with hers. Miranda’s family isn’t present, and she is busy scrubbing the soiled powder room. But the two still cry and embrace.

Anthony backpedals on his engagement to Giuseppe, but they stay together, with slapping a pie in Anthony’s face being all the comeuppance his lover needs to move forward.

Harry finally gets an erection, and he and Charlotte do it. With sex finally back in the picture, they once again have it all.

Woven in there is thought-provoking commentary on brainwashing, the state of modern marriage and the true meaning of happiness. It would have been nice if we’d had more time to explore all that.

But the pièce de résistance is how things will end for Carrie, and for a show that has centered on her romantic endeavors, her ending, while perhaps not dramatic or sensational, or traditionally “happy,” is powerful.

As Carrie puts it to Charlotte as they stroll down the street, she has been without a man in her life before, but she never believed it would be for long — and it never was. Whether because of a new boyfriend or an old flame, Carrie was rarely without a suitor, as was befitting of a sex writer (and romantic). Love was always Carrie’ special interest, so she pursued it with passion.

Which is not to say that passion has died, exactly — it’s simply turning inward.

On Thanksgiving morning, sharing coffee with Adam in her garden, Carrie tells him that she wants to scrap the well-ordered garden he has already planted and return to something more “wild” and “free … something more me,” she says. It echoes a moment from the original series in which Carrie says in a voice-over, after confronting Big for marrying someone else, that perhaps the issue wasn’t that she couldn’t “break” Big. “Maybe,” she says, “some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with.”

Which is exactly where Carrie lands once again. Like “the woman” in her novel, Carrie ends up not “alone,” but “on her own.” By herself, but not lonely. As the episode, and the series, comes to a close, we see Carrie dancing in her big house, click-clacking in heels, twirling in tulle, wholly herself, unbothered, uncompromised, unapologetic — untamed.

Another man may come and go, or come and stay. But that doesn’t really matter. Judging from the number of pies she delivered to friends that day, and the number of kids who call her “aunt,” there is no lack of love in Carrie’s life.

It was never in question, she tells Charlotte in this episode, that she is fabulous. Now, though, for the first time, we see Carrie — just Carrie — fulfilled.

Things still taking up space in my brain

• Seema asks Carrie why she got married, and Carrie’s answer is revealing. She doesn’t say it was because Big was the love of her life, or that she couldn’t imagine ever being without him. “I wanted to feel chosen,” she says simply. At worst, it suggests that Carrie may not have married for the right reasons. But if that’s overstating it, her reasoning at least bolsters Seema’s musing that maybe she wants to get married only because she has internalized the message that she should.

• The closing credits could have kept Barry White’s “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything” going, but instead, they switch to the original “Sex and the City” theme. As much as “And Just Like That …” — with its updated title, lack of signature voice-over and new characters — tried to be its own entity, this felt like an intentional callback meant to close a circle. When “Sex and the City” ended, we had no reason to believe it wasn’t the true end … until a movie popped up, and then another movie, and then this new series. But the Powers That Be seem to want us to know that this really is it this time. I think most of us agree that’s for the best.

• In case you needed hard proof that Carrie isn’t desperate for her next beau, she rejects the setup with Mark Kasabian that Charlotte springs on her. The mood in that scene reminds me of the “Sex and the City” episode in which Carrie sets up Enid Frick (Candice Bergen) with Martin Grable (Wallace Shawn). At first, Enid is resistant — calling him a “Hobbit” — but then ends up on his arm, for lack of other options. Carrie absolutely will not be Enid. As we see in the closing moments of this finale, the option of herself is far better.