Carrie tells us that some New Yorkers think of Manhattan as a place to kill time between weekends at their homes in the country, as CIM shows Carrie pictures of a run-down cabin in the woods and Carrie fakes interest. CIM tells Carrie she is joining him in the country week, and she tells him that she has a meeting with her editor in town week. He tells her she can take the train into the city for her meeting and then go back out into the country afterwards. Carrie realizes she can’t get out of this little trip, and then CIM sings like some yokel, "Pack your bags little lady you’re coming to the country with me!" Because we all know that as soon as you leave Manhattan, everyone talks like they’re from Mayberry. Miranda buzzes up to Carrie’s apartment as Carrie tells CIM that she's a city girl, and that because she goes to the late movie in the middle of the week, she is wacky and can’t possibly go to the country. Because people that live the country go to bed when the sun goes down, and they don’t have movie theaters that show movies past 7:00 p.m. Miranda comes in as CIM and Carrie start swapping spit, making it all too clear once again that Miranda does not have anyone to swap spit with right now, and she looks a little uncomfortable. She tells CIM to tell his "little pal Steve" to call his insurance company, because they can’t reach him and he still has her name as the "in case of emergency person." CIM tells Miranda that Steve wants to talk to her, and she thinks that Steve wants to get back together with her since he broke up with Jessica. CIM tells her Steve has testicular cancer, and Miranda feels like a "horrible, selfish bitch" for expecting Steve to want to be with her.
Charlotte is in bed reading and doing pelvic thrust exercises, which arouses Trey when he comes into the bedroom. She tells him she is doing fertility exercises, and he thinks there is a better way to become fertile, and he climbs on top of her. She looks at some watch-looking thing on her wrist and tells him that her basal body temperature tells her that she won’t ovulate for another five days, so they have to wait so that he will have strong swimmers when she ovulates. Trey is a little annoyed, and Charlotte whines about trying for three months and not getting pregnant yet and wanting to make sure it works this time, and she asks him to wait until Saturday. Oh, waaahh, three months. Go whine about it at the fertility clinics that have couples that have been trying for years to get pregnant. Trey reminds Charlotte that they have to be in Connecticut for the weekend to go to the orchid show with Bunny. Charlotte then decides that they will have to have sex at his mother’s house. Trey is all, "People having sex in Connecticut? There’s a first time for everything." Except that his siblings are all in Connecticut having sex with the hired help, like Charlotte’s gardener boy-toy last season.
Miranda and Steve are sitting on a bench having sandwiches, and he tells her that his type of cancer is very trendy now and that everyone, like Lance Armstrong and "that Drew Barrymore guy," get it. Miranda calls it "the TiVo of cancers," and Steve tells her that the surgery is simple; all the doctor has to do is "go in there and snip one out." She asks him if his is in Stage One, since she read up on testicular cancer "on the 'net." Who in the hell still calls the internet "the 'net"? Steve guesses it is Stage One, because the first "stage" is to have the operation. Miranda asks if he's had any ultrasounds or CAT scans done, and he tells her that he "turned [his] head, I coughed, he poked around a little." Miranda wonders what kind of doctor he is, and Steve tells her he got him from his HMO. Miranda then tells him that she talked to some men in her office, and they gave her the name of a specialist to pass along to him. Okay, who would walk around an office, much less a law office, and ask the men about testicular cancer? And what men would go around telling coworkers about their testicular cancer while at work? It might have been more professional to check out a testicular cancer message board on "the 'net" to get the names of some specialists. So anyway, Steve doesn’t want Miranda's help and tells her it isn’t a big deal, and she explodes, telling him it is a big deal because it's cancer, and the longer he sits around and does nothing, the more the cancer could spread and he could die. Steve gets teary-eyed and looks away.
