“And Just Like That … ” ended as it started: terribly.
I’m not the only “Sex and the City” fan who thinks so. On Thursday, I attended a small viewing party for the finale of the reboot series with a group of pals who loved the original.
Like me, the majority of them were disappointed and, yeah, disgusted.
“This is unhinged!” one — dressed as actress Lucy Liu from her 2001 “SATC” cameo — shouted as a shockingly gross scene played out. “Over twenty years of watching this show, and this is what we get?”
What could have provoked such a response?
Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda’s apartment, when a person named Epcot — yes, Epcot — clogged the toilet. Epcot is a friend of Mia, the hyper-flatulent girl knocked up by Miranda’s son, Brady.
But the show’s writers didn’t think it enough to simply tell us about plumbing difficulties. They showed us. For at least 10 seconds, the remains of Epcot’s day assaulted our eyes. It was gag-inducing and vile.
(Not even “Dumb and Dumber” went so far as to allow the results of Jeff Daniel’s laxative-induced bathroom ordeal to appear on screen).
And now, a glamorous franchise built on fashion, friendship and sex will be remembered for actual crap.
Remember when fans were so excited for the premiere of “And Just Like That … ” back in 2021? We were promised more time with the most fabulous friends the Big Apple has ever known.
That first episode brought us up to current day for the iconic characters’ lives.
Miranda had gone to grad school, unleashing a barrage of micro-aggressions at her black professor. Charlotte struggled with her tomboy (soon to identify as nonbinary) daughter not wanting to wear a frilly Oscar de la Renta dress. Carrie, responding to current industry trends, fired Samantha as her book publicist; in turn, Samantha cut everyone off and moved to London.
We met the “queer, nonbinary, Mexican Irish diva” Che, who soon added another facet to “their” lengthy identity cluster: the most insufferable character to ever appear on HBO (or Max or whatever they’re calling it these days)..
And Mr. Big died from a post-Peloton cardiac arrest.
It was not an auspicious start.
And still, I persevered through the woke morass. Even in this Season 3, as the series tried to extricate itself from the humorless pit of identity politics and limp toward the finish line with unrealistic plot lines and characters, poor acting — and far too much nudity from Cynthia Nixon, who disappeared the real Miranda so she could play herself.
How would they land the plane? I joked that maybe they wouldn’t. Perhaps, en route to a girls’ trip in Portugal, the ladies would all die in a fiery plane crash and put us all out of our misery.
That would have been brave and merciful.
Instead, with Thursday’s series finale, we were given a literal pile of crap.
Thankfully, HBO Max does not offer the scratch-and-sniff option.
The gross-out continued as Miranda, wearing rubber gloves to clean the sewage leak in her bathroom, is surprised by her girlfriend — who she excitedly embraces, rubbing those contaminated gloves all over her beloved’s back.
Instead of “Awwww,” the room I was in filled with a chorus of “Ewwww.”
“Take off the filthy gloves!” one friend yelled.
It was like the Fyre Festival of streaming TV.
The show wrapped up with a soulless montage showing the characters in their respective homes, eating the Thanksgiving pies Carrie had hand delivered earlier in the day.
Meanwhile, Carrie returned to her massive Gramercy spread solo.
She took to her computer, erasing the epilogue of her novel set place in the 1800s — and instead wrote, “The woman realized she was not alone. She was on her own.”
After all that, Carrie ended up single in a home so big it could have eased our city’s migrant housing issue.
Her love story, which drove the entire franchise, became an afterthought.
But I did get a genuine laugh courtesy of “Sex and the City” this week as I watched the new version of “The Naked Gun.” In the movie, someone mentions Miranda Rights to the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., ably played by Liam Neeson. He deadpans in response: “No Carrie writes. Miranda is the lawyer.”
And I couldn’t help but wonder … if the stars and creators of “And Just Like That … ” could go back in time and kill the series before it sullied a great legacy, would they?
I hope so.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land ’
