Episode Two: models and mortals

People like to make fun of Sarah Jessica Parker’s nose, especially males who like to make fun of females who watch the show. As if she didn’t know it was huge and thus should be admired for overcoming and making a career with her face.

For that reason, I love this episode, because it makes two disparaging references to SJP’s nose. The first is when the girls are comparing the body parts they hate and Carrie points to her nose, and the second is when Derek a.k.a. the Bone says Carrie’s nose is distracting him. The scene with the Bone, surprisingly, comes straight from the book, but the trading body flaws talk with the girls seems to be written for SJP. So there.

I also like the throw-away joke in the party scene, when all the models are wrinkling their noses and turning away the hors d’orvs and Carrie scoops four of them off the waiter’s tray.

This leads to another encounter with Mr. Big, and in both this episode and the first, he seems to be adamant about taking the wind out of Carrie’s sails. Her column is “cute,” men who date models are “lucky,” and everything about her fluffy little world that gets whipped up throughout the episode is brought down to earth with a loud thump the second he shows up and says something snide.

One might think that I don’t like Mr. Big, and one would be right up until this point in the show’s history. I really have a love-hate relationship with the man. To quote SJP: “Chris has done a great job of taking a very specific archetype of man and forcing Big to become human.” (See Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell).

Case in point: my all-time favorite moment of TV history is the final scene of this episode. Carrie has told BIg that she sometimes writes her column at a coffee shop on 73rd and Madison (which she will never do again after this season). He comes to see her there, and the first thing I love about this scene is that Big does not read over her shoulder when he walks up behind her while she’s writing on her laptop. Aidan does this in a much later episode, and it drives Carrie (and me) crazy.

Big sits down across from her, and suddenly, I love him. He starts off saying he’s late for a meeting (ooh, so powerful), but he’s been thinking about the column she’s writing (okay, so you were glib at first but it actually gave you some food for thought, huh Mr. Big?). Then he says “well, there are so many goddamn gorgeous women out there in this city,” which pisses Carrie off but is actually kind of sexy because that “goddamn” shows more emotion than anything the character has said so far.

Then he says: “but the thing is this: after a while, you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh, you know what I mean?” And Carrie grins and nods, and he leaves, and then the voice over makes some Manhattan-specific quip, and then it’s over. But I love it. That line was inscribed in silver ink on the back page of my “senior memories” book in high school.

Episode Three: bay of married pigs

Okay, I’m mostly going to skip over this episode because it tries to discuss an issue that is tackled more effectively later in this season. Episode Three is all about “the cold war between marrieds and singles,” which, if you watch carefully, is really just a rivalry between married women and single women. For that conversation, we are all better off watching Episode Ten, “The Baby Shower,” which I will discuss, with relish, further down the page.

However, there is something about this episode that I have to write about, and it really only comes into play at the very end. Charlotte makes Samantha sleep over because she’s been shooting Tequila all night at a married couples party. Samantha makes a play for Charlotte’s doorman, who has a British/Scottish/Irish accent. It must be Irish, because that would explain the “summary statement” the voiceover makes at the end of the show/column. Plus, he says “Jaysus.”

“Maybe the fight between marrieds and singles is like the war in Northern Ireland,” Carrie says in her head as she walks to the movie theatre. “We’re all basically the same, but somehow we wound up on different sides.” Wouldn’t the Civil War be a better simile here? I just don’t think the war in Northern Ireland can be explained away that easily (I know I haven’t been able to do it.) Even more confounding is the fade-in of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Episode Four: valley of the twenty-something guys

Ahh, Twenty-Something Sam, my second favorite of Carrie’s single-episode boyfriends (ergo Big, Aidan, Berger, Aleksandr, and the peeing politician do not count, because they were in multiple episodes). This would be Timothy Olyphant, from Gone in Sixty Seconds, Scream 2, First Wives Club (with SJP) and, according to imdb.com, Deadwood. Okay, this is really embarrassing, but I never realized that was him in the lead role. Whoops.

This episode also starts “Once upon at time…” but then goes in to Carrie and Big’s story. She keeps comparing him to a crossword puzzle, which I like. “Men in their forties are like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle: tricky, complicated, and you’re never really sure you got the right answer.”

I guess they’re contrasting this with Twenty-Something Sam, who is constantly compared to an addictive drug. “Yes, Samantha, Miranda and I were all recreational users,” Carrie says, and “Why the sudden craving?” It’s funny, because Sam’s twenty-something dialog, especially when he’s recounting his Unicorn Woman dream to Carrie, is something you don’t get to hear a lot on SATC.

Oh, this episode also has the “Mrs. Up the Butt” conversation. Supposedly it is a landmark conversation with the four of them in the back of that cab, but I think they are a bit too hysterical (in the high-strung sense, not the funny sense) about the whole topic.

Episode Five: the power of female sex

Okay, Gilles may be #3 on favorite single-episode boyfriends list, simply because he is French. “I suddenly recalled my terrible weakness for gorgeous French architects.”

I like this episode because of its international flavor, with Amalita and all her beaux. Amalita and Carrie are much better friends in the book, and I kind of wish she had been a reccuring character on the show. Side note: Amalita is also on an episode of Veronica Mars, but she’s playing a Middle Eastern woman, not euro-trash like on SATC. I guess that’s why they say actresses can have an “ethnic” look; it’s kind of a catch-all phrase.

