“Despite the fact that there are over eight million people on the island of Manhattan, there are times where you still feel shipwrecked and alone,” Carrie voice-overs. She is sitting nervously in her apartment, possibly unnerved by the frenetic African drum music playing over the action. She stares at the telephone, vexed. “Times when even the most resourceful survivor feels the need to put a message in a bottle -- or an answering machine,” her narration continues. Carrie nibbles on her cordless phone’s antenna and wishes it were part of Aidan. She suddenly dials frantically and, as the African music crescendos, she gets his machine. She hangs up on it and screams, because her ears are bleeding from the tom-toms.
Cut to the cacophony’s source -- a band in some sort of African-themed jazzercise class. “Ah yes, earth to heaven, yes! Strong arms! Remember, every movement has a meaning,” shouts the euphoric instructor, swaying to the rhythm. Crowds part to reveal Carrie and Charlotte in the back of the room, and I must say, Carrie is certainly going for bag-lady chic today, holding onto her Stupidest Dresser Alive crown. To a cardio-funk class, she has worn a black-and-white knit scarf wrapped around her head, like she’s trying to go incognito, and tinted aviator sunglasses. That’s dumb enough. But the worst part is the flimsy white/pink/beige transparent fabric thing doubling as Carrie’s skirt. It looks like she got her period in the middle of class, ruined her pants, popped a Mentos, and -- bing! -- yanked an old curtain from the wall and tied it around her waist, solving her problem because she’s fresh and full of life. Pardon the period joke -- I don’t usually do girly shows and I’m used to recapping Making the Band -- no, wait, they’re girly, too. So much for that excuse. Moving on. Carrie voice-overs that she can’t help wondering why she wants to talk to her ex-boyfriend, because it takes a rocket scientist to figure that one out. “I’ve been making faux calls to Aidan,” she whispers to Charlotte, then explains that a “faux” call means calling and hoping desperately to get the answering machine because if he answers you have nothing planned to say. “It’s emotional Russian roulette,” she finishes. Charlotte sums it up: “You call and hang up.” Carrie nods. “I don’t know why I’m telling you,” she says. “Don’t tell anybody else.” Then, back with the class, they jump gamely -- or is that lamely? Both.
At dinner with the quad, Charlotte immediately says, “Carrie, tell them what you told me.” Annoyed, Carrie fires back, “What, that I’m not going to your African dance class any more?” Her single horseshoe pendant swings. Charlotte reveals Carrie has been calling Aidan -- “Chris in the Morning,” or CIM, as we know him here. “And hanging up!” Carrie adds defensively, as if that makes it all normal and okay. Miranda and Samantha are shocked, because they’re not really sure which season of the show this is. Choking on her words, Carrie admits she might want CIM back. “How do I do this?” she implores Miranda, who is the wrong person to ask, at least lately. Miranda suggests that CIM might not want to hear it, but Carrie doesn’t care and wants to try anyway. “One word, honey: granola. So not you,” Samantha interjects. Charlotte disagrees. “Aidan is perfect! He stripped her floor!” she exclaims. Dork. But then she admits he needs to lose the tummy and the turquoise rings. Carrie says the tummy is gone and CIM looked frighteningly awesome when she saw him at the opening of his new bar. “The new, improved Aidan,” Miranda sums up, but Samantha goes one better: “Low-fat granola.” I really feel for John Corbett here. I’m certain the writers aren’t foresighted enough to have had him bulk up in season three just so he could return in a blaze of physical glory this time around; meaning, now that he’s thin, the writers are all finally admitting that they spent last year joking about how he was a big flabby daddy. Bastards.
Softly, Carrie tells her pals she misses CIM. Miranda wonders, totally on-target, whether Carrie missed him before she saw his svelte new self. She didn’t, but we’re supposed to love her, so -- “I’ve missed him for months,” Carrie argues, ostensibly referring to the months she was doing some heated off-camera pining. Miranda suggests email as a safe approach, in case CIM doesn’t want her back; Carrie says she’s an old-fashioned girl who prefers the hang-up approach. “Oh come on, honey, you’ve gotta get online, if only for the porn,” Samantha coos. “Yeah, stop sending me that,” whines Charlotte. Carrie refuses to “get e-mail” just to write to CIM. Miranda points out that she can shop online, too. “No, that’s my cardio,” Carrie says. Hee. Except not, because she’s way too toned for that and we all know it. And I know I echo everyone in the forums when I say -- whaaaaaa? We’re supposed to think Carrie doesn’t go online? She has a laptop, she writes a column yet she never goes into an office, and we’re supposed to believe she doesn’t use email? No. Maybe we’re supposed to find it endearing that she’s a technological neophyte, but I find it as contrived as Samantha’s lesbianism, the Cruise/Kidman marriage, and Colleen Haskell’s “acting” combined.
