Sarah Jessica Parker disproves my (non-complimentary) belief that she has a face that can stop traffic. ["I thought the expression for fugly was 'a face that could stop a clock'? And that a face that can stop traffic is a pretty one. I believe this was in an episode of Mad About You, and that my knowing that makes me a big dork. Um, carry on." -- Wing Chun] End credits.
The camera zooms into Carrie's window as she voice-overs the things "a real New Yorker will wait for." Carrie will wait for a perfect rent-controlled apartment, the chocolate soufflé at a restaurant she product-places, and a shoe sale from a designer she also product-places. We zoom up to Carrie and Chris in the Morning standing up and necking in her foyer. She's wearing a skirt that looks like two woven-at-crafts-camp potholders strung together, and CIM has his hands up said non-existent skirt. I've seen more coverage on a matchbook. Carrie voice-overs that she's waited for CIM long enough. She asks CIM to "sleep over." He blows her off with an excuse about getting up early the morning, and departs. Carrie shuts her door and walks towards the camera in a snit.
Carrie voice-overs that Samantha was opening her door at that moment for a 2 AM guest. We see Samantha drop her robe for the guy who's standing in her doorway. She drags him in for a tryst.
Cut to the morning. Samantha, sporting her usual JBF look, struts out of her building's elevator into the lobby. She sees some tenants talking to a couple of policemen. They tell her there was an armed robbery in one of the apartments the night. Samantha bitches about the building's sub-par security. A policeman tells the tenants that the thief must have walked into the building behind someone else's guest. He runs the surveillance tape on the monitor for the crowd. Samantha sees that the thug came in "behind the guy who came in Samantha," as Carrie so delicately voice-overs. A couple of biddies whine and wonder who in the hell has a guest so late at night. Samantha busts out of there but quick.
The Fabulous Foursome are sitting at their usual Seinfeld-ian table at the local diner, having breakfast. Miranda asks the gals what they did the night before. Charlotte gets morose and doesn't want to discuss it. Samantha cracks wise about Charlotte's possibly "sleeping with someone on the second date." Charlotte corrects her, stating that she had sex with her latest hubbie candidate, and it was the third date. Carrie wonders if the sex was bad. Charlotte is reluctant to tell the gang what the deal is. Miranda tells her to "get over [herself]." Charlotte decides to tell them.
We cut to Charlotte and her new beau in bed. He's orgasming and exclaiming, "You fucking bitch! You fucking whore!" Charlotte makes a stink face and rolls her eyes as he collapses on top of her in ecstasy.
Cut back to the gals. Charlotte wonders if this happened because she's "a whore." Samantha: "Oh please! If you're a whore, what does that make me?" Carrie and Miranda silently dig into their food, which was a pretty funny response. Charlotte frets, because "no one wants to marry a whore." Gee, tell that to Darva and Rick, honey. Carrie decides to make the conversation all about her, and whines that everyone is getting more sex than she. Miranda asks about CIM. Carrie admits that he keeps asking her out, but "doesn't want to sleep with" her. The gals wonder if he's possibly gay, or has mother issues or an abnormal penis. Carrie shoots down all those theories. Samantha warns Carrie, "If you wait too long to sleep with someone, you miss the window and become just friends." Which probably explains why Samantha has no male friends. Bah-dum-bum. And I'm liking the analogy about lusting after CIM being akin to the desire to jump out a window; it's quite apt. Miranda makes a crack about Carrie's hopes of becoming CIM's "fucking bitch" or his "fucking whore." Charlotte frowns and pouts. Burn! Samantha tells her to lighten up.
