Carrie’s Crappy Goodbye: Why And Just Like That’s Finale Left Fans Fuming
Kai Montgomery here. Look, I do not enjoy saying “I told you so,” but someone had to point out that ending the Carrie Bradshaw saga with a toilet catastrophe was a bold choice and not in a good way.
Oh, fantastic. Another prestige-TV finale that thinks shock equals meaning. After three seasons, And Just Like That wrapped up on HBO Max with a Thanksgiving dinner sequence that traded sentiment and iconic city-glamour for a visual gag involving an overflowing toilet and visible feces. The scene aired in the series finale on Thursday and immediately detonated across social feeds, with viewers blasting the show for a finale they called gross, insulting, and emotionally hollow.
Let us be clear and factual: the episode centers on a dinner where Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is left alone at the table after Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are called away. Miranda tends to a dog-related emergency while Charlotte supports her husband’s recovery, leaving Carrie with Miranda’s son Brady (Niall Cunningham), several boisterous teens, and Mark (Victor Garber) as dinner companions. One of the teens clogs the bathroom and lights a candle in apology; later Mark uses the same toilet, it overflows, and the camera lingers on the mess. Yes, the show literally ends with a poop shot.
Fans did not hold back. Social platforms erupted with reactions ranging from incredulous to furious. One viewer asked why they were saying goodbye to beloved characters while watching a toilet overflow. Another accused the writers of “hating” the audience by filling the finale with scenes of urination and defecation, while a third said the final minutes made them physically ill. Several posts suggested the scene felt like an intentional middle finger to longtime viewers.
Context matters. Sex and the City began in 1998 as a frank, stylish chronicle of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha navigating love and sex in New York. The franchise spawned films in 2008 and 2010 and returned in 2021 without Kim Cattrall’s Samantha. From the start, And Just Like That polarized audiences: the show’s decision to kill off Big (Chris Noth) in season 1 triggered backlash, and characters such as Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) drew criticism for being overwritten as woke caricatures. Ratings and goodwill dwindled over the seasons.
Despite the turbulence, producers did not cancel the series mid-run. On August 1, Sarah Jessica Parker announced that season 3 would be the end, and showrunner Michael Patrick King later explained he wrote the finale and felt it was a natural stopping point, claiming they avoided calling the season “final” to let viewers enjoy it fresh. That line did not age well for many fans after the toilet-clog finish, which some argue trivialized character arcs like Aidan’s subplot and the retconning of Big’s legacy.
So what are we supposed to take away? If your intent was to puncture nostalgia with a reality check about messy lives, fair. But to many, the gag read as mean-spirited and lazy—an undignified end for an iconic character whose story began in the glossy, witty world of Carrie Bradshaw. There’s a difference between subversive and simply gross, and apparently the writers either misjudged the line or decided they did not care.
Will this finale be reexamined as brave misdirection years from now, or will it be filed under “tone-deaf send-offs”? Fans and critics are already debating that, and the social backlash suggests the latter. For a show that once made high heels and monologues viral, a toilet shot as curtain call is, at minimum, a baffling creative choice.
And that, dear reader, is why we can’t have nice things.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and New York Post, social posts on X (formerly Twitter)
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