Samantha brings attention back to her by deciding Carrie needs to show up at CIM’s furniture store wearing “these,” and she whips out flesh-colored suction cups. “Ew!” Charlotte squeals. “Fake nipples!” They were sent to Samantha as a promotional item, and Carrie makes a stupid joke about whether nipples are getting a bad rep these days. “Nipples are huge right now,” Samantha intones dramatically. “Open any magazine. It’s not that cold. Those girls are either tweaking, or they’re wearing these.” And either way, they look smutty, but hey -- Samantha oozes smut, so go for it, girl. The quad wants to try out the nips, but Carrie points out that Samantha can’t, because “Samantha already leads with her breasts. Not a very good experiment.” Charlotte giggles that Miranda should do it, and they gather around to cover her while she licks and sticks. Charlotte says it’s obscene, then demands that Miranda walk the room with her mega-nips. “We have secretly replaced Miranda’s normal nipples with rubber ones,” Carrie whispers conspiratorially. “Let’s see what happens.” Turning around, high beams shining, Miranda struts toward the bar and immediately gets scanned by a dude in a blazer. She mouths incredulously, “They work!” and Samantha pouts, “I want my nipples back.”
Hey! Does anyone remember when Samantha was a lesbian? Granted, it was a long time ago, way back in the olden days, like, a whole episode ago, so I’m sure it’s normal that no one would mention it, or tease her about her failed experiment, or that she would even be caught in sexual limbo. I suppose, at the very least, we’ve been spared some Anne Heche jokes, but still.
The day, Miranda -- “sans nipples,” Carrie points out -- shows up at the park to train for the marathon. “But running wasn’t the only thing getting her heart-rate going,” Carrie VOs. Miranda peeks at a guy to her and asks if he’s in the wrong group -- this is the ten-minute mile group, and all the hot guys can run it in seven. He says he’s had knee surgery and then suggests they train together, just the two of them, during the week. “Miranda was thrilled, but she still wasn’t sure if he was interested in anything more than a running buddy,” Carrie explains as they jog away.
“Uptown, Charlotte’s marathon redecoration continued,” Carrie says. Trey strolls through the dining room and says he can’t believe he ever questioned the wallpaper -- he loves it now. Which is tragic, because it’s boring-beige wallpaper with brown spots on it that look suspiciously, well, a bit like shit stains. He hugs Suzy Homemaker and oh, aren’t they blissfully wed, blah blah kiss snore hug, and they wander into the study. Carrie explains that every married couple has one room that forces the parenthood question. Charlotte gingerly notes that the study is attached to the bedroom, then passes the buck to Trey, who picks it up and says, “It could be a good room for a… B-A…” “B-Y,” Charlotte finishes with a hopeful smile. Trey, ever the elegant man, says, “We already have enough bathrooms,” and they embrace elatedly, because they’ll be making a baby instead of payments on brass faucets. Carrie explains for people who can’t spell that Charlotte and Trey were finally on the same page, “and that page had a baby on it.”
We cut to a close-up of Samantha’s mega-nips poking through her blue sweater. I think one of them’s about to break through and drop off into her red wine. “Samantha went shopping, nipples blazing, and picked up a ’94 cabernet and an ’84 Harvard MBA,” Carrie tells us. Samantha’s nipples are almost upstaged by the thick white bangle she’s wearing -- no, not Susannah Hoffs. A bracelet. Sam totters into the living room. “It’s a blip!” MBA bellows into a cell phone. “No, we can’t retract it.” Carrie tells us his name is Warren Dreyfous, a partner in a communications firm that “made the Exxon oil spill an incident rather than a debacle.” The cutie actor with the piercing baby blues is John Bolger, who -- for trivia buffs -- had lead roles in Another World and One Life to Live, and who is related to Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Samantha leans provocatively against the wall, and my roommate is momentarily blinded by her headlights. “That’s just absurd,” he says. But Warren is rapt, and cuts off his cell-phone conversation, apologizing to Samantha. “About talking on the phone, or staring at my nipples?” she asks seductively. He says he’s apologizing for the phone conversation, and then ravages her. As he smooches the back of her neck, Samantha jubilantly rips of the suction-nips and throws them into the air. I half-expect one to affix to the wall with a smacking sound, but it doesn’t, instead disappearing into the same black hole that sucked away her memories of lesbianism.