Cut to the hallway outside Carrie's apartment. She's necking goodnight with CIM. Carrie voice-overs that she's taking Samantha's advice and is trying to vamp CIM by "wearing [her] very little dress that [leaves] very little to the imagination." As opposed to the high-necked, floor-length, demure ensembles she usually sports on this show. Whatever. Carrie's little orange tank dress doesn't work as intended, because CIM makes excuses not to join her inside the apartment. Carrie harshes a "yeah, yeah" retort at him, and closes the door in his face. CIM knocks on her door. She opens it. He wonders what's the big. Carrie asks him point-blank if he just wants to be friends. He says, "I don't know. Is that how you kiss your friends?" Ugh, LOSE HIM, Carrie! She demands to know why he won't have sex with her. He admits that he wants her sexually, but his "new thing" is having sex with someone he cares about. He tells Carrie that he thinks he can care about her. Besides, "it's only been a week and a half; don't people date anymore?" I hate to admit it, but CIM has a point. Carrie wishes him goodnight. In her apartment, she voice-overs her worry about becoming "so jaded that [she doesn't] even recognize romance when it kisse[s her] on the lips." She writes the word "ROMANCE" on a Post-It and tapes it to her laptop screen. What a great idea! Why doesn't she also write "ATTRACTIVE" on a Post-It and tape it to CIM's forehead? I don't know about her, but I keep forgetting that's supposedly one of his character's traits.
Cut to Miranda and Carrie walking in the park. For once, Miranda's outfit is far more frightful than Carrie's. She's sporting tan pants with bell-bottomed flares and a burnt-sienna blouse that clashes with her hair and has sleeves that completely cover up her hands. Anyway, Carrie is whining about how "thirteen years of dating in Manhattan" had conditioned her to forget about the concept of romance. Miranda trumps Carrie's rant by confessing that her years of dating have resulted in a diagnosis of chlamydia; her gynecologist just gave her the results of a screening. Miranda "guesses" that it's good that she found out, because she's never been tested for it before. Huh? Huh? Whatever! Miranda then bitches that her doctor "seemed judgmental" because she told Miranda to contact all of her past sexual partners so they could be treated. The HELL? Where is the "judgment" in that suggestion? I would think that someone would be "judgmental" if they bitched at Miranda for not contacting her sexual partners and informing them that they might have an STD, and that "judgment" would be completely justified because it's THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Jeez.
Back at Carrie's bachelorette pad, she sits on the extravagant leather chair she and CIM dickered over (tee hee) last week and types into her laptop while she voice-overs that it's "inevitable" for thirtysomething New York women to have had a certain number of sexual partners, "but how many men is too many men?" We cut to a close-up of her Apple laptop and this week's thesis query rolls across the screen: "Are we sluts?"
Cut to Charlotte and her beau having dinner. Carrie voice-overs that the slut quandary was on Charlotte's mind. The couple makes small talk over their entrees for a bit until Charlotte has a flashback to his outburst during sex. She throws her copy of The Rules aside and admits that she's "kind of bothered" by what he said to her in bed the other night. He pleads amnesia. Charlotte is too embarrassed to repeat what he said aloud, so she abandons concern over her needs and the expression of independent thought, goes back on Rules autopilot, and tries to please her date by encouraging him to have a bite of her swordfish.
But then we cut to Charlotte and her beau in bed later that night. They're in the missionary position again (natch) and as he ejaculates, he yells out his assessment of Charlotte as "a fucking whore" and "a fucking bitch." Charlotte calls him on it. He says he doesn't know what he just said. Charlotte makes a scrunchy face and ekes the words out. Her beau clutches his pearls; he was "lost in the moment" and "had no idea." He tells her, "Believe me, Charlotte, you are sweet and kind and lovely, and you're the kind of woman I hope to marry someday. I promise never to say that again." Charlotte hears, "Wah wah wah wah wah marry wah wah wah," and all is forgiven.