The girls are having breakfast, and Miranda complains about yelling at Steve and making him cry. Charlotte thinks Miranda's outburst at Steve is understandable, because her mother just died and she has "a lot of pent-up residual anger." I’m so glad that someone was able to remember what happened last week. Miranda tells them she was just pissed off at Steve, and Samantha thinks she was right for yelling at him. Carrie thinks Miranda needs a quiet weekend away from the city, and that she needs to go with Carrie to the country. Samantha can’t believe that Carrie is actually going, and Carrie tells her that she is being taken against her will, and that she will be a "hick town hostage." Miranda tells her she can’t go, because Steve has cancer, and she needs to stay in town to make him feel bad about it. Charlotte tells her that she will be in Connecticut for the weekend, so Carrie tries to get Samantha to go with her, making her pretend they live in Paris and they are going to Provence for the weekend. This baits Samantha into going into a diatribe about men always wanting to know what she is going to do on the weekends, and her monologue is about how she spends her weekends looking for men to fuck so she doesn’t have to fuck the men she’s already had. Because she hasn’t had every STD out there yet, and she wants to try them all. Carrie resigns herself to the fact that she will be in the country alone, and Charlotte corrects her by reminding her that she will be with CIM. Carrie decides that since she loves CIM and CIM loves the country, she might love the country too. This bugs Miranda, who thinks that Carrie has to "pretend to be someone else to be in a relationship," and Carrie tells her that she is compromising. Charlotte agrees with Carrie and tells them that since Trey likes golf, she is going to take golf lessons, and because Trey loves Bunny, she is going to ovulate at the orchid show. Um, she had me there for a minute, but then lost me. Samantha asks Carrie which town she is going to, and she tells them she is going to Suffern. SUFFERN? THE COUNTRY? NOT! Vesuvius, Virginia? Country. Mifflintown, Pennsylvania? Country. Suffern, New York? SUBURB. If you stand on a hill in Suffern, you can see the New York City skyline, for cripes' sake! And it has a downtown with a movie theater that has late shows. There is a microbrewery there! Would a country town have a microbrewery? I think not. Granted, the new Wal-Mart that just opened up in town may attract hicks, but Suffern is about as country as the town I grew up in (about ten miles away from Suffern), which is to say that it totally is not country.
So CIM drives Carrie to the non-country and up to an old cabin that has trees around it. Oh, well, since there are trees, it MUST be the country. My parents’ house has trees and a lake in the backyard -- they must live in the deep woods. Carrie decided to straighten her hair for the occasion, and to wear a big skirt and high heels. The perfect attire for going to a beat-up cabin in the non-woods with her boyfriend and his dog. You know, Carrie would have found this the perfect excuse to go out and buy a bunch of the camouflage outfits that are all the rage now, and to get some big trendy boots to go along with the clothes. CIM tells her there's a lake a mile away, as she drags her bags up the steps and teeters on her high heels. They get inside, and he tells her that the floor dates back to 1874 but the plumbing is from 1974 and he put in the hot water heater himself. He asks her if she thinks it was as scary as she thought it would be, and she lies that it isn’t while she tells us that she thought it was scarier. When he takes her bag to put in the bedroom, she walks into the kitchen and puts on lip gloss and tells us that she would rather be in the city, going to sample sales. She turns around and sees a squirrel on the window ledge and lets out a scream like someone stuffed a knife up her ass. CIM runs over to her, and she tells him about the squirrel. He tells her the squirrel is his, and that he has been feeding it. She tells him that he can’t be friends with a squirrel, because a squirrel is a rat with a cuter outfit. Oh, please. Like she hasn’t seen a freaking squirrel before. The parks in the city are filled with them, and unlike rats, they prefer nuts and berries over garbage and don’t live in dumpsters. Only someone with mental problems would be mortally afraid of a squirrel.
Carrie and CIM are lying in bed, Carrie with the requisite black bra on, and she tells us that they thought of something to do in the non-country to pass the time, but it didn’t pass enough time. She looks at the clock, and it is 8:30, and she tells us she had nowhere to go and nothing to do except smack mosquitoes that are biting her. Not so, Carrie! You could go to the movie theater and see a late show, or go have a beer! ["Or read a book. Hello. Who goes on vacation and doesn't pack something to read?" -- Sars]
As Carrie sits in front of her laptop, she tells us, "Three hours, two mosquitoes, and one too many vodka Kool-Aids later, I finally found an outlet for my computer, but not for my frustration." Frustration? Oh, please! She should be happy she even has hot water and electricity. My husband’s family has a real log cabin (built before the Civil War) in the country, in Rockbridge County, VA, about ten miles from Buena Vista (and that’s pronounced Byoona Vista), and to get to the cabin you have to go off a main road and drive through a cow pasture and up a gravel drive. Once you get there, you need to get a pail and go to the spring at the bottom of the hill so you can have water, and if you want to go to the bathroom you need to walk about a hundred yards to the outhouse (that only got a door installed a few years ago), and if you want light you need to make sure that all the lamps have oil in them so the wick doesn’t dry out. Fortunately, the wood stove heats up the cabin pretty quickly so in the winter you don’t freeze, and in the summer there is a nice breeze since the cabin is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but you have to make sure that the screens are on tight or else a gazillion bugs will get you. That, my friends, is the country. Carrie then blathers on about relationships and how people have to compromise, and she asks her computer, "In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?" When the writers have you do things that you wouldn’t really do, like wear heels to a cabin and screech at a squirrel.