Carrie, scowling into the screen of her usual product-placed Macintosh G4 laptop, takes a stab at her first email, which will go to CIM. Okay, if she never had email before, then why does she know Aidan’s email address? I suppose Steve, through Miranda, could have supplied it, but still. It underscores the stupidity of this plot. She has a paragraph written on her handy-dandy America Online email account -- AOL! So easy to use, even Carrie can do it! -- but she hastily deletes it; since I am a loving, caring recapper, I paused my tape and transcribed. Here it is, in all its glory:
“Another big problem: I’m surrounded by memories of you, in my apartment, on the street, that little Moroccan restaurant we ran into when it started pouring rain on us and you kissed me over the couscous. (Rookie tactical mistake not to have a memory-free environment. Why did we have to go so many places?) Anyhow, I’m not holding out hope that you’re going to change your mind about us. You probably have a new girlfriend now, or several new girlfriends, and I missed my window and I’ll just have to live with that. I’m sure you feel like you can’t trust me with your heart. But please know that I never meant to hurt you, and I would never do it again, because I know now (too little too late, or better late than never?) that what we had was real and rare and special, and the way it felt to kiss you is the way I always want to feel. I hope you write me back, but if you don’t, I understand. Just know that I’m thinking about you and I miss you, and I’m still sleeping on your shoulder when I close my eyes at night. -- Carrie.”
That last line is rather sweet, but Microsoft Word disapproves of her grammar in some places. Still, not bad; but, after the merest glimpse on-screen of this missive, Carrie replaces it with, “I miss you. Do you miss me?” Then she deletes the second sentence and sends it to CIM with a wince. This moment of angst is brought to you by America Online. Carrie covers her face with her hands and shrieks, not least because the tom-tom music is coming back to haunt her and SJP is afraid the ghost theme is coming out of retirement.
Samantha is getting some “male” as well, Carrie shares. Moaning with pleasure, she grins as Warren creeps up from between her legs and we prepare to hear the PR expert’s failure as a bedtime communicator: “Samanfa, does ya gina-wina wanna visit fwom my mista-mista?” My roommate and I snort in unison; to this day there’s a puddle of Diet Coke fizzing in my sinuses. I’d have paid good money to hear Sonia Braga deliver that line.
Shopping with Carrie and Charlotte, Samantha regales them with her tragic tale of baby-talk in bed. “How can they think it’s sexy? It’s like putting ketchup on prime rib -- stop, you’re ruining it!” Carrie complains, a tad too vehemently considering that it's Samantha’s crisis and not hers. Charlotte nods importantly and opines that baby-talk is a way to avoid intimacy. Carrie tries to make it about her, noting that ignoring emails is a better strategy than baby-talk and groaning that CIM hasn’t replied to her. Because she cares, Charlotte interrupts this and coos at a baby dress. Not to get too hung up on the fashion thing, but…she’s got on a gray plaid-ish skirt with a pink tank-top and a green, blue, and lavender sweater with horizontal stripes. Way too much going on, there, Char. And Samantha’s decked out in gold and some jangly things -- Saks Fifth Avenue apparently chewed her up in New York and spit her out in South Florida. Anyway, Charlotte reveals to the gals that she and Trey are trying to get pregnant. Why do couples speak of it as though the man is also able to get pregnant? There’s no “we” in “labor pains.” Carrie sensibly points out that now might not be the most stable time for them to procreate, and Charlotte, a rock-solid logician, counters by whining that she’s the oldest woman she knows without a baby, and children are status-symbols, and as such she should pop one out. Silence. “Well, the oldest married woman who wants one…you know what I mean,” she fumbles. Carrie offers support, and a lame joke about Diaper Genies ensues.
Charlotte spots Tricia, a fellow married, across the store. Tricia is “the kind of hip mom for whom Barneys would always be stores, not dinosaurs.” Tricia, a pretty blonde, says she’s thrilled Charlotte and Trey are back together. Charlotte whispers that they’re trying to have a baby, and invites Tricia and Cliff over for dinner, but Tricia complains she couldn’t get a sitter. “I can’t believe I’m 34 with three kids,” she says, not unpleasantly but not elatedly either. Charlotte’s smile falters a bit.