Meanwhile, over on the set of thirtysomething, Hope and Michael...er, Steve and Miranda are lying in bed. Steve's trying to mack with her but she tells him she "can't tonight; [she has] chlamydia." Steve says he doesn't know what that is. Miranda explains that it's an STD that either of them might have given to the other. Steve grins and takes this news quite flippantly. Miranda tells him he "probably" should get tested. Um, "probably"? Steve whines that he's "afraid of doctors." Steve doesn't think that he really needs to know; he might just "hurt when [he] pees or something." The HELL? Miranda assures Steve that men are just "carriers" of the disease, which is quite wrong. In actuality, while 75% of women exhibit no symptoms of the STD, 50% of men with chlamydia experience symptoms such as discharge from the penis, burning with urination, and swollen and/or painful testicles. And shame on a show called Sex and the City for not presenting correct facts about an affliction that CDC sources call "the most widespread sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The inanity continues as Miranda tells Steve to get tested so he doesn't pass the disease on to others, and Steve reasons that Miranda is his "only other person, and [she] already [has] it." I thought for sure that Steve's callousness here would cause her to fly characteristically off the handle, because his behavior is certainly perplexing me and creeping me out, but Miranda just asks him to "please get tested" and informs him that they won't have sex until her antibiotic treatment is over and the disease is out of her body.
Cut to Steve at the free clinic. He's wringing his hands, looking worried. The doctor informs him that he has to drop his trousers. Steve says that's not necessary; he's just there to get the "test." Just how dumb is Steve supposed to be, anyway? The doc holds up a swab and tells Steve that the test involves taking a sample from inside of his penis. Steve plotzes.
Carrie voice-overs that Steve was "facing what every man dreads," which is one of the few generalizations that she's made on this show with which I completely agree. Then she voice-overs that Miranda was doing "what every woman dreads;" making a list of her past sexual partners.
Cut to Samantha strutting into the elevator in her building. It actually has an elevator guy in a uniform pushing the buttons for the tenants! Does this job really still exist? Carrie voice-overs that Samantha's number of sexual conquests was "way up there," but Samantha didn't think most people knew this. Cue the other elevator occupant, a matron who's clutching her poodle and sneering at Samantha, to harsh at her, "We know it was you who buzzed in the gunman." Samantha gapes. The matron bitches about Samantha's many gentlemen callers: "Every time I'm in the elevator, you're with a different man." Samantha retorts that the allegation is "ridiculous." Then the show's usual chicka chicka boom boom porno soundtrack music starts up and we see a flashback montage of Samantha's elevator couplings. First she's macking with a guy she seems to have picked up from the gym, then Samantha's hanging all over a guy who's dressed like Keith Richards for Halloween, and finally Samantha's giving a guy in a business suit a supposedly clandestine hand job while Molly Matron stands in front of them, clutching her poodle. The elevator stops, and the anachronistic elevator attendant tells Samantha that they've reached her floor. Samantha awakens from her reverie.
Cut to Miranda in her office, calling up the guys on her list, bearing the bad tidings. Her secretary pops in to tell her that someone named David is holding. Miranda picks up the line and greets him. He's another lawyer who bitches at her for taking up his valuable time. Miranda tells him that she has chlamydia. David says he's already been tested. Miranda wonders if he had it. David yells at her that his diagnosis is "none of [her] business" but yes, he had it. "So what?" Miranda thinks that he gave the STD to her. David wonders if Miranda will "sue" him. Luckily, this isn't Ally McBeal, where this civil lawsuit would be tried in the latter half of the show in salaciously quirky detail. Miranda suddenly remembers why she stopped seeing David in the first place, and hangs up in a huff.
Cut to Carrie's apartment. She voice-overs that she's "still waiting on the diagnosis" about CIM's interest in her. Because this storyline is as important as Miranda's or Charlotte's or Samantha's. Not. Carrie, wearing a ruffled sleeveless see-through negligee that toddlers have finger-painted all over, answers the door and lets CIM in. He stumbles in the door with take-out food and a video rental for their date and drawls out in his usual laconic stoner-speak that he's making a "delivery." I notice that up until now Wardrobe has been attempting to hide his considerable paunch by dressing him in untucked button-front shirts and long leather or suede coats, but here he's wearing a tight grey thermal undershirt and the jig (or rather, the stomach jiggle) is up. He kisses Carrie hello and she begins this tired voice-over monologue in which she will interpret his every utterance as being either that of a "friend" or a "boyfriend." Save me.
