Carrie tells us that she has been seeing CIM for three weeks now, and she keeps waking up in the middle of the night thinking that she forgot something, that something just didn't feel right. Gee, maybe it's the fact that you stopped smoking so you could sleep with a balding, paunchy, wannabe radio DJ from Alaska? So then we see Carrie and CIM finishing up a round of boot knocking, and CIM is still wearing some cheesy necklace/choker thing that looks so sensual with his pasty white chest. Not. Carrie starts to get up to get a glass of water -- maybe to get the taste of Has-Been out of her mouth -- but CIM offers to get the water for her, and thank god we didn't get an ass shot of him walking to the bathroom, because as Carrie watches CIM walk off she gets a look of horror on her face, which at first I thought was her real life reaction of seeing CIM's ass, but we find out through Carrie's VO, "I realized it. For the first time in my life I was in a relationship where absolutely nothing was wrong." Um, Carrie, you are forgetting the part about you having to give up a lifestyle you have had for some time, and that no one has ever made you give up before. That may be a little wrong. Or the fact that he has a dog that wanted to have sex with you before he did. Or maybe the way he tries to live like he is from Woodstock or something, and you are the exact opposite. There are so many things wrong with this relationship I could go on forever, so I'll just stop here for now.
So the girls are at breakfast again, in the same place they have been having breakfast for weeks, just like the gang from Seinfeld always did. Carrie is bitching and moaning about how effortless her relationship is, and Miranda thinks that there is an upside to being with a guy with no surprises, and that one of the things she loves about Steve is that he is completely predictable, comfortable and safe. At this point Miranda is looking a little too happy, especially for Miranda, when she tells the girls that her favorite thing to do on a Saturday is Steve's laundry. Okay, who stole Miranda and replaced her with a Pod Person? Samantha tells her, "Your relationship is my greatest fear realized." I can't believe I agree with Samantha, but I do. I've been married for over four years, and I still don't do my husband's laundry. Charlotte gets upset that the girls are talking about dumping men for being too available, and then she tells them about a book she's reading about how to get a husband, and it tells her to stay away from friends with dysfunctional relationships. Samantha and Carrie make a D'OH! face, and then Charlotte tells them that she is going to spend more time with her married friends so she can meet their single male friends. Charlotte is so excited and certain that she is going to meet her husband this year that she almost convinces me that her plan could work.
Miranda goes home, and Steve shows her that he heated leftover lasagna, and Carrie tells us, "An hour later it was on to dessert" with Steve feeding Miranda some ice cream while they lie in bed, "followed by exactly eight minutes of no frills sex, and twelve minutes of Frontline. Theirs was the kind of closeness that only came from true intimacy." I can't tell whether Carrie is putting down Miranda's routine, or if she is jealous of it. I would think she is jealous, because who in the hell wants to have crazy monkey sex with CIM? Give me eight minutes with Steve over an hour with CIM any day, even if Steve still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Samantha is getting it on with a nice young doctor named Mark Raskin. He asks her to get him a glass of water so he can take some Viagra. Samantha gets a little concerned, and he tells her he takes it recreationally, so she runs off for the water, and the thing we see is Samantha riding the doctor like a bucking bronco, yelling and moaning. I'm waiting for the doctor to have problems seeing colors correctly, and to not be able to lose his erection and end up in a lot of pain, like many men who take Viagra recreationally.
ACK! CIM and Carrie are walking down the street together, and CIM is wearing an XXXXXL blue shirt with an early seventies print on it, and it looks like he brushed his hair with his fingers and used the oil in his hair to slick it back. Carrie is wearing a lavender horizontal-striped shirt that is oddly pinched in the middle like it should accentuate her breasts, but the gathers are too high up by her neck, so it just winds up looks ridiculous. Carrie asks him why he is still single, and he answers by asking her why she is still single, and if the two of them can't figure out why the other is single I guess they really do deserve each other. She then asks him what his bad traits are, and he asks, "Alphabetically?" Yeah, A -- Accepting only non-smokers in your life, B -- Bad haircut, C -- Can't dress for shit, D -- Dog that humps other people's legs. Do I need to go on? She tells him she can't take the pressure of having a perfect relationship, and before she keeps babbling on, CIM kisses her. Now, it's been a while since I've been in the dating scene, but aren't the first few weeks pretty perfect for most relationships? Like, everything is just wonderful until you start to notice that the things that were quirky and cute have become annoying? Isn't Carrie still in her "honeymoon" phase of the relationship? ["It's been awhile for me too, but if memory serves, you're having too much sex the first few weeks to notice little peccadilloes like personality." -- Sars] Carrie asks him again why he isn't married, and he tells her to "go with the flow." "Go with the flow"? Huh? Carrie seems just as confused with that bit of advice, and tells him that she can't go with the flow because it is too seventies. Kind of like their clothes? He tells her his parents are coming to town and he wants her to meet them. She is flattered.
