Pie Is the One Thing ‘And Just Like That…’ Got Absolutely Right

ByJill Ettinger

After three seasons of And Just Like That… feeling like an awkward Thanksgiving dinner, the finale gets one thing right: pie is always a perfect ending.

Let’s face it. For three seasons, And Just Like That… has been the television equivalent of an awkward Thanksgiving dinner. The kind where the seating plan makes no sense, the conversation swings between oddly intimate and strangely evasive, and you’re never entirely sure who’s bringing what to the table. There were moments of warmth, yes, but also moments when you’d have happily excused yourself to “check on the rolls” and never returned.

Which is why the finale’s focus on pie felt less like a plot device and more like an intervention.

Carrie spends the episode making stealth deliveries across Manhattan: pumpkin here, pecan there, a gluten-free situation for Seema. No one is herded into the same room. No one has to pretend they’re fine while someone monologues about their spiritual awakening. She hands over the box, smiles, and leaves like the relative who knows how to arrive with a gift and depart before anyone can ask her to carve the turkey (or, in this case, take it out of the oven before it’s fully cooked).

Anthony gets his pie with a side of reconciliation, which feels on-brand: sweet, a little messy, probably best eaten quickly before it changes its mind. Charlotte’s comes destined for sitting atop fine china, because of course it does. Miranda’s arrives like a peace treaty; for a woman who has ping-ponged through professional crises and relationship plotlines the entirety of the series, a fork and a slice are a better therapy session than anything we’ve seen her attend.

Lisa Todd Wexley’s delivery is accompanied by a command from Herbert to sit down, which may be the most romantic moment in the episode. And Seema, casually waving off gluten, accepts hers with the kind of ease that makes you suspect she has an entirely separate dessert already waiting at home.

Pie is among the great unifiers of strained gatherings. It is not cake in the slightest, but instead marries the bitter and the sweet, the tart, the creamy — it lets you decide your own portion and how much of the crust you’re committing to. It’s equally at home in a fridge raid at midnight as it is under a cloche in a dining room Charlotte would approve of.

And in a series that has occasionally overexplained itself into exhaustion, pie is pure economy. It closed out every subplot without reopening wounds. We don’t need Carrie to talk through her feelings — we see her fork in the tin, Barry White on the karaoke machine, and understand more than any monologue could give us.

Choosing pie over champagne was the show’s only true brilliance (besides Shoe). Champagne is for performance: the clink, the sparkle, the group photo. Pie is for honesty. Champagne says look at us. Pie says you’re fine. And after three years of watching the show try to be all things to all people, the latter feels like the most grounded decision it made.

The revival has been, like many family meals, a mix of the baffling, the unexpectedly touching, and the dishes you wish had been left in the kitchen. But in the final minutes, the noise dies down, the plates are cleared, and something everyone actually wants lands on the table.

Pie can’t fix an undercooked plot or revive a missing character, but it can make you leave the table feeling better than you arrived. And in the awkward dinner party that has been And Just Like That…, that’s a sweet triumph.

Previously Published on The Ethos

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