“Charlotte, 35 with no kids, decided it was time to get serious,” Carrie narrates. We see Charlotte riding Trey, fucking him silly, right hand clasping his left and her groin rocking vigorously atop his. Looks like work. She pants, without breaking rhythm, that she invited Tricia and Cliff to dinner. He says that’s fine. Fucking continues.
The day, Carrie voice-overs that she is working on a piece she calls “Thirty-Six Hours and Still No Response from Aidan.” She’s got three horseshoe pendants on this time, and I wonder if they added to her pendants on purpose to imply that Carrie is frantically seeking luck, any luck at all, or if maybe it’s a silly visual pun about Carrie as an accessory-horse. Or, more likely, it was an accident that happens to work. Carrie notes that it took the Indians six months to get responses, and it took her six months to realize she missed CIM. She’s hammering at her keyboard, wondering if improvements in communication, like email, are really helping us all communicate. “Do actions really speak louder than words?” she wonders, typing this into her word-processing program. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a theme. Carrie opts for action, grabs the phone, and calls CIM, primping as though he could see her through the receiver. He answers, and she goes for the jugular. “Why won’t you respond to my email?” she demands. CIM, bless him, has no idea who it is. “Oh, it’s Carrie,” she stammers. CIM reckons he deleted her message because he gets tons of junk mail and doesn’t open anything he doesn’t recognize. “That’s not very neighborly,” she says, trying to sound cool and collected. She blathers about only getting two messages, and one was from the AOL wizards, and she explains what it was, and no one cares, and CIM yawns, and I pass out and bang my head against the coffee table. Carrie jolts me awake by asking CIM out as part of a friendly foursome with Miranda and Steve. He says that sounds fine, and they hang up after much awkwardness. Carrie is wearing a sheer nightdress with a black bra and panties under it -- lingerie underneath her lingerie. I don’t understand this constant need to make Carrie look idiotic, but then, I did just sustain a blow to the head due to show-induced boredom.
At Miranda’s place, sports gear is scattered all over the floor. Carrie narrates that the morning runs led to coffee, which led to sex. He’s behind her and they’re kneeling on the bed; he lowers her onto her stomach and kisses down her back, pulling off the spandex shorts. He moves back up…and stops at her ass. Her face registers shock, then alarm, then confusion. Cynthia Nixon does a good job of not making her expression look too cartoonish.
Carrie hounds Miranda about their double-non-date, and Miranda says she’s actively ignoring the idea. “You’re my airbag in case there’s an impact, and Steve’s going to be Aidan’s airbag,” Carrie explains, delighted with herself. Miranda frets that Steve will get the wrong idea, which he shouldn’t, since he had a new girlfriend last week -- not that the writers care about such trifles as continuity. Miranda doesn’t register the fact that she’s been reduced to “bag” status. Instead, she reveals that Marathon Man is her nail-a-thon man. Everyone grins. “It was good, except…he licked my butt,” Miranda blurts. And as she talks about getting her salad tossed, Miranda munches on a tossed salad. This has changed vegetables for me forever. Samantha asks if it was the cheeks, or… “It was more localized than that,” Miranda confesses. Carrie gasps jokingly, “Are we talking tookus-lingus?” Whatever. Call it a rim job and be done with it. The cutesy shit is getting old.
“Are we doing this now?” Miranda frets. Charlotte says Trey likes to do it, which floors the other three. “What? We’re married!” she says. And that gets a whopping puh-leeze from me -- she was grossed out by fake nipples, and she’d never seen her own vagina, and they wrote an entire show about her reluctance to take off her towel in a public sauna. So naturally, yeah, she’s fine with getting her ass licked. Right-o. Samantha’s attitude is, “If the guy’s willing, why say no?” Why say yes? Are there nerve-endings there I don’t know about? Samantha muses that something’s afoot with men and the buttocks. “It’s true, the last few guys I’ve been with have been more eager to attend to it, digitally,” Miranda says. I guess I missed that scene with the Open-Door Dumper, and the scene where Duncan Hines called and begged her to strip down and sit on his chocolate-frosted face. “How did they get the impression that ass is on the menu?” Carrie asks, and Miranda guesses that a loudmouth guy found one woman who loved it, and has spread the word like it’s gospel. They’re baffled. Samantha suggests that they not knock it until they try it. “Bingo,” Carrie says. “Was this my last shot? Am I out of the ass loop?” Miranda worries. “I can’t bring myself to ask for it.” Samantha tells her to lean into it -- actions being louder than words, and all. Miranda asks if she should reciprocate, and Samantha immediately says, “No.” Pause. “You wouldn’t?” Charlotte asks, and they all stare at her. Okay, I laughed, but it’s still out of character.
