Episode Three: attack of the 5’10” woman

“It’s her. It’s her, her. You know, she’s just, you know, she’s shiny hair, style section, Vera Wang, and I’m, you know, the sex column they run next to ads for penile implants.”

This is so sad! Charlotte is sitting in Carrie’s apartment, reading Big and Natasha’s wedding announcement out loud, and Carrie starts crying and the music swells and the curtains start fluttering in the breeze. So sad.

I think this episode really touched a nerve, because who hasn’t gone through that phase where you think there really are girls put on this earth to make you feel bad about yourself?

The irony of this scene is that Carrie is saying all this to Charlotte, who, out of the four, is the most likely to be that woman. Seriously, in one episode she asks if her hair is too shiny, and later in this season, she’s going to wear a $14,000 Vera Wang wedding dress. Plus, she has not one but two wedding announcements run in the Times’ style section.

Carrie does the whole dance where you’re feeling insecure and you realize you’re dressing for other women. Then she finally accepts that some women are simply better: “I will never be the woman with the perfect hair, who can wear white and not spill on it, and chair committees and write Thank You notes, and I can’t feel bad about that.” Then she spots Natasha’s misuse of the word “their,” and calls Miranda to gloat about it.

Oddly enough, I did the same thing this week, probably subconsciously thinking about this episode: there’s this really perfect, pretty girl I’ve met briefly, and I found some comments of hers online and there were like two grammatical errors. I was overjoyed. But looking back over this blog, I can see I really have no room to judge.

Episode Four: boy, girl, boy, girl…

This is the one where Carrie kisses Alanis Morissette. Also, she whines to Miranda in the coffeeshop: “what about my problem?” when Miranda starts to leave. I think that’s saying to the audience: yes, we know they do the same thing every week.

Episode Five: no ifs, ands, or butts

Okay, I obviously need a cigarette now, so I’m going to take a break. But first, an introduction to Carrie’s new boyfriend: “His name was Aidan Shaw. He was warm, masculine, and classic American — just like his furniture.”

Episode Six: are we sluts?

This is the episode where Miranda has chlamydia, clamidia — fuck it, the clap — and she has to call everyone she’s ever slept with and tell them to get tested. It’s weird, because she calls a guy we, the audience, have seen before, and he has the same personality, job situation, and break-up history with Miranda, yet he has a different name. What’s up with that? Oh, and he’s the one that gave it to her.

Carrie is wearing her “coat of many colors” for the third time in this season, and I love it. “Kiss and Tell” says it’s from Bergdorf Goodman, and it’s so cute and patchwork-like and not at all in-your-face Carrie fashion.

When Steve and Miranda are in bed talking about their “numbers,” the book Steve is reading is the Beginner’s Guide to Aquariums. Nice bedtime reading, buddy.

Episode Seven: drama queens

It is unsettling, this whole “relationship without drama” thing. Samantha tells Miranda, who is also in a state of domestic bliss: “your relationship is my greatest fear realized.” It used to be mine, too, but you get used to it. You get fat and happy and you wonder how you ever survived all those bad relationships.

Carrie is complaining that she doesn’t feel the “stomach flip” with Aidan, and Miranda says that “the stomach flip is really just a fear of losing the guy.” I don’t know about that, but it kind of makes sense.

This episode marks the return of Big. In TV time, he was gone for like, ever, but in DVD time, I barely missed him.

Episode Eight: the big time

We learn two interesting facts in this episode.

1) Carrie last her virginity in the 11th grade to Seth Bateman on a ping pong table in his basement after half a joint.

2) Samantha is “a little older” than the rest of the girls. She says this like it’s news to them, but it clearly isn’t.

Carrie and Big have the same run-in on the Gab party boat as they did in the “modelizer” episode: she has her mouth full of canape and someone accidentally shoves her into him.

There’s this whole theme about “time” with Big: he keeps saying he needs to do things in his own time during the first two seasons. In this episode, titled ‘the big time,” he finally comes around and realizes he wants Carrie, so he shows up at her apartment. Aidan has gone to set the TIMEr on the coffee maker and realizes Carrie doesn’t have any filters so he runs down to “the Korean.” That’s a totally mundane thing to do, set the coffee timer, and I think it’s only in the episode to get Aidan out of the apartment and get us thinking about time in order to set up the return of the notorious B.I.G.

Episode Nine: easy come, easy go

This is the first of the four episodes with commentary, and I watched them all twice. This is also the beginning of “Carrie’s descent into hell,” says Michael Patrick KIng. The idea was to drag everybody’s favorite good girl through the mud to make her more relatable.

I’m not sure how I feel about this commentary. It points out a lot of things I had kind of noticed and made them official (Natasha always wears white, Carrie’s smoking is symbolic of her relationship with Big), but it also reveals the man behind the curtain, and I think I may have been happier with just the wizard projection.

Regardless of the commentary, this episode is in the running for favorite of the season. In fact, I think I’m going to call it my “favorite serious episode” of season three.

Episode Ten: all or nothing

“That’s Miranda’s cat, Fatty. Cat’s a regular; he doesn’t get billing but the cat is perfect. The cat is huge and fat and never, ever does anything wrong.”

That’s MPK talking about Miranda’s cat in the commentary, during the scene where Steve’s puppy is barking at Miranda’s bedroom door. Miranda is sleeping next to the cat and it’s glaring at the door and looks supremely pissed.

Lots of animalia this episode — it’s the one where Carrie loses Pete. Honestly, how the hell did a dog find it’s way back to it’s owner’s girlfriend’s apartment in NYC? No way. Worse, when Aidan says “he found his way back,” the voiceover says “and so had I.” Lame!

I also learned from the commentary that the theme music for the affair is a deconstruction of the Sex and the City theme by Groove Armada.

Episode Eleven: running with scissors

Ha. The Japanese business man thinks Carrie’s a hooker. Ha.

It cracks me up when Carrie voices her delusion that everybody is going to get out of the affair alive and Miranda says “I don’t watch Lifetime television for women.” She doesn’t just say the network, she’s says the whole tag line. Funny.

And if I had any lingering doubts about the voiceover being Carrie’s column, this episode was the coup d’grace. Natasha and Aidan could have just read Carrie’s column and learned about the affair.

In the very end, Carrie says “I’d found a way to let myself out of the mess,” meaning the affair with Big. Um, no? You don’t get credit for that one. You got caught, you didn’t end it through courage and conviction. What kind of person would keep sleeping with a married man after his wife breaks a tooth chasing her out of their apartment? No one. Nope, that summary statement was way off the mark.

Episode Twelve: don’t ask, don’t tell

Charlotte is such a brat. There are times when I like her, but they are few and far between. MPK says in the voiceover that they made her so bratty in these “Trey” episodes so that when her perfect little marriage blows up in her pretty little face, she’ll be forced to grow up. Good.

Miranda’s speed date calls her Mandy. I, too, am starting to realize that I am Miranda. With Carrie’s job.