Carrie tells us that Charlotte decided to have dinner with her married friends, Amy and Dennis. As Charlotte sits down at the dinner table, she tells them that this is the year she gets married, and she tells them they can help her find her husband by fixing her up with one of their single friends. They suggest she meet their friend Phil, and she tells them she will call them tomorrow to follow up, and then tells them that she has tickets to the opera on Saturday and it would be a perfect first date. Charlotte is so funny that she makes psycho look cute.
Miranda is sorting laundry, and she finds a pair of Steve's tighty whiteys with a huge skid mark on them. She gets all disgusted and almost runs away from the offending underwear. What did she think was going to happen when you do laundry? Skid marks are a typical work hazard when washing dirty underwear. Duh! Like her ass has been so clean all her life that she never once made skids. I guess with her panties, you would have to watch out for diseased discharge in the crotch.
Miranda and Carrie are walking down the street together. Carrie looks like she is wearing a leftover costume from Clash of the Titans and has a purple flower corsage on her wrist. Was she coming home from a prom with a toga theme? Miranda is munching on carrots and not even offering any to Carrie, which seems a little stingy. Miranda tells Carrie she is living with "Skidmarks Guy," and Carrie starts laughing. They start talking about why men leave skidmarks, and how that leads to peeing on the seat. I would rather live with a man who has poopy pants than a man who shoots fire out his penis when he urinates because the woman he sleeps with has an STD, but that's just me. Then Miranda starts talking about her boring sex life, and Carrie suggests that Miranda is mistaking falling into a rut with intimacy. Miranda thinks that she and Steve have generic sex, and that they have a "race to have an orgasm." And Carrie reminds her that at least she is getting some regularly. Miranda agrees that they always whine, whether they have men or not. Knowing is half the battle, girls. Carrie then asks Miranda if she remembers how Big kept her away from his parents, and how much it hurt her. Miranda remembers, and then Carrie tells her that CIM wants her to meet his parents, and she isn't sure she wants to meet them. Miranda tells her she is no hurry to meet Steve's parents, and I'm thinking that Carrie's relationship with Big was completely different than her relationship with CIM, especially since she went out with Big for two years, and she has only been with CIM for three weeks. If I were dating someone for only three weeks and they wanted me to meet his parents, I would be a little wary too. Carrie theorizes that CIM is acting how she wished Big would have acted, and she is acting like Big. If that is true, let's hope that Carrie dumps CIM, moves to France, meets a young French guy, and takes him back to the US and marries him.
As Carrie is sitting in front of her computer, we find out the question of the week: "Do we need drama to make a relationship work?" Well, if you are a neurotic thirtysomething living in NYC, you sure do.
Charlotte is calling Dennis over, and over, and over, leaving messages about meeting her future husband Phil. If it was from anyone else but Charlotte, it would be scary and pathetic, but when she does it, it is really funny.
Carrie is at CIM's store, and she is wearing big hoop earrings with "Carrie" in cursive lettering going across the hoop. They're genuinely hideous. As she chews gum like a cow, she tells CIM that she has a deadline and can't make it to dinner that night. He asks her to go to breakfast with him and his parents, and she makes some lame excuse that if she meets his parents they will think she is great, and if they break up they will always ask him about her and she doesn't want that to happen, blah blah blah bad excusecakes, and then tells him that to her, meeting someone's parents is really big, and he finally gets the idea that she doesn't want to meet his parents. She also complains that they are too available to each other, so they decide not to see each other that weekend, because if they see less of each other they will miss each other more, and I think she goes over some more eighth-grade dating philosophy, and he just goes with the flow.