Meanwhile, Samantha is in the city having sex while wearing a red lacy bra, and when she finishes up, the guy asks her what she is doing weekend. She gets annoyed and gets out of bed and throws his clothes at him. Oh, what wacky Samantha hijinks! All these crazy people asking her what she is doing on the weekends! Will the comedy ever start?
Carrie tells us that Miranda invited Steve over for Chinese food and Chop Socky, and Miranda sits down with Steve and gives him a beer. Steve thought Miranda didn’t like martial arts movies, and she tells him she doesn’t, but the guy at the video store told her it was a good movie, so she rented it for Steve. She then offers him the last spring roll and offers to make him some Chinese tea. Steve gets annoyed and starts to put on his shoes to leave and tells Miranda that he doesn’t want to be treated like a cancer patient. She tells him that she felt bad about being a bitch the last time they were together, and she wanted to make it up to him. He tells her that she was a bitch, and he thanks her for it, because now he has a good doctor who knows what he's doing and he has his surgery scheduled. He thanks her for being "a huge bitch," and the camera does a close-up of Miranda looking sheepish, then goes back to Steve, whose glasses have suddenly disappeared! Is it so hard for the continuity people to remember to have Steve keep his glasses on?
Carrie tells us that in Connecticut, Bunny gave Charlotte a tour of her nursery. Bunny blathers on about how she has gotten into growing orchids since her boys grew up and were on their own, and gives Charlotte one of her orchids as a gift since Charlotte is working on giving her the gift of a grandchild. Charlotte looks a little scared. I would be very scared if I knew I were working on making another member of such a fucked-up family. Run away, Charlotte!
Carrie is in CIM’s pick-up truck, using his cell phone to call Charlotte and tell her that she didn’t get any sleep because "the silence was deafening." Charlotte reminds her that she is in the non-country, and then Carrie complains that she went to take a shower but there was no water, so CIM is working on the plumbing now, and she needed to get out and get something to drink before she dehydrated. But instead of going to the local grocery store, she drives to a fast-food restaurant drive-thru and orders a cheeseburger, fries, and a Cosmopolitan. Oh, that Carrie, so spunky trying to put down people who don’t live in the city by ordering something she knows they don’t have. Charlotte asks where she is, and she tells her she is in Ho-Ho-Kus, which is not near Suffern at all, and if Carrie wanted something to eat, she could have gone to a number of restaurants and diners in Suffern, or had a burger and a Cosmopolitan at the Mason Jar in Mahwah, which is to Suffern right off Route 17. Or she could have gone across the highway to the behemoth Sheraton Hotel by the Sharp Electronics plant, since that place has a number of bars and restaurants. By the way, in case you were wondering about the names of the towns in this area, many are named after Native Americans. Carrie then tells Charlotte that she had to drive to New Jersey to get a cell signal, which is complete bullshit, because I was in Suffern visiting my aunt two weeks ago and I had my cell phone and I made a call while I was there. And by driving to New Jersey, she only had to drive one town over. Mahwah is in New Jersey. Charlotte then tells Carrie about how Bunny has gone nuts and is picking out names and schools for the baby, and wouldn’t let the cook put shrimp in her omelet. ["And that part of Jersey isn't exactly the sticks, either. To get to 'the country' from the city, you have to drive for a while in any direction. Like, for two hours. At least. And even an inveterate 'city girl' would know that. This episode made me crazy." -- Sars] Carrie wants to go to Charlotte’s "country," and Charlotte asks how CIM’s cabin is. Carrie tells her she hates it, but CIM thinks she loves it. Charlotte tells her to keep CIM company, and Carrie is all, "He’s out there hoeing." Charlotte tells her to be with CIM and "go hoe." Hasn’t Carrie been doing that for years now?