Carrie and CIM are standing in her kitchen. She doesn't have two matching plates or glasses -- because I guess all her disposable income goes towards expensive footwear -- and he teases her about it. Because he's a chic downtown designer and all about aesthetics, I guess, although he's standing there with a beer, his empathy pad-looking belly protruding out there for all of North America to see. Carrie flirts with him and hopes in her voice-over that he's still boyfriend material. I'm just not getting Chris in the Morning's appeal: the dated seventies hippie shtick, the thinning long hair, and that gut. If the producers were looking for a David Crosby type to play Carrie's new love interest, why didn't they just hire David Crosby?
CIM and Carrie watch The Mask of Zorro, and he says that Catherine Zeta-Jones is hot. Carrie thinks "friend." He backpedals: "Not as hot as you." Carrie thinks "boyfriend, and liar." Which makes them compatible, considering Carrie's penchant for dishonesty, I guess.
Later, we see Carrie crumpling up the "ROMANCE" Post-It off her laptop screen while she's chatting on the phone with Charlotte. Carrie thinks she and CIM are "only friends who kiss occasionally." Charlotte wonders why Carrie is whispering. Carrie tells her that CIM's still in her apartment; he's been in her bathroom, probably on her toilet reading a newspaper for the past half-hour. Charlotte and I reply, "EWWW!!" Just then, CIM calls Carrie in to the bathroom to join him. She tells Charlotte goodbye because she has to join her "friend." She opens the bathroom door. I was so expecting the room to be filled with CIM's hypocritical bong smoke. But it turns out that he's drawn her a bubble bath and lit all of her Pottery Barn candles and opera music is playing on the stereo. The HELL? Carrie's apartment is tiny; surely she heard the bathwater running. Carrie beams with pleasure, though, and tells CIM that "it's like a Danielle Steel novel in here." CIM: "From a writer, I'm pretty sure that's an insult." Not from a writer of Carrie's stature and abilities, Chris. Try reading her column sometime. Carrie assures him that she's all, "Wow." CIM drawls out her need to "relax" because she seems "tense." Then the two exchange some stillborn badinage about CIM trying to see Carrie naked getting into the bath, as if the earlier planted image of CIM loitering on Carrie's toilet seat hadn't already put me off of solid food for the three weeks. Chris tells her to enjoy her bath, and he'll be thinking about his non-friend "naked."
Cut to CIM walking towards the door, holding his folded coat over his paunch, although it's too late; the damage to my fond remembrance of younger, cuter, early 1990s Chris in the Morning has been done. He looks over into the bathroom and sees Carrie sitting in the suds. With that shaggy dog, loose blonde perm, she looks to me just like a golden retriever whose master commanded to "STAY IN THE TUB" while they went to go get the flea shampoo. But CIM thinks she looks lonely and sexy, so he joins her in the tub like there's room for the two of them in there along with his considerably large midsection.
Cut to Carrie and CIM in the tub. Carrie wonders what they're doing. CIM drawls out in his stoner monotone, "Just taking a baaaaattthhhh." Then he decides, "Oh fuck it, let's just do it." Carrie freaks and throws him a towel, or rather, a wet blanket, because sex so soon between them "isn't how it's supposed to happen." She insists that they both stay in the "romance" mindset.
Cut to Samantha's building lobby. She enters, wearing a smashing red pantsuit with black block accents, while Carrie voice-overs that Samantha's "feeling exposed." Samantha walks over to the elevator, past the building's blue-haired quilting-bee participants, who are gathered down there whispering about her. Samantha tells them, "Good evening." They continue to whisper and titter. Samantha, to her credit, shouts at them to say whatever they're gossiping about "to her face." One of the biddies tells her she's "bad for the building." Another chimes in, "There's always men in the hall!" As if Samantha takes guys on one at a time and makes anyone wait! Yet another cauliflowerhead, the armed robbery victim, blames Samantha because she "can't close [her] left eye!" The elevator arrives and Samantha books out of there.
