And there was nothing exquisite about it.
Darren Starr and Michael Patrick King’s HBO Max series “And Just Like That” will conclude for good this month after the end of Season 3. Series developer King, who executive-produced the original “Sex and the City,” shared the news via Instagram that the Carrie Bradshaw-centered sequel series will end after a two-part finale set for this month. The last episode will air on the streamer August 14.
The writer/director/showrunner wrote, “And just like that… the ongoing storytelling of the ‘Sex And The City’ universe is coming to an end. While I was writing the last episode of ‘And Just Like That’ season three, it became clear to me that this might be a wonderful place to stop. Along with Sarah Jessica Parker, Casey Bloys and Sarah Aubrey, we decided to end the popular series this year with a two-part finale and extended the original series order from 10 episodes to 12. SJP and I held off announcing the news until now because we didn’t want the word ‘final’ to overshadow the fun of watching the season. It’s with great gratitude we thank all the viewers who have let these characters into their homes and their hearts over these many years.”
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When contacted by IndieWire, HBO Max representatives had no further comment.
“And Just Like That,” which launched on HBO Max in December 2021, follows a much more-moneyed, literary-established Bradshaw as she navigated the sudden, Peloton-induced heart-attack death of Big (Chris Noth) and renewed her on-and-off relationship with carpenter Aidan Shaw (John Corbett). Kim Cattrall, aka Samantha Jones, declined to participate in the series after salary and creative disputes other than a literally phoned-in cameo at the end of Season 2. “And Just Like That” expanded the worlds of Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) to open up the ’90s-launched original series into the modern day. And that was after the box-office but middling critical success of the “Sex and the City” and “Sex and the City 2” movies.
We saw Miranda embracing her queer sexuality, with flings with the controversial comedian character Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), unceremoniously dropped from Season 3, and briefly with Rosie O’Donnell this season as a “Wicked”-singing lesbian virgin nun. We saw Charlotte wrestle with a budding nonbinary child, Rock (Alexa Swinton), and, more recently, her husband Harry’s (Evan Goldenblatt) prostate cancer. The series also introduced new characters it never figured out what to do with, including Nicole Ari Parker as couture-clad documentary filmmaker Lisa Todd Wexley. Any day now, she will finish that decade-in-the-making documentary about Black women in history. Most successfully, the series filled the Samantha void with sultry, cigarette-smoking real estate agent Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), easily the strongest of the new characters.
But the series has met fan derision, whether over Carrie’s often typically erratic emotional behavior (chiding Miranda for eating her yogurt? Come on. Also, Carrie eats yogurt?) or even how Lisa’s dad appeared to die twice. In a feint of on-the-fly retcon, the series’ creative team said it was actually Lisa’s stepfather who died in Season 1, even though the character was pronounced dead twice in the series (again in Season 3 during an elaborate funeral episode).
Ultimately, it did feel like “And Just Like That” lost the plot, drifting away from its core celebration of empowered female sexuality and fascinatingly flawed, not-always-successful women hustling for love and career in New York City. By the time “And Just Like That” came around, the characters were all up to their neck in money and more outrageous fashion and privilege, with none of the struggle and discomfort that made Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda so relatable way back when. At least we still have the original, inimitable series to binge again and again… unless of course, like me, you’ve already lined up rewatches of “Girls” as your successor to great TV about women on the verge in New York.
For now, we’re eager to see where “And Just Like That” will land. (SPOILERS) Carrie and Aidan are done again, again, and now Carrie is embracing a flirtation and intellectual attraction with her downstairs neighbor, the pipe-smoking biography writer Duncan (Jonathan Cake). Where will it all end? I have to wonder if it will be any place good, but nothing the series has established so far inspires confidence. (Except for that karaoke episode earlier in Season 3, which was almost good.)
