Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Critical Condition
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 6 | Aired on 08.24.2002
Lights up on a smallish cabaret theater. The camera stays with a martini as it is poured, placed on a tray, and delivered by a smiling waitress to a nonplused Carrie, sitting in the audience with a rapt and radiant Stanford. Carrie VOs that there are three things a New Yorker has to deal with: getting her purse stolen, "random public urination," and seeing a gay friend's boyfriend in a Broadway revue. She might have added, in a way-off-Broadway theater. Onstage, a woman belts out "All That Jazz" backed by two handsome chorus boys, one of whom is Marcus, happy to be stealing some spotlight. Stanford is bursting. "Isn't he handsome?" Carrie says snidely that she "understands the three-drink minimum." Stanford is surprised she isn't enjoying the show, and Carrie says she's more concerned with her book's review in the Times this week. Well, maybe the noise and heat might distract milady for a moment? Of course not. She and Stanford actually carry on a conversation as the song goes on -- Carrie is nervous as hell, as Times book critic Michiko Kakutani is "brilliant and really tough." Wow, how great that NY book critics get a rep. I've been reviewing books for the Philadelphia City Paper for five years now and still am unsure if anyone ever reads them. My reviews, I mean, not the books. Or even books. Stanford asks amusedly how Carrie could not be loving the performance, and Marcus executes a fab high kick as the singer belts out the last bar. Stanford says, "Isn't [Marcus] wonderful?" and Carrie excuses herself to go to the ladies' room, without even saying yes, he is.
In the red, black, and white tiled ladies', we get an arty overhead shot of ladies on the loo, panties around their ankles and reaching for TP. One woman says she wouldn't have believed the phrase "'go see your cousin Debbie's revue' would have contained such horror." Heh. They lament the utter absence of straight guys in the place, then hope the "cute pretzel guys in the Village Square Market" are good for oglin' tomorrow. One loo lady says, "Is that as sad as that just sounded?" Carrie, in the spirit of All Women Together In The Restroom Are Sisters Temporarily, says she used to think the Amish guys that made hairbrushes were hot. Dude, you want hottie Amish dudes? Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia. Get thee to the pretzel stand where they come out of the oven, hot and fresh, liberally painted with a coating of melted country butter, and handed over to you. Sooo gooood. The loo lady, instead of laughing or even nodding at Carrie's comment, looks like something crawled up her nose and died. She says, "You're Carrie Bradshaw." Carrie is all, yeah, have we met? No, Loo Lady recognizes her from her column -- and she dated Aidan right after Carrie did. Then she makes a face, a "whoo shee!" face. You know, a pursed-mouth exhale, then an one-sided extended inhale. Not a good face. A bad face. Carrie. Freaks. OUT.
At lunch the next day, she tells her girlfriends all about The Face. "A face and run." She displays The Face, and Sam agrees, "That ain't good." Char tries to pass it off as a facial tic, which a lot of people have, "like Bell's palsy." Um, no, it was not. Carrie says it was a face of "ooh, you sure fucked him up good." Well, maybe you did, Carrie. Maybe you did really hurt Aidan, and he told people about it. It happens. Break-ups are hardly ever smooth. Mir says flatly, "Fuck that fucking face girl." Ha! Carrie is all, "Well!" Well, sorry, Miranda is exhausted, with the baby and all. The baby has been on a bad crying jag ("if he were thirty-five, this is when we would break up!"), and all Miranda's clothes smell like barf. Mir hasn't slept in a week or had time to do anything for herself, like get a haircut. Then Sam, in an incredible display of insensitivity, says gaily, oh, that reminds her! She needs to confirm her hair appointment. She makes a big show of calling up and confirming, right in Mir's glum, long, sad, wan face. Char says she's hired a divorce lawyer, and Mir confirms that he is in fact "tough enough to beat Bunny to a pulp." Mir and Char exit together, and Carrie asks Sam why "that face girl" is still bothering her. Sam says, "Honey, let it go. If [Sam] worried about what every little bitch in the city said, [she'd] never leave the house!" Heh. So true. Being shameless means you can't care what people say. And Sam is what now? Right.