Carrie goes back to the cabin and tries to be all country by wearing overalls and a tank top and helping CIM carry railroad ties to a mudhole. Can the writers come up with something more contrived, please? Wacky hijinks ensue when Carrie repeatedly slips in the mud and falls down and gets all muddy, while music that usually plays in promos for shows on Country Music Television plays in the background, because we're supposed to think that Carrie is in the country, but all it is, really, is insulting, because the producers of this show think they can pass off where she is and what she's doing as "country." CIM finally goes over and helps her out of the mud, and she tells him she needs to take a few showers and get ready for her meeting with her editor.
Carrie tells us that, four hours later, she kissed CIM goodbye and went back to the city for a "New York steak with my New York ex." Carrie is stuffing red meat into her mouth, and as she's sitting in her chair, it looks like she has on a green satin miniskirt and her rumba panties are showing in the back. She is sitting with Big, the man she had an affair with and who CIM doesn’t want Carrie to ever see. That’s really classy, Carrie. Punk out on your boyfriend so you can see your ex and lie about it. Carrie is blathering on about CIM and how great he is, but she can’t stand to be with nature. She stops rambling for one second to ask Big if it's okay to talk about CIM with him, and Big is fine with it. Carrie starts to tell him that if he met someone, he should feel free to talk about it with her, and Big cuts in and tells her that he did meet someone. Carrie is taken aback and feigns interest. She asks who it is, and he tells her it's Willow Summers, the movie star. Big tells Carrie he saw Willow’s last movie and thought she was pretty good in it. Carrie tells him she doesn’t know about that, but knows that "she wears many wrong things on the red carpet." Okay, let’s take a look at the person who just said that line. Not only has Carrie worn a mile-long list of Fashion Don’ts, SJP has managed to make herself look like a fool while walking down some red carpets herself, most notably this year’s Oscars, to which she wore a micro-mini dress. I wonder how much extra SJP was paid to say that line. So anyway, Carrie asks Big where he met Willow, and he told her that he was at her premiere, and Willow came up to him and asked for a cigarette and told him that she had two vices, "smoking and green-eyed men." Carrie thinks the woman is smooth, and Big goes on about how they talked and had some drinks and went back to her place, and she wore red panties and kept her high heels on, and before Big can go into detail about the sex he had with her, Carrie stops him and asks him how the stock market is treating him. Big ignores her and says that he's crazy about Willow and Willow is crazy about him and he thinks he's in love.
Carrie is walking down the street, telling us that she hated being in the non-country, and she hated being in the city listening to Big talk about Willow. She walks past a store window that has a Willow Summers movie poster in it, and she stops and looks at the poster. A rat walks by, and she screams and turns around, and it looks like a maxi-pad exploded and flew against Carrie’s ass and got stuck to the bottom of her skirt. Carrie then tells us she wanted to go back to the non-country, but this time, she "would not rely on the country to provide the entertainment. I would take the entertainment with me."
