AND JUST LIKE THAT: Curb Your Duncthusiasm

The gentleman wondered what he had gotten himself into… (It was Carrie. He had gotten himself into Carrie.)

Holy shit, gang. The end is nigh! Nigh, I tell you! And not just the end of the season; like, the for-real end!

If you are reading this, you probably know and maybe care that on Friday, And Just Like That’s impish evil-genius-in-charge Michael Patricia King woke up in A MOOD. He’d run out of Klonopin and Tastykakes and nicotine gum and ideas, and was just so over everyone making fun of his show all the time. He looked at the vape-fluid-stained pages of notes he’d made of things for the fancy ladies to do in Season 4 — which included: going to Russia for a magical Christmas episode in which the gang leads the gays out of oppression and bondage via karaoke; Carrie winning the Nobel Prize for literary whimsy — and thought “Fuck it!” He threw those pages directly into the dumpster and fired off an email to the whole cast and HBO Maximum and all of us that was like, “IT’S OVER! You won’t have Michelle Partridge King to kick around anymore!”

And that it how we all learned that And Just Like That would be kaput following its upcoming two-part season finale, thus ending the three-ish decade romantic saga of Carrie Bradshaw and her gaggle of wacky harpies probably forever this time. What hath we wrought with our incessant criticisms!? (I regret nothing!)

Meanwhile, on the actual show, Carrie kinda bumbled into actually interesting and, dare I say it, vaguely satisfying territory finally. But also, a bunch of other really cringe and lame stuff happened too, obviously.

The summer of our discontent had ended, and autumn found Bradshaw Manor finally decorated and filled with charming furniture — INCLUDING A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DINING ROOM TABLE!!! Where had the hideous one that was a plot point over SEVERAL EPISODES this season gone? Had Aidan Shaw taken it with him when he left? Had the ghosts of Che Diaz and Professor Karen Pittman spirited it away to the shadow realm where they exist now? We may never know, because MPK et. al. just fully didn’t bother to address the absence of this allegedly significant and symbolic thing they’d failed to make any of us care about at all until now.

Besides decorating, Carrie had also spent the previous months since last week finishing (?) her fictional historical novel that was really all about herself and listening to Duncan lie to her about how great it was.

“This brilliant work of literary genius deserves a Scotch,” he said one day, secretly needing one himself to bolster his own resolve to keep gaslighting Carrie in the hopes that she would one day maybe have sex with him. (The gentleman wondered what he had gotten himself into…, Duncan thought.)

His scheme was working, but mostly on everyone else on the show, who all thought Carrie was head-over-high-heels gaga in need of a shag from the Duncatron. That included Seema, who took Carrie to martinis one night ostensibly to talk about how she’d recently learned that Adam, the smelly hippie she’s been sleeping with, lives in his dead mommy’s haunted loft and believes her to be reincarnated as a kudzu that would surely slowly strangle the life out of any living woman who dares to love him. But obviously Carrie didn’t care about any of that and just wanted to talk about how Duncan thought she was a significant virtuoso creative literary genius. She was so totally into the fact that he was the first human man to ever (allegedly) believe she was smart that she was thinking maybe she didn’t need him to dunk his crumpet into her clotted cream after all.

She said more-or-less the same things later when Charlotte came over to do a Zoom exorcism with Susie Essman from Curb Your Enthusiasm due to her own home being fully demolished by tap dancing nonbinary tweens or something. As she was getting ready to commune with the dark forces once more, Charlotte happened to notice a whole mess of shredded steely blue satin hanging in Carrie’s closet and was like, “What is up, my girl? Do you believe yourself to be starring in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella at the Shed or something?”

Interestingly, that was not what was going on. What was going on was this: The other night, Duncan had stolen up to Carrie’s second floor boudoirs (plural) and conned her into believing he was giddily charmed by the fact that she owned hundreds of dresses and shoes that collectively cost more than 99.99999% of people make in 10 years, and had filled several rooms with them in a city with a catastrophic housing crisis.

Duncan saw his opening: He knew that if he could get this dizzy broad into one of those magical frocks, he could in all likelihood get her out of it again (for sex). So, he invited Carrie to a party, and she was like “Ooooh! Goody goody gumdrops! I will choose the most special tit-bursting gown for our platonic date!” And that is the very gown that Charlotte spied as her own unseen demon familiars swirled about her, impatient for the Zoom sabbat with Susie Essman to begin.

But Carrie was having second thoughts about the dress, because remember how several episodes ago Miranda was like “When are you going to drown Duncan in your flooded panties?” and Carrie got all rageful regarding that? Well, Carrie remembered it. She’d apparently been nursing that stupid grudge all summer, and now she was extra annoyed that maybe the gown proved that Miranda was right all along, and all the farting she’d done about Maggie Thatcher and the Woman in the Dove Grey Button Boots in Duncan’s basement really was just to get him into her own basement.