All throughout the season, the show has exhibited some distinctive (amateurish?) editing techniques. This episode is a smorgasborg: Carrie walks out of Dolce and Gabana swinging her shopping bag in slow-motion; there’s a shoe wipe between the time Amalita calls Carrie on the phone and when she gets to Balzac; and when Carrie leaves Gilles to go home, she literally floats on air (they must have filmed her on a lift).

Carrie and Gilles’ day together seeing the sights of New York is enviable. “I felt like I had landed in a Claude Larouche film: a man, and a slightly neurotic woman.” They go to the Alice in Wonderland statue (this is also where SJP’s character goes with her father in “If Lucy Fell”), and one of the three Edith Piaf songs I know (Soul de Seil) is playing in the background.

Also, I don’t blame her for not running off with the Italian in the end, because he’s way less attractive than Gilles. That was probably an easier choice than the voiceover implies.

Episode Seven: the monogamists

Nothing to really say here, either. Carrie almost leaves Big for a novelist, which could have been much more interesting than it is. Then there’s the goofy synthesis of Carrie’s metaphoric approach to life and Big’s literal one: she asks him to get off the merry-go-round and stand still with her, so he actually stands still with her.

Episode Six: secret sex

Samantha is swilling Veuve Cliquot all throughout this episode. Carrie thumbtacks the bus poster to her wall: I would totally frame that. Charlotte tells Carrie she can’t put the Hasidic Jew in her column, and it’s not really clear if she does or doesn’t, since you can’t tell what’s the column and what’s the show.

Episode Eight: three’s a crowd

Another episode that starts with “Once upon a time!!!”

Charlotte’s boyfriend wants her to have a threesome, and he is very transparently “buttering her up,” as Miranda puts it.

Carrie is drinking a blackberry Clearly Canadian while she writes her column, and I’m so jealous. I really miss Clearly Canadian, and blackberry was my favorite. It’s even in the old-school clear bottle.

This is the “lost episode” for me, because it was so long after the original airing that I finally got to see it. It’s kind of important too, meeting Big’s wife. It’s a shame she never shows up again, especially since she wanted to be friends with Carrie.

They never clarify if Big and Barbara had a threesome with the best friend he eventually cheated on her with. And at what point in the episode does Barbara know that Carrie and Big are dating?

Episode Nine: the turtle and the hare

Well, the ladies meet in a coffeeshop, but it’s not THE coffeeshop. I guess they start the weekly brunches next season.

This is the first of what I think is a total of three references to John Kennedy, Jr.: “Look, we all think we’re Carolyn Bassett, then one day John-John’s out of the picture and we’re happy to just have some guy who can throw around a frisbee.”

Miranda and Carrie have to stage an intervention for Charlotte and the Rabbit, which is hilarious until Miranda sticks the confiscated vibrator in her purse.

One thing I noticed was that Carrie gets three e-mails from Stanford, but seasons from now, she’s going to “discover” the internet for the first time.

Episode Ten: the baby shower

I’ve deemed this my favorite episode of the season, although it may have had a lot to do with the conversations I had on the day I saw it. This episode is about women who get married, have babies, and lose their identities.

“It’s a cult,” says Miranda, “They all think the same, dress then same, and sacrifice themselves to the same cause: babies…I’ve lost two sisters to the Motherhood, I know what I’m talking about.”

I lump this in with the “marrieds vs. singles” episode because it’s basically the same thing: the show is addressing the belief that single women in their thirties are pathetic because they haven’t snagged a man yet. It’s what landed SATC on the cover of Time magazine, with the headline: “Who needs a husband?”

For the sake of this argument, Marriage = Babies.

Miranda must have a serious aversion to crepe-paper storks, because she wants to rip off their cardboard beaks in this episode. When she has her own baby shower in a later season, she gives Charlotte the mandate “no storks.”

They are obviously using a body double in the Laney Berlin strip scene.

Carrie sums up the ‘burbs: “I was struck by how a place so filled with nature could look so unnatural.” For their trip to Connecticut, the girls are all wearing black again. I realize this is symbolic, but two episodes in a row? And the poor dog’s invisible electric fence serves as a metaphor for married life later in the show. “No, I don’t want to go back there,” Laney says, and you’re supposed to feel sorry for her.

Laney is a total bitch at her baby shower:

“Remember that feeling like if you left Manhattan even for a second you’d fall of the edge of the earth?”

“Is she still bar-hopping and bed-hopping? It’s so sad, isn’t it, when that’s all you have?”

“Life is not a Jaqueline Suzanne novel: four friends looking for life and love in the big city.”

I have one of these in my life. That’s why we don’t talk much anymore. But if you ask her, it’s because I’m jealous and pathetic since I haven’t convinced my boyfriend to propose to me. Makes me want to throw an “I don’t have a baby” shower, like Samantha.

Samantha is pitch-perfect in this episode, maybe because she’s supposed to be drunk the whole time.

Episode Eleven: The Drought

“I’m not like me. I’m like Together Carrie. I wear little outfits, you know, Sexy Carrie and Casual Carrie. Sometimes I catch myself actually posing. It’s exhausting.”

Ah, the farting episode. I read that Carrie running into the door with the sheet over her head was not scripted, but happened accidentally. So that belly laugh from Mr. Big is natural. She makes it worse when she’s trying to act all mature, and all the while he’s planning to put a whoopee cushion in her chair.

She’s totally out of line when she goes to his apartment and tries to seduce him while he’s watching a pay-per-view fight. The whole “not having sex” problem is a really good example of Carrie going to her friends and getting three different perspectives.

I like that one of her interviews in this episode is the manicurist that is doing her nails while she talks to Miranda about the fart. And I’m impressed that she’s painting her kitchen cabinet freehand, without tape.