“That night, Charlotte performed a more traditional wifely duty,” Carrie shares. In a red-and-white dress that evokes the 1950s and its social strata, Charlotte wanders out of the kitchen with a big platter of food and invites everyone to dig in -- she’s serving dinner to Tricia, Cliff, and their three children in the shit-stained dining room. Tricia compliments the meal. “Tricia is amazed that anyone cooks,” mutters her husband. “Well, Tricia has three kids, which keeps her kinda busy,” Tricia snipes back, smiling through gritted teeth. Kids scream. One son complains about sitting to Charlotte and slides under the table. The other brandishes his ruby-slipper-clad feet, and his sister announces that he wears her shoes. Basically, the scene is one of a marriage crumbling because having kids ruined everything. Charlotte and Trey look frightened. Cut to them sleeping back-to-back, with space between them. Sometimes, “inaction speaks louder than words,” Carrie offers in voice-over.
For her part, Carrie is “full of words” at her dinner with CIM, Steve, and Miranda. She’s telling a not-very-interesting story about pests in her apartment, and she’s doing it with all the gloss and finesse of someone who’s terrified that silence will betray the façade of normalcy, and who therefore clogs the air with meaningless words. Everyone willingly participates, Miranda even offering the “oh me, oh my!” gesture of clapping her hands to her cheeks as an expression of surprise at the twist in Carrie’s story-with-no-twists. As the laughter decrescendos, CIM touches Carrie’s hand and smiles almost imperceptibly at her, which stops her in her tracks. Steve and CIM then riff about men going to the bathroom in pairs, agreeing to break with convention and go together. Carrie, practically licking her lips, tells Miranda that she can go now, back to banal anal subplot hell. And she should take Steve with her, because he’s outlived his usefulness.
Four blocks away, Carrie has walked CIM to his front stoop. It’s like this: CIM is hot, and there’s no getting around it, although he’s certainly trying by wearing that weird flimsy cotton shirt. It’s like a pirate shirt cross-bred with a season of Miami Vice. CIM says it was great to see her, and Carrie takes this as the cue to admit she wants him back. “Fuck, I…was afraid you were going to say something like that,” CIM stammers. Apparently, he was game to try a friendship, but nothing else. She is stunned. “You…put your hand on my hand,” she chokes. CIM is adorably confused. She repeats herself, and looks up at him imploringly. “I was trying to make you comfortable,” he says. “You seemed so nervous,” what with that nightmarish bug story and all. “Then I guess…” Carrie turns around, winces, and breathes something like, “fuck,” then turns around and says goodnight. She starts to walk away just as he leans in to kiss her, and it ends up that he catches her around the waist and kisses the side of her mouth. It’s a nicely done awkward moment, and it really is unclear just why CIM would choose to kiss her at all, even a platonic peck, after rejecting her. Carrie is equally confused by this, but continues walking away, with just the merest touch of the spot on her mouth that his lips grazed. That was a pretty good scene; SJP and CIM do seem to have nice on-screen heat.
Stripped down the way America likes her, Carrie curls up in her desk chair and desperately emails Miranda, who didn’t answer her phone. Mid-sentence, the phone rings, and it’s Miranda, who informs us she was just Instant Messaging her Marathon Man. “Will your tookus be wanting some lingus?” Carrie asks, and it’s almost as annoying as Warren’s baby-waby talky-walky. Miranda says to forget that conversation because he’s coming over, and by the way, Steve tried to kiss her outside the restaurant. A chorus of “WHAT??” erupts all across America. It makes no sense that this would be a throwaway detail, and indeed it seems superfluous and almost insulting to include it at all, because it shows just how much disregard the writers apparently have for Miranda. If Steve is one of her major exes, then him trying to kiss her -- after having a happy girlfriend last week -- seems like it should be worth more than an off-camera incident and a flippant remark. End rant. Well, in this paragraph, anyway.
