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.

Episode Twelve: oh come all ye faithful

So we learn in this episode that Carrie writes every Sunday while Mr. Big is taking his mother to church. It makes sense that his mother lives in New York, since he’s supposed to be Mr. Manhattan. Carrie is really bull-headed about meeting his mother, and I don’t blame him for being pissed at her for showing up at church.

The scene where Samantha meets James in the jazz club is supposed to be taken from Kim Catrall’s real life. I think she and that husband are divorced now. I saw this episode in Spanish, and I remember the line “Cuando chupalo…” Now there’s a useful phrase.

The past two episodes have shown a really obnoxious side of Carrie, and it brings to mind an advice column I saw in a teen magazine once. I wish I could remember which one it was, or that I had clipped the column, because it was really significant. A girl had written in and said she had no self-esteem and how could she become more confident? Instead of answering with some fluff about recognizing how great you really are, the agony aunt actually responded that maybe the girl had no reason to be confident. Sort of saying ‘don’t worry about self-confidence, just self-honesty and acceptance.’

That’s what these past two episodes make me think of regarding Carrie and Big. It’s supposed to be about Carrie finding someone to love her for the fabulous person she is, but she’s honestly not that fabulous. Really, if you’re that neurotic, maybe you should just take what you can get? We know they wind up together in the end, but I think they both have a lot of growing up to do, not just him.

He asks her: “what are you trying to do, test me?” and he’s right, that’s exactly what she was doing. If she hadn’t gone to church to spy on him, she wouldn’t have been introduced to his mother as “a friend.” Big talks a lot about timing with her, as in ‘don’t rush me, bitch.’

I’m not saying Big should take the lead in the relationship, but she’s complaining ‘I can’t get inside’ and wanting to be told she’s ‘the one,’ and they’ve been together less than a year. It’s all about ‘finding someone to love me for who I am,’ but if you find yourself acting like a crazy person in front of a guy you really like, shouldn’t you start looking at fixing yourself?

This is season es mucho mas mejor que Season I. The show has more direction and the storylines are woven together more seamlessly. But I’m tired, so here goes:

Episode One: take me out to the ballgame

Carrie rebounds from her relationship with Mr. Big with “Joe,” the new Yankee, up from the minors. The new Yankee is my favorite of all single-episode boyfriends, although he doesn’t talk much. I just like the idea of one New York icon dating another and their photo ending up on Page Six.

Also in this episode we learn that Carrie has been dating for ten years in Manhattan, and that she was there before Big (“If Big had any class, he would have moved away. I was here first”). Wonder where he was before that. Sidenote: Chris Noth’s current picture on imdb.com is disturbing.

Behold, the introduction of the coffee shop, “our Saturday morning ritual.”

Episode Two: the awful truth

“Because sex is not a time to chat. In fact, it’s one of the few instances in my overly articulated, exceedingly verbal life where it is perfectly appropriate, if not preferable, to shut up.”

This episode has Susan Sharon, who actually is a recurring character because she pops up in one other, much later episode. I don’t like her. She bogarts Carrie’s cigarette in their first scene together and I think that’s pretty much a signal that we’re not supposed to like her.

The apple on Carrie’s laptop is upside down when she’s typing on it. It makes me curious about when Apple changed this, because mine is always right-side-up when it’s open. That’s how I know if I’ve got it facing the right way on the table.

Samatha’s boyfriend James is like a human cartoon. I’m guessing he’s supposed to be that way, but I’m glad he’s gone after this episode.

When Big sends Carrie roses for her birthday, she doesn’t pull the card all the way out of the envelope, so we can’t see his name. Watching for things like this is like watching for clues that Bruce Willis is actually dead in the Sixth Sense. How cleverly they avoid using his name!

Episode Three: the freak show

The above quote is my sister’s favorite from the show, but then they ruin it by adding, out of nowhere: “and in the mean time, we always have Manhattan.” I just don’t get the little Manhattan reference at the end. The show is often a love letter to NYC, but in this episode, that was barely a factor. I guess they had to cram it in there somewhere, like the very last line.

I find it hard to believe that Samantha was turned off by the S&M guy’s torture chamber. I would have thought that was right up her alley.

In the bathroom when the girls are talking about Mr. Pussy, Carrie sprays perfume in her hair. I think this is really sexy for girls and I used to do it all the time until I read that it is really damaging for your hair. But so is smoking, and she does that too.

I want to know what used bookstore Carrie and the kleptomaniac are shopping at. Is it the Strand?

Episode Four: they shoot single people, don’t they?

There are certain props from television/movies that I would like to have in my possession, and the New York magazine cover from this episode is one of them (the others are a Beers jersey from Baseketball and the old-timey photo of the three Texas Rangers from Lonesome Dove).

I’m the first to admit that a lot of my personal catch phrases come from this show, but I had no idea they were so heavily concentrated into this one episode:

• Single and Fabulous

• I need a coffee the size of my head

• Well fuck you, exclamation point

• Everyone here is gay, gay, gay

This is also the episode where Carrie tries to quit smoking and she’s eating Hershey Kisses by the pound. I used pistachios, which are probably just as bad.

I’ve been watching for things I’ve never noticed before, and the thing I noticed about this episode is that when Stanford calls Carrie a “little tartini” and leaves her to go home, he walks right past the guy she’s about to leave with, and he turns around and looks at her with his mouth agape. Doesn’t really move the plot forward or anything, but I had never noticed it before.

Also, this episode is kind of elitist, because Carrie’s all appalled that she sees pity in the eyes of the man who sells her her Marlboro Lights, and later, Samantha lets the Pakistani bus boy kiss her, but she won’t go home with him.