Elsewhere in the city that fell asleep watching this show, everyone else was having just a real terrible time. First there was Miranda, who wasn’t thinking about Carrie and Duncan at all. No, she was too busy having to stop her ex-husband Steve from murdering their first- and only-born failson, Brady Hobbes, due to his getting a wacky shampoo girl pregnant with his deadbeat sperms. After shooting Steve with a tranquilizer dart and ending his bloodthirsty rampage through the streets, Miranda roped poor Charlotte into stalking the shampoo girl at work. But the Shampoo Girl saw right through their dastardly ruse and doused Miranda with her shampoo hose, thus ensuring that she would never get her clutches on the unborn babe.

Meanwhile, two characters in whoms love story we are all invested were having butt sex. Just kidding! It was only Anthony and Guiseppe, and the butt sex had to be cut short because SOMEONE (probably Patti LuPone) was trying to murder them with toxic gas. So, they had to flee Anthony’s gas filled apartment for the tiny artist’s garret Guiseppe shared with a lonely old puppet maker. Just as they were getting down to business again on each other’s buttholes, Pappa Gepooto burst in with his latest creation: mini-Guiseppe. Regular-size Guiseppe was such a sweet, simple, Italian puppy of a boy, so he was charmed by this dead-eyed wooden effigy and just blinked his big brown eyes and stroked his big pink dong in wonder.

But Anthony, wizened elder queen that he is, could see right through Pappa Gepedo’s kindly asexual act. “That creep is gonna do a sex murder on you! Come live at my house!” he said.

Poor Juicyppe didn’t know what to do! He loved his little hairy meatball boyfriend, but didn’t want to abandon the poor dear sad old puppet master. Who would give Pappa Gepedo his sponge baths and make sure he had enough feet pics to get his little puppets’ tootsies just right? Guiseppe decided to seek the old man’s wise council. Pappa Geppetto had never steered him wrong before. But as Guiseppe tip-toed up to the old man’s workshop, he heard strange noises. “Fap fap fap fap fap,” he heard along with rasping whimpers and the xylophonic clatter of wooden limbs. Then he met the vacant gaze of mini-Guiseppe, who was lying prone as Pappa J’pethomo performed unspeakable acts upon him.

It was then that Guiseppe understood that Pappa G would be A-OK with his new wooden muse, and he skipped back to bed to tell Anthony, sure, he would move in with him. And they all lived happily ever after.

As for Seema, she was doing battle with the hateful tendrils of Adam the Garden Gnome’s mother vine. She slashed at it with her talons and singed it with her cigarettes, but the thing would not release her stinky love from its grasp. Finally, in desperation, she shoved it out of the window and fled for her life.

Believing her long plant- and deoderant-based nightmare to be over, she went to work the next day, only to find that the vine had survived and taken over her office. “You will never be free of us,” it whispered, as Adam fed Seema to the jaws of a giant, pulsing pea pod.

Also, it was November, which naturally meant that it was Election Day on whatever show Nicole Ari Parker and President Christopher Jackson have been on by themselves all season. Surely, PCJ was about to be named Comptroller of the City or whatever. But first, NAP had to find her daughter’s hamster which had mysteriously disappeared.

“How about we not worry about that,” PCJ said as he squirmed pleasurably, odd squeaks coming from his butthole region.

“Ok!” said NAP said, and they all went to Election headquarters to learn the results of the Comptroller race and none other.

Sadly, PCJ lost, possibly due to him never having done a single campaign thing and no one knowing what his positions were or even what party he was affiliated with. But also perhaps due to his mother being like “Fuck the working class!” and endorsing Andrew Cuomo? Unclear, because And Just Like That simply did not give a single solitary fart about making this storyline at all interesting, let alone relevant to our current political moment.

Apparently totally oblivious to the fact that it was Election Night, because why would she care, Carrie was getting ready for her PLATONIC date with Duncbone. She was just about to leave her manse looking like Marla Bloodstone from Gremlins 2, when something began to stir within her humors. Tonight was a night for enchantment, not pencil skirts! So, she spun around three times and was transformed into her true form: a Sanderson Sister in tattered silk.

When she got to the party, Duncan took one look at her ill-fitting bodice overflowing with boobs and was like, “TAKE ME, MUMMY!”

At first Carrie was like, “Nah.” But then she was like, “Hmmm, OK!” And so they descended to his hobbit hole to hob it on each other’s holes.

Afterward, they were lying in bed and Duncan suddenly realized that he had missed his deadline for The Life and Times of Margot Thackery. Worse yet, he couldn’t possibly turn in what he had written with Carrie because it was all about the will-they-won’t-they situationship between Margot and Prince Phlipflop. He looked over at Carrie, and it was as if a veil had been lifted, and all he saw was a woman who looked like she’d been stuck by lightening. Yes, all the enchantment had left him along with his spooge, and he knew now that he had to get back to England right away! He had to get as far from this vile temptress as possible and never return to her cursed city.

And Carrie was totally fine with that. She’d gotten what she needed: some guy to tell her she was the bestest and never question her and convince her that her terrible novel was the bee’s knees.