Carrie reacts to the Steve kiss with the kind of interest a best friend deserves: She changes the subject back to herself. “Aidan kissed ME!” she exclaims, as though it was all a nifty plot concocted by the guys during their bathroom bonding. Carrie can’t figure out if CIM’s kiss was a real one, or a peck, or what it all means. AOL makes the Instant Message noise, but the writers pretend it’s the sign-on noise that bings whenever someone on your Buddy List logs on, and we see AidanNYC on Carrie’s list. She spots him online and leaps out of the chair, ducking. “Can he see me?” she wails. Miranda calmly tells Carrie to step away from the machine, then go back and send a calm email. Carrie argues that CIM will just pretend he doesn’t want her, even though she thinks he does, and her epiphany is to…go back over there, to the scene of her recent spurned advances! Way to go, Carrie; you’re handling rejection with such style and grace. “His words said no, but his kiss said yes,” she insists. Miranda rightly points out, “That’s the defense invoked by date-rapists.” Carrie still refuses to believe that anyone would knowingly ditch her or try to get over her, so she states, “I know he still feels it,” and hangs up.
“When men attempt bold gestures, it’s generally considered romantic,” Carrie voice-overs, as we see her on the sidewalk, tossing pebbles at CIM’s window. “When women do it, it’s often considered desperate” -- check -- “and psycho.” Check. She’s two for two. Follow your own logic, Carrie. “I was hoping to prove I was neither.” CIM’s light comes on, and he peers out of the window, shirtless, and so basically I stop paying attention to what’s being said and concentrate fully on the view of his smokin’ bod. Amid my slobbering I think I can make out a feeble joke about how long she’s been out there; by the time he appears at the front door, he’s got a shirt on, and my senses return in a rush. “See, I think…no, I feel fairly certain…there is still something between us,” Carrie sputters. CIM insists that he had a lovely time with her, but that he needs to leave it at that. Carrie tries to wheedle her way upstairs for a “talk,” and he denies her the chance to infiltrate. “Because of what might happen?” she prods. CIM throws up his hands and looks increasingly frustrated that he can’t pull the leech off his leg. As he fumbles for a lighter that would burn it off, Carrie decides she doesn’t look desperate enough and clamps down even harder. “I know you’re probably scared, and I would be too, but it’s different now, things are different. I’m different,” she says. To prove this, she grabs her cigarettes and throws them over her shoulder. They land at the foot of a nearby tree, which appreciates her thoughtful littering. CIM sighs but can’t help looking a tad intrigued. “Seriously, all bad habits gone,” Carrie simpers. “This is a whole new thing, because…I miss you, and I’ve missed you, and it’s not just because you look so good -- and you do and you should know that -- but I lie in bed at night and I think about us, and I think about you holding me…” CIM, at his breaking point, doesn’t have a lighter on him, so he chooses verbal fire. “You broke my heart!” he yells at her, then stares at the ground, almost awed by his own outburst. Carrie looks up at him for a minute, and then, rather than apologize for this, she runs away from CIM and the reminder of her horrible behavior. Half-heartedly, he calls after her, but he doesn’t give chase.
Samantha is riding Warren, wearing a bra, because she can have pictures hanging in her foyer that show her nude body but she can’t fuck with her breasts swinging loose. Obviously. “Samanfa!” Warren growls. “I WUV your tittie-witties!” She looks put-off. It’s like she’s having sex with Tweety Bird. “Warren, you’re a great fuck, but I don’t need the baby talk,” she says gently, almost maternally. “You don’t have to call them my tittie-witties. These are my breasts, and you don’t have to say anything about them. It’s just sex, and it’s fine.” She delivers this soothingly, with a beaming smile, and it’s really quite creepy, so I don’t blame Warren for leaping up and storming into the bathroom. Annoyed, Samantha covers herself with a sheet and waddles to the bathroom door. She tries to get him to come out, this time hitting us hard with the adult-child dynamic -- “Can we talk about this like adults?” -- but when he does come out, he’s dressing and preparing to leave. “Samantha realized she wore the nipples, and attracted a big baby,” Carrie explains. As the door slams, Samantha looks peeved. No gasm-wasm for Sammy-wammy.
