“And Just Like That…” creator and showrunner Michael Patrick King is defending his decision to conclude the “Sex and the City” revival series with a decidedly unglamorous plot point involving literal poop.
Thursday’s series finale episode, “Party of One,” found Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) celebrating Thanksgiving at the home of her longtime pal, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon).
The evening culminates with Charlotte’s boss, Mark Kasabian (Victor Garber), and Miranda scrambling to deal with an overflowing toilet that a lactose-intolerant dinner guest had clogged. The cringe factor of the scene was amped up significantly given just how, um, true to life the prop turds appeared.
In an interview with Variety published Thursday, King said he and the show’s creative team saw the scene as a reminder to viewers that “we cannot take ourselves too seriously.”
Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
“For the gorgeousness of Carrie’s pink, sparkly top and tulle skirt — that’s the high — the low is a toilet filled up with shit. Because guess what? Being single, there’s a lot of shit, and relationships are a lot of shit,” he explained. “It’s the comedy, with the drama, with the romance, with the fairy tale. I guess it’s a response to the fairy tale.”
King elaborated further in a chat with Deadline, noting that the scene had a “symbolic” aim as well. As for the poop itself, it was made of silicone and required only a single take.
“This was a manifestation of how shit backs up and you have to deal with it. And also, we’ve always done high-low on the show,” he said. “We’ve always done couture and comedy… It was the symbolic version of having to deal with a lot of doo doo in relationships, and it backs up if you don’t.”
Still, spotlighting excrement in the final episode of a series that’s become synonymous with cutting-edge fashion and New York luxury caught many fans off guard.
“Why am I saying farewell to some of my favorite TV characters of all time and seeing a toilet overflow on my screen?” one person wrote on X.
Added another: “Should change it to ‘And just like Crap.’”
Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
Critics were similarly unimpressed.
“The crescendo of the evening involved a toilet overflowing with lots and lots of poo. Could this have really been the intended finale to the entire franchise?” The Guardian wrote.
IndieWire felt similarly, noting: “There are less than seven minutes between our last ever glimpse of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing down her palatial hallway in thousands of dollars of head-to-toe pink, and a gurgling geyser of feces spewing straight up into our collectively horrified faces.”
For others, however, the scene was indicative of the overall reception to “And Just Like That…,” which debuted on HBO Max in 2021 to major fanfare but never captured the cultural zeitgeist like “Sex and the City.”
HBO Max’s unceremonious Aug. 1 announcement that the series would conclude at the end of its third season came as a surprise to many, prompting speculation that the streaming platform canceled it despite King and Parker’s claims that it was a creative decision.