Then Samantha's on the phone, explaining to Carrie that her neighbors "practically chased [her] with torches, like [she] was Fuckenstein," which is a pretty funny line. Carrie tells Samantha to relax; she can't get evicted for having sex. Samantha thinks "the dried-up old farts" are jealous of her sexual activities. Samantha tells Carrie that she's thinking about moving. Carrie reminds her that she has "a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper East Side." Samantha says that she requires some "life control," not rent control. Then Carrie makes the phone call all about her by bragging about having another date with CIM to go to a blues club. Samantha freaks when she finds out they're still not having sex, and implies that Carrie's the one who'll be singing the blues. Carrie assures Samantha that she'll boink CIM "eventually," and she's seen his penis -- it's not abnormally curved, as the gals had wondered in the diner scene earlier. Because we all really needed yet another unpleasant Chris in the Morning mental image planted in our minds. Not.
Cut to Charlotte's bed. She's having sex with her fiancé candidate again. He suddenly becomes uncomfortable during their lovemaking. Charlotte assures him that she's "close" to coming. Then she realizes what's holding him back, and tells him to "go ahead." He orgasms and blurts out, "You fucking bitch! You fucking whore!...Oh god! What's wrong with me?" He rolls away from Charlotte. Carrie voice-overs that he stopped seeing Charlotte and started seeing a therapist.
Meanwhile, over at Nancy and Elliott's...er, Steve and Miranda's, he's taking off his pants to get into bed with her. Carrie voice-overs that his test came back negative. Steve bitches that the swab-in-his-penis experience has made him swear off cleaning his ears. Miranda takes all the blame for being "a big, dirty, diseased whore." She tells him about the list she had to make of all her past sex partners; it "wasn't short." Steve asks for the number. Miranda hems and haws, and finally admits that the number is "about forty-two." Steve says that number isn't "so bad." Miranda asks for his number. Steve hesitates, then practically brags about his number being higher than sixty. Miranda's surprised. Steve beams and replies, "Hey, I'm a bartender and I'm cute." Carrie saves me the trouble of pointing out the "men can't be sluts" double standard by noting it in her voice-over as Miranda and Steve start to neck.
Cut to CIM and Carrie walking down her hallway, dressed like extras from the set of The Doors. CIM's sporting his usual balding shag-cut hair and a suede jean jacket and leather choker, while Carrie's wearing a transparent blouse and tan bell-bottoms and that FUGLY pimp-wear duster with the multi-hued panels that we all made fun of last episode. Hey Carrie, Joseph called -- he's starring in a Broadway revival, and needs his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat back. ["Wait, back it up: John Corbett -- a man -- is wearing a choker? What is he, Dawson?" -- Wing Chun] Long story short: CIM and Carrie decide that "blues" night is, appropriately enough for us viewers, the night they will Do It. They enter her apartment and walk over to the bed as Carrie voice-overs, "For the first time in a long time, I was nervous. [Chris in the Morning] and I were going to sleep together, and it was going to mean something." Yeah, it means that owen worries about CIM's weight crushing Sarah Jessica Parker's emaciated frame into paste by falling on top of her on the bed like that.
The morning, Carrie and CIM cuddle in bed. John Corbett's body is only covered in a sheet from the waist down, and SJP rests her hand on his protruding potbelly. The HELL? Would it have killed JC to do some sit-ups before joining the cast of this show? If one of the actresses showed up on the set with a gut like that, there'd be close-ups and framing shots and Slimfast lunches and ab classes until that problem was cleared up, don't you think? Talk about your double standards. Carrie voice-overs her belief that a new relationship wipes out one's sexual history and provides a "clean slate."
Which segues to Samantha supervising some furniture haulers in front of a moving van in the Meatpacking District, where, Carrie voice-overs, "Whores were whores, men were women, and rents were much higher." Samantha greets the transvestite hookers standing in front of her new building, and worries that the movers will nick her bedframe as they move it into her new loft, as if it isn't covered with a gazillion notches already.
week: Carrie is a flighty, disingenuous flake. Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha endure zany sexual hijinx. Chris in the Morning wears a shirt made out of blue bandanas, puts down the bong and drawls, "Go with the flooowww." Luckily, our prayers for the return of Mr. Big are answered.