Charlotte and Carrie go to the opera together, and while they are in the lobby Charlotte calls Dennis one more time to leave a Dennis another message saying that he really messed up Phil's life by not introducing them, and this time Dennis picks up the phone and tells her that he was on a business trip and couldn't call her back. He tells her he will set up a meeting with her and Phil the night, and after they hang up Charlotte feels silly for creating all that drama in her head. I think something else is going on in her head, and I don't think it is drama.
Samantha and the good doctor are in bed, and he takes a Viagra, and Samantha decides to take a pill too and see what happens. Carrie tells us, "Twenty minutes later, Samantha officially became the first woman to land on the moon," as Samantha is bouncing around on the doctor. He looks scared as Samantha starts howling.
And her howling turns into opera singing, specifically Aida, as Charlotte and Carrie, still chewing gum like a cow, are sitting at the opera watching the show. Charlotte gives Carrie her opera glasses and she starts looking around at people in the audience. She sees Mr. Big staring at her with his opera glasses, and Big waves at her. Carrie tells Charlotte she doesn't feel well and runs off. Big sees her leave and tries to catch her, but he misses her.
Carrie wakes up in the middle of the night and calls Miranda and tells her about seeing Big. After some more babbling, Carrie tells Miranda that she wants to be with a man who wants to be with her. Miranda tells her to tell that to CIM.
In the morning, Carrie calls CIM at work, but he isn't there. Gee, since his parents are in town, maybe he is with them? Duh, Carrie! That night she calls him at home, and gets an answering machine message that says "Hey, I'm not in, but Pete is. [insert dog bark]" If I had a boyfriend that had a lame answering machine message like that, I would never call him unless I knew for sure that he was home. She leaves a message saying she was just calling to say hello. The dog hears her voice and starts humping the phone. In a voiceover, she starts whining that she thinks she blew it with CIM. Like that's a bad thing?
Because Miranda is a glutton for punishment, she is doing laundry again. But this time, Steve decides to have Miranda put some skid marks on the dryer by lifting her on the machine and groping her, and yells, "Race you for the orgasm! One, two, three, go!"
Charlotte goes into a bar that seems to be inhabited only by men wearing suits, and she is going around asking various men if they are Phil, and she bumps into Dennis. Dennis tells her he didn't call Phil, because he is in love with her himself and wants to start something with her. Charlotte gets upset, slaps Dennis, and runs out of the bar and into the street trying to catch a cab. She trips and falls in front of a moving cab, which screeches to a halt in front of her. Kyle MacLachlan runs out of the cab to help her. Their eyes meet, and sparks fly. Carrie tells us, "And that's how, in the most dramatic fashion, Charlotte met her new leading man." Yeah, the leading man from Showgirls. Should we now start calling Charlotte Nomi Malone?
Samantha and the good doctor are in bed getting it on, and Samantha wants to take Viagra. The doctor wants to go natural that night, and she starts wigging out like a crack whore and demands the pills. Carrie tells us, "He wrote Samantha a prescription, and she promised never to call him again." I was hoping Carrie was going to tell us that when Samantha took the Viagra, it made her clitoris overly sensitive and uncomfortable and she found out that it was not good for women to take the drug, so she vowed never to enhance sex with medication ever again. Taking Viagra if you don't need it is not good at all, and I'm very disappointed with the writers of this show for making a comedic situation out of using a drug that has nasty side effects if improperly used, which they had the characters do. Shame on you, HBO!
Carrie hasn't heard from CIM, so she goes to the restaurant that he and his parents were having breakfast at. CIM looks like he is wearing a NRA cap, backwards, and when he sees Carrie outside of the restaurant he runs out to see her, and she is wearing those stoopid hoop earrings and a flower. If I were CIM's parents I would be embarrassed to be seen in public with either of them. Carrie starts babbling about relationships, meeting parents, taking a leap of faith, yadda yadda yadda -- I didn't really pay attention to what she was saying because I couldn't believe she would dress like that to meet her boyfriend's parents. She asks him why he never called her back, and he tells her she wanted him to be less available, so he was being less available. Duh! They go inside, and she meets his parents. They seem to be very good actors because they don't look aghast at the horrid ensemble Carrie has on.