I Heard The Finale of Sex and the City Sequel Just Like That... Was Terrible. It's So Much Worse Than I Could Have Imagined
I am inherently skeptical when people claim to hate a show they profess never to have watched. This is one of Donald Trump's many obnoxious tics. He is forever spewing hatred at the late-night talk show hosts who have engendered his rage by making fun of the president rather than prostrating themselves before his greatness while claiming that he somehow only watched these shows by accident.
Unless they’re masochists or pop culture writers, people tend not to watch shows that they despise. There are exceptions, of course. For example, I hate Sex and the City and And Just Like That…, it's a poorly received, Samantha-free revival/sequel.
My wife enjoys watching Sex and the City, so I’ve watched countless episodes because I like being around her even when she is consuming entertainment that I find abhorrent.
It is more accurate to say that I have passively consumed numerous episodes of Sarah Jessica Parker's vehicles while writing, rather than actively watching.
Even my wife will concede that And Just Like That… is something of an abomination. And Just Like That… responded to criticisms that Sex and the City was wealthy and white and privileged, as well as profoundly uninterested in the lives of the non-white, the non-rich, and the non-fabulous, by embracing diversity with a clumsy, tone-deaf, cringe-inducing oafishness.
This was most glaring in the character of Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), a nonbinary podcaster and uniquely terrible stand-up comedian and the Jar Jar Binks of the And Just Like That… world.
Due to overwhelming pressure and hatred, the character was dropped after the second season. The twelfth and final episode of the show’s third season, which doubles as its finale, does not feature Che yet still manages to be egregiously awful on a historic level.
My wife heard that the finale was so bad that it had to be seen to be disbelieved. That’s my specialty, so I chose to watch it with her. My mind was blown.
As someone who has devoted their career to chronicling the unspeakable, I knew that I had to write about it.
“Party of One” opens with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw being intrigued by Haidilao, a Chinese restaurant known for its novelty and customer service.
Things are about to get much worse for Victor Garber’s character.
Despite being a cosmopolitan writer, Carrie seems confused and overwhelmed by tablets, menus, and ordering food.
Carrie is inexplicably treated like a mentally ill homeless woman who wandered into the restaurant in a daze when she’s wearing a five-thousand-dollar outfit. The waiters look down on the chic older woman as someone who is desperately lonely, mentally ill, and possesses the mind of a child.
Few characters in the history of entertainment have given off less of a “sad single girl to be pitied” than Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw. That does not keep a server at a Jetsons-style eatery from sticking a garish doll across from her.
When Carrie looks both confused and insulted, the employee cheerfully offers, “It’s Tommy Tomato! You don’t have to eat alone.”
She doesn’t come right out and say, “We feel sorry for you because you’re so pathetic and have no friends.”, but that’s the implication.
This very realistic scene serves a metaphorical purpose. If a woman of a certain age chooses to be alone rather than base her identity around being part of a couple, society will assume that she is a sad loser to be pitied and treated like a small child, even if she looks like she could buy the restaurant where she’s eating, not just purchase a meal.
In the next scene, Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker), a gorgeous, wealthy, and accomplished editor of color, introduced in a failed attempt to make audiences forget Kim Cattrall’s Samantha Jones, who wisely chose to sit this one out, watches footage of an African-American wedding designer.
“Party of One” subtly indicates this by having her say, “I’m not just speaking as an African-American wedding designer myself.”
The scene pays off a season-long plotline where Lisa is frustrated when producers push her into including Michelle Obama in a documentary series about unsung black women.
This makes sense if, by “unsung black women,” they mean “the most famous black women in history.” I assume that the producers also want to highlight similarly obscure figures like Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé on the show.
And Just Like That… is like the female Entourage in that everything always works out for its characters because they lead such charmed lives.
Sure enough, Lisa and her handsome editor get a ring from the Obamas' production company. They're told that Michelle Obama is too well-known to be a suitable subject for a documentary series about unsung black women, but if she likes the rushes, she’ll consider narrating the series.
The African-American wedding designer from the documentary series won’t sign a release unless Lisa promises to bring all of her “fashionista” friends to a bridal show.
Lisa’s fashionista friends include Seema Patel, a real estate broker played by Sarita Choudhoury, who is fifty-eight years old but could pass for a thirty-something. She’s another gorgeous, ageless woman of color brought on board in a doomed attempt to make up for the massive Kim Cattrall-shaped hole in the series’ cast. Instead, she makes you appreciate what the veteran actress with excellent judgment brought to the show.
For those keeping score, “Party of One” brings together three boring white women and two bland women of color. That’s the show’s idea of progress.
Seema is schtupping Carrie’s hunky gardener, Adam (Logan Marshall-Green). She learns that he has a negative take on marriage, because when she mentions going to a bridal shower with all her friends, he sneers at the institution, "(Weddings are) just such a ridiculous idea, you know? Do you take this one? So you take that one? Oh, you do? Okay, well, sign this.”
Adam is urinating while disparaging marriage. This leads her to tell her friends that he was “literally pissing on the idea of marriage."
I don't want to nitpick, but marriage is a concept. It is an institution. It's an idea. You consequently cannot literally piss on the idea of marriage because it does not have a physical form that can be urinated upon.
