Sex and the City Fans Deserved Better than And Just Like That

The reboot was a disservice to viewers who turned the original series into a cultural phenomenon

Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw (Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max)

I stuck with And Just Like That through two seasons of Che Diaz and their “comedy concerts.” I endured the agonizing return of Aidan Shaw, Carrie’s patronizing ex-fiance, now morphed into a MAHA-coded dad who refused to treat his teenager’s ADHD with medication. I didn’t quit the show even when Carrie wore this hat.

But the moment I finally, definitively gave up on And Just Like That was when poop began flying out of Miranda’s toilet in the closing minutes of Thursday’s series finale.

It was not how I wanted things to end—for Miranda or for a show that once meant so much to millions of people like me. But it was an apt metaphor for the experience of fans who kept tuning in to the misbegotten Sex and the City reboot week after week, hoping it would eventually course correct, only to wind up watching actual crap.

I was among this foolhardy group and, despite all evidence to the contrary, retained a shred of optimism that the show would reach a semi-satisfying conclusion. Then Miranda’s toilet exploded in ways that defy the fundamental laws of physics—not to mention good taste. Instead of leaving me with warm thoughts about the enduring power of female friendship or the promise of long-term romantic relationships, the show left me pondering how a fully intact turd could reemerge from a sewage pipe long after it had been flushed.

Which, I am guessing, is not what showrunner Michael Patrick King had in mind when he wrote the episode, “Party of One.”

Outside of that logic-defying plumbing disaster, very little happened in the episode. Carrie dined out alone. Miranda went to the vet with her girlfriend. Charlotte had sex with her husband. Seema fretted about her boyfriend. Lisa continued work on her still-unfinished documentary. They all went to a bridal fashion show, for some reason. “Party of One” did not feel like it was written as a send-off, but it will, in fact, be the final episode of the series. Earlier this month, HBO Max announced the series would be coming to an end after Season 3.

For fans of Sex and the City, who remained loyal to the franchise through two movies of rapidly diminishing quality and 33 unhinged episodes of And Just Like That, the news came as a relief. Finally, the show will be put out of its misery. But it’s also devastating. And Just Like That had vast potential as an exploration of late middle-age from the female perspective. Instead, it took characters that fans have watched, rooted for, and felt a deep connection to for a quarter century and turned them into crass sitcom caricatures.

The revival premiered in 2021, when COVID was still raging and a nostalgic comfort watch held enormous appeal. Yet AJLT did away with much of what made the original series both enjoyable and distinctive. Big (Chris Noth), Carrie’s long-time love, was killed off via Peloton in the series premiere. Samantha, the lusty publicist played by Kim Cattrall, was exiled to London and present via text messages only. Also gone was Carrie’s pithy narration, which tied together disparate storylines around a central theme and gave the show its sharp, savvy tone.

Yet even more upsetting was how some of the core characters seemed to have gotten personality transplants. No one was more changed than Miranda, once the most sensible and grounded person in Sex and the City, who left her adoring husband to chase Che Diaz, a pot-smoking, commitment-phobic nonbinary comedian played by Sara Ramirez who should have been trailblazing but unfortunately epitomized the show’s awkward attempt to get with the times. Fans absolutely hated Che, and with good reason: they were insufferable for reasons that had nothing to do with gender. Not since Jar Jar Binks has a single character done so much to derail a beloved pop culture franchise.

By Season 3, Che was finally gone, but so was the last semblance of a character who wasn’t extravagantly wealthy. The original series was always a fantasy version of New York in which a freelance writer could afford to live alone in an apartment full of Manolo Blahniks.

But And Just Like That felt completely divorced from financial reality. If anyone in this show worried about paying for college, saving for retirement, or covering their health insurance premiums, we certainly didn’t hear about it.

Instead, AJLT followed Carrie, a widow with piles of cash to burn, as she moved with ease from one multi-million-dollar home to the next, while hanging onto her old studio apartment for sentimental reasons. She ultimately settled in a cavernous Gramercy Park townhouse with enough space to house a small army and which felt even bigger because she couldn’t be bothered to furnish it. Instead of dealing with the kind of vaguely relatable challenges she once faced, Carrie now grappled with the fizziest champagne problems, like a broken antique windowpane and a downstairs neighbor who asked her not to stomp around her bare wooden floors while wearing stilettos all day and night.

And that’s just Carrie: we also got storylines about Miranda buying a fully furnished apartment for way over asking and Charlotte renovating her Park Avenue pad. Somehow, a show about sex and relationships had become a show about high-end real estate (bringing new meaning to the term “lifestyle porn.” ) In an era when people can’t afford to buy groceries, much less a home, the runaway affluence felt tone-deaf, not aspirational.

Frustrated fans found catharsis in spaces like the And Just Like That subreddit, which was often more entertaining and thoughtful than the show itself. There was a growing sense among AJLT’s dwindling audience that they were better stewards of the show than the people who were actually getting paid to make it. They fumed when Parker, an executive producer on the series as well as its star, told Howard Stern that she apparently doesn’t watch AJLT. They rolled their eyes at each episode of the companion podcast in which King and his writers defended their baffling “creative” decisions.

And they scrutinized the flaws in the storytelling, which was almost offensively sloppy and justified the frenzied hate-watching. In the most notorious example, eagle-eyed fans noticed that AJLT had somehow killed off the same character twice—an inconsistency that King (rather absurdly) claimed was intentional.

Why should fans feel devastated by the unceremonious end of a show they were mostly hate-watching? Because it is fun and frothy and centers on female characters, Sex and the City has never quite gotten the credit it deserves for helping ignite a TV revolution. Compared to The Sopranos, which premiered on HBO a year later, its cultural contributions are too often minimized.

Yes, it presented a narrowly upscale version of New York City with startlingly few people of color. But SATC took seriously women’s personal lives and friendships at a time when that was basically unheard of. Nearly 30 years after its debut, frank, funny shows about the sex lives of single, professional women in their 30s constitute an entire small-screen subgenre, from Insecure to Fleabag.

SATC viewers followed Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha through countless life events that echoed their own—through career highs and lows, through marriage and divorce, through fertility struggles and cancer scares. And Just LIke That could have done the same for women over the age of fifty, a demographic that rarely takes center stage on TV outside The Real Housewives franchise.

Alas, the series missed numerous opportunities to grapple with what it means for women to get older in a culture that can’t deal with the concept. Aside from a fleeting storyline in which Charlotte goes through a “flash period,” there was almost no discussion of menopause or the massive effect it has on the mind, body, and libido. Likewise, there was little acknowledgment of the pressure—particularly for women of a certain social class in New York City—to maintain a slim, youthful appearance well into their 50s and 60s.

Maybe in another decade or two, Carrie and the gang will reunite for a Golden Girls-style series about their twilight years. The fans, ever hopeful, will be there to watch, even if we know better.