“Speaking of babies, Charlotte and Trey still were not,” Carrie narrates. Charlotte is in bed, fingering a Tiffany’s silver rattle. Trey discovers her and looks sheepish. He ordered it a week ago so that it could be engraved. I’m a little alarmed at the passage of time here, which is reaching Gilmore Girls proportions. “We had each other, and then we had you, and now we have everything,” Charlotte reads from the rattle. I think my sister and I once wrote that same letter to a chocolate-chip cheesecake. Gingerly, Trey and Charlotte both wonder why they stopped trying after having Tricia and Cliff over for dinner. “Kids don’t even want to sit by me,” Charlotte mopes. Trey moves in for a cuddle and reminisces about how in love Cliff and Tricia used to be. That helps a lot, I’m sure -- it’s good to hammer home what a hollow, loveless trap that marriage has become because of the children. Charlotte decides that having just one child might be the solution, and Trey says, “It’s a start. See how we do.” They kiss. “Then, Trey told the lie that all parents-to-be have to tell themselves in order to procreate,” Carrie says to prepare us. Trey whispers to Charlotte, “Our kids will be different.” More kissing. Carrie shares that they made love that night, and possibly, a baby.
“And downtown, Miranda seemingly had her communication problem licked,” Carrie tells us. Lying on her stomach, Miranda is smiling as though in ecstasy, and Marathon Man crawls up from ass-level to snuggle. Carrie says Miranda felt like she should do something in return, and Miranda offers a massage. He accepts. As she starts rubbing his back, his taut butt wiggles higher and higher toward her face. Miranda looks increasingly uncomfortable until she is about two inches away from his ass, at which point she shouts, “I don’t want to do that!” Annoyed, he drops his butt.
Carrie is alone in her bed. Pebbles hit her window, so she darts over and sees CIM on the street. After a few seconds of locked eyes, he darts toward her building’s door and she follows suit. Opening her apartment door, he dashes in -- but in slow motion -- and sweeps her up into a deep kiss. “This time, we didn’t need words,” Carrie narrates. It’s actually a fairly nice moment -- he just grabs her and goes for it, and they show a little chemistry.
We cut to Carrie on her bed, sitting coiled behind a shirtless CIM. It’s implied that they either just had sex, or fooled around until he got cold feet. He stands up and faces her, putting a shirt on -- boo! -- and she stares right at his crotch, as though she’d like to slap it in a bun and gobble it up with mustard, relish, and some sauerkraut. CIM wonders if she’s just doing this to ease her conscience. “No, no, I just…I love you,” she breathes pathetically. She looks up at him with puppy-dog eyes. “I still love you, I just…wish that I could be your girlfriend again,” she finishes. CIM leans down and kisses the top of her head, then lingers so that they rub noses. “I need to think about that,” he says gently. He walks away, and she doesn’t unclench his hand until the last possible second. “His actions said he still loved me, or maybe just missed me, or maybe he needed closure,” Carrie narrates as she stares morosely into space. “Maybe I’d never know.”
Miranda jogs in the park in the morning, conspicuously trying to sprint ahead of Marathon Man. “The morning, due to sheer embarrassment, Miranda got what she needed -- a running buddy who pushed her into the nine-minute-mile group,” Carrie voice-overs. Miranda grins maniacally as Marathon Man is left in her dust, with nothing but a distant view of his former anal snack.
Carrie leans back from her chair, checking her handy AOL email account -- AOL! Making and breaking relationships since 1985! -- and announcing that CIM still hasn’t responded. She slinks down low into her seat, bumming out big-time -- but not, for once in her life, Big-time. Then comes the plot twist. You know, there was a point at which I was about four thousand miles away from this plot twist, and yet I still spotted it on the horizon, staggering toward me with a belt of scotch in one hand and a picture of its parents, Contrivance and Predictability, clutched in the other. Carrie hears someone calling her name, and she leaps over her desk to lean out the window. It’s -- wait for it! Wait…for…it -- CIM, pulling a Romeo while also pulling a dog on a leash. “Okay, let’s give it a shot,” he smiles. She pretends to be surprised. “Want to come upstairs?” she asks, but he says he promised his dog, Pete, a nice long walk. He invites her along. “Yeah. Don’t move, okay?” she begs him. Crawling back inside her window, Carrie shuts off the computer and calls out that she’ll be right down. The computer screen turns black.
week, Samantha becomes a transsexual, Charlotte proposes to her biker-boyfriend Jimmy, Miranda tries a case while her husband and daughter go bowling with Big, and Carrie gets a job writing a column about sex and relationships. At least, that’s the kind of continuity and sensible storytelling we’ve come to expect this season on Sex and the City. What really happens week: Carrie screws something up but Aidan keeps on screwing anyway, while Samantha gets sassy in a taxi.