Episode Fourteen: all that glitters…

As much beef as I have with Hillary Swank playing the lead in P.S. I Love You (in the book, Holly was blond and bubbly), I did like the movie, especially for it’s beautiful Irish scenery and beautiful “Irish” men. One of Gina Gershon’s lines (love, love Gina Gershon – Eva Mendes is like the poor man’s Gina Gershon) is about “grope-free dancing” at a gay club. That is exactly what it is! I never could verbalize why I liked gay clubs so much in college, but that was the reason. No groping, and the guys would tell you how pretty you were and that they loved your outfit.

Anthony’s love interest in this episode is so cute and funny. I think he was in another episode, but I’ll have to check. Yep! He’s the guy Stanford meets in the underwear-only club.

Stanford makes fun of Carrie for wearing Candies. I swear, if it weren’t for this show, I wouldn’t know that things like Candies and scrunchies were verbotten. Or how to pronounce Manolo Blahnik.

Stupid Carrie moment when she mimmicks gay porn music for Aidan. Painful to watch.

Episode Fifteen: change of a dress

The return of Susan Sharon. She’s blond now.

Also returning is J.J., with the same name, from the Season Three opener. He hit on Charlotte, got hit by “gets in fights” guy, then grabbed Carrie’s thigh as he tried to pull himself up. I think he’s funny, but I hate hate hate that Samantha has sex with him and messes things up with Richard.

MPK also commentates on this episode, but I don’t really agree with/care about anything he has to say. It’s the break-up-in-front-of-the-fountain episode, so it’s pretty much down to personal reactions.

Episode Sixteen: ring a ding ding

Oooh, the money between friends conversation. This is hard, because you want to agree with Charlotte, because what she says is more logical, but Carrie wins out in the end, and Charlotte does look like a bitch. Maybe if she had just handled it better.

The whole make-up scene between Carrie and Charlotte (which may be at the same restaurant where Carrie shows her the shoes she bought to bring her face to face with Natasha) is like Charlotte is proposing to Carrie. It seems intentional.

If each of the girls had lent her ten grand each, I would have been happier. This in-debt-to-Charlotte thing doesn’t sit well with me, because by the time the series ends, two years later, you know she hasn’t paid it off. At least, I wouldn’t think so.

Episode Seventeen: a ‘vogue’ idea

This was in the running for favorite episode of the season, but I just can’t get past that old dude with his pants around his ankles.

Carrie stores the picture of her and her father in a classic JD Salinger paperback copy of Franny and Zooey. I’ve read that book since Season One, when it first came up, and it turns out the Zooey is a boy (short for Zachary) and Franny is his sister. Really good characters.

Fun Charlotte-is-psycho quote: “It has a white chocolate peanut butter baby inside and YOU CAN EAT THE BABY!”

The whole Manolo Blahnik-Mary Jane scene kind of gets me in my little shoe-loving heart because I’ve been looking for a pair of Mary Janes. It was weird; they came back big time when I was in junior high, but we all got ours at Payless. That’s not going to work this time around.

And I love the choice of Candice Bergen for the Vogue editor, and I love that she keeps coming back on the show (twice? I’m not sure). I remember watching Murphy Brown with my grandmother when I was little; and when I was in college, I would get out of swimming class and take a shower before dinner and watch M.B. reruns on Lifetime while I dried my hair/took a nap. Good times.

Episode Eighteen: i heart ny

So, MPK had to comment on this one because he had to make very clear that he had written this episode, title and all, BEFORE 9/11. It’s kind of obnoxious to hear him say it, but someone has to do it. That kind of thing is so hard: you want people to know that you were not jumping on a band wagon or, worse, exploiting a catastrophe; but to be the one saying it about yourself still sounds like you’re tooting your own horn. “I predicted New York was special BEFORE it was attacked by terrorists! I’m a true I-heart-New Yorker! The rest of you are just posers.”

Otherwise, I really like the commentary because it completely justifies my (poorly-integrated) rant about Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the very first SATC blog entry. “Holly Golightly is a prototype, descendant of Carrie’s,” he says about the decision to use “Moon River.” I feel totally justified. And they itentionally did not reference the movie.

I like that Carrie tells Big that he can’t leave because he’s the Chrysler Building. I’ve always liked the Chrysler Building best.

It’s funny how Charlotte confesses that Monet is one of her favorites, and Bunny detests Monet because he’s “such a sap.”

MPK says they didn’t know if Mr. Big was coming back, and his final appearance on the show could have been riding away in a horse-drawn carriage. No way.

MPK also says something about the doctor “stitching up” Miranda after she’s given birth. Is that standard procedure? Always? I’m really not having kids now.

The leaves in the trees in the final scene were actually green when they filmed this episode, says MPK. They made it look like fall by tinting them, and the falling leaf is animated. It looks really good though.