If I can heap the faintest of praise on Kristin Davis' Charlotte York, she has the least humiliating arc in the episode. She gets excited when her cancer-stricken husband unexpectedly gets a boner and they have sex for the first time in quite a while. Later, she sets up Carrie with Mark, a rich buffoon (he has his own plane) played by Victor Garber, who does not seem to have aged in the past twenty years.
The most humiliating plotline belongs to Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda Hobbes, because she had the terrible judgment to procreate.
Miranda and her ex-husband brought a red-headed twenty-something monster named Brady (Niall Cunningham) into the world.
Brady is angry at Miranda because Mia (Ella Stiller, Ben's daughter), the mother of his unborn child, said that Brady’s mother violated her aura.
The carrot-topped hellion, who is somehow far and away the least obnoxious Gen Z caricature in the episode, refuses to talk to his mother, beyond “We’re out of oat milk” and “What’s the wi-fi?”
Mia comes to a poorly attended Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda’s house along with sidekicks Silvio (Paulo Hernandez-Farella), a flamboyantly queer man, and Epcot (Spike Einbinder), a trans man played by Laraine Newman’s trans son. He was named after Epcot Center, as his parents were Disney adults, we learn repeatedly throughout the episode, in the proverbial running gag that limps and lurches.
Even when Silvio is complimenting someone, he insults them. When Carrie answers the door, he blurts, “She doesn’t look crazy.”
When Carrie looks surprised, Mia explains, “That’s Silvio. He goes off!" Incidentally, Silvio Goes Off is my favorite new indie band.
When Silvio sees that Brady has red hair, he quips, “He’s a ginger? No girl, bye!”
Those crazy kids! Always refusing a free meal because someone has a hair color they dislike.
The three most obnoxious characters in the history of television seem surprised and chagrined to discover that turkey, of all things, is being served for Thanksgiving dinner.
“I only eat cucumber, brown rice, and seaweed,” Mia insists indignantly.
When Brady says that she never told him that all she eats is deconstructed vegetarian sushi, the mother of his unborn child sneers, “You didn’t ask me, so that’s on you.”
That is an excellent question.
In a bid to please his baby mama, Brady embarks on a desperate but ultimately successful hunt for cucumber, brown rice, and seaweed.
When Brady sees a woman he should have forcefully encouraged to have an abortion eat cheese, he expresses surprise and displeasure at the development; she once again coldly informs him that she did not ask for him to get the only food she professes to eat, so, once again, this is on him.
Silvio is all about vibes, rudeness, and insulting people to their face.
Silvio starts by saying, "I don't feel this vibe.” Then he quips that the apartment of the people who were kind enough to let him share their Thanksgiving dinner is “literally giving Martha Stewart vibes.”
When he meets Mark, the millionaire played by Victor Garber, he sasses, “Mr. Man here is giving Mayor of Whoville vibes.”
Then Silvio, who is clad in a deeply unflattering jeans/shoulderless denim blouse ensemble, starts a one-man dance party, leading Mia to enthuse, “Yaaas girl! Yaaaas girl! Yaaas!”
And Just Like That… seems to understand and appreciate unconventional young people about as much as far-right-wing political cartoonists who draw them as obese, pierced, tattooed, and perpetually crying or whining while losing debates with Trump supporters.
Like the Kesha concert I attended a few weeks back, the audience for And Just Like That… seems to be eighty percent female, and twenty percent gay men. That did not keep the show from introducing an unspeakably cruel caricature of a queer man as the bitchiest, most obnoxious asshole in the history of the universe.
When Miranda attempts to introduce herself and learn Silvio’s name by blurting awkwardly, “My name is Miranda, and you are?” He responds indignantly, “Still starving, girl!”
Epcot professes to be lactose intolerant, but he also helps himself to fancy French cheese and stuffs the toilet with explosive feces.
We know this because, in what could be the nadir of his extraordinary career, Garber’s wealthy bachelor urinates, and when he flushes, raging torrents of poop rise angrily to the surface and fill Miranda’s bathroom with foul-smelling brown water and human waste.
“Party of One” is consequently shitty in more ways than one.
I cannot fathom why the final episode of a beloved saga that spans decades closes with an episode heavy on literal toilet humor, focusing inexplicably on unspeakably mean-spirited parodies of woke queer twenty-somethings who are written with a witless viciousness that would make The Babylon Bee proud. In a characteristically nasty throwaway line, Silvio expresses annoyance that he skipped a protest so that he could go to the worst Thanksgiving dinner ever.
That’s not all that happens in the episode, of course. There’s also a montage sequence where Carrie delivers expensive pies to her friends.
We end on a theoretically empowering note, with Carrie embracing the idea of being single and not needing a man to define her.
She ends her autobiographical novel by saying that its heroine (known only as “The Woman” because Carrie is apparently an experimental writer now) is on her own, not alone.
None of that makes anywhere near as much of an impression as what my wife pointed out is the worst party scene since The Room, both because people randomly file in and out like in Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic and because quality-wise, this is on the same level as The Room but without the unintentional hilarity.
“Party of One” feels like a particularly cruel parody of And Just Like That… Director and co-writer Michael Patrick King seems to want to drive a stake through the heart of the franchise, ensuring it stays dead.
Then again, I could also see them saying they want another season or movie so that it does not end on such a dire and desperate note.
And Just Like That… is very bad, but its finale is the absolute worst.
Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success: Fiasco
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