How she actually convinced Samantha to go out to Suffern with her is beyond me, but Samantha is there with a pocket fan, fanning herself while Carrie teeters around on even higher heels than before and tries to make a pie. She looks in her Suffern Succotash book to see what ingredient she needs ; she needs a cup of milk. As Samantha is complaining about how hot it is, Carrie looks in the refrigerator and sees that they have no milk. Samantha thinks the place is a dump and wants to take the train home, but Carrie begs her to stay and entertain her and tells her that CIM worked hard on the cabin and put the hot water heater in himself. Yeah, that’s going to convince Samantha to stay. CIM comes into the kitchen and wonders why it's so hot. Carrie tells him she's preheating the oven so she can bake a pie. Samantha looks outside, and out of nowhere there is a farm about a hundred yards away with piece of cheesecake driving a tractor and wearing overalls with only one strap buttoned. CIM tells them that the cheesecake is Luke Gillmore, and that he moved out there after the last stock market crash. Samantha gets an idea, so she ties up the front of her shirt like she’s Daisy Duke and puts on a hat that looks like a cheap prize at a country fair, and she goes over to see Luke for a cup of milk for the pie. Luke shows her over to the cow and tells her to "help herself." She slowly walks over to the cow in her strappy heels, and Luke asks, "Are you from New York City?" Okay, now, no one in the suburbs of New York City actually says "New York City." They just say "the city." Like, "Tonight I’m going to go into the city to see a play." Or "My friend just got a job in the city, so her commutes are going to be really long now." Or "Sex and The City." Get it? I wish the writers would. So anyway, Samantha steps in the bullshit some more and tells Luke that she does live in the city, but is saving her money to buy a place in Suffern. Luke then asks her if she has ever milked a cow, and she tells him she hasn’t, and as she looks at the udders, she tells him she has a feeling she would be very good at it. Oh, good god, could Samantha’s story get anymore predictable and boring? So Luke shows her how to milk, she tries it, oops! Milk gets spurted in her face; she makes a sexual innuendo and asks if anything else needs milking. Not really, since she has milked this "I’m promiscuous and I love it!" shtick until it has gone dry.
Charlotte finishes a game of fertility tennis and rushes back to her bedroom and whips off her shirt, yelling at Trey, who is in the bathroom, that she is ovulating and that he needs to get into bed and make love to her. She goes into the bathroom and finds Trey taking a bath and Bunny sitting on a chair to the tub, smoking a cigarette. Bunny tells her she was telling Trey how much Charlotte reminds her of herself when she was younger. Charlotte is mortified. Run, Charlotte! Get out while you can!
Trey finds Charlotte in the greenhouse, digging dirt in a pot, and she starts yelling at him about Bunny watching him bathe -- it is not acceptable behavior for a parent and a child past the age of five to do that, and she will not allow that to happen with her kids, and she is not like his mother. Trey tells her that he was raised by a nanny most of his childhood, and the only time he saw his mother was in between tennis and her cocktail hour, when she drew him a bath and asked him about his day, so he knows that Charlotte couldn’t possibly be like his mother. Oh, so that makes it okay. Bunny was a bad mother when he was growing up, so she can keep doing what she did after he has grown up? What a sick, perverted family. You would think, with the brain that Charlotte has, that she would know to stay as far away from the MacDougals as possible, but I guess her hormones are out of control and she can’t think straight. Charlotte’s wrist watch/ovulation alarm goes off, and she tells Trey she is ovulating, and they start doing it in the greenhouse, and they knock over a bunch of Bunny’s prized orchids.
Carrie tells us that "the patient, Steve, was greeted by a patient Miranda." Miranda sits by Steve’s hospital bed after his surgery. He looks pretty damn good for a man who has just had a testicle removed, and he wakes up and sees Miranda, who asks him how he is. He tells her, "On drugs." Which is probably a very good thing at the time. She tells him she spoke to his doctor, and the doctor told her that things looked good. A nurse comes in and tells her that visitor’s hours are over and she has to leave. She tells the nurse that she needs to stay longer, and the nurse asks if she is family. Miranda tells her that she is his "in-case-of-emergency person," so the nurse lets her stay another twenty minutes. Miranda gives Steve something to drink, and they smile at each other. Aw. They look really cute together.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, Samantha and Luke are having loud sex in the barn, and Samantha is actually naked, but this time she is grabbing her boobs and using her hands as a bra. They finish up, and he asks her what she's doing weekend. Oh, the non-comedy!
Back at the non-country cabin, Carrie finishes making the pie crust, and she's all impressed with herself because she has never made anything in the kitchen before. CIM looks unimpressed and tells her he's going to take a shower. As she is walking around holding the pie plate with the crust, she asks him to help her peel apples and tries to convince him that making a pie together will be fun. She turns around and sees the squirrel again and screams and drops the pie plate on her legs and burns her legs. CIM looks annoyed that she screamed at the squirrel again (like the rest of the world), and then asks her if she's okay. She starts yelling at him that she isn’t okay, that she burned her legs and she hates the squirrel and the oven and the house and she doesn’t belong there and whine whine whine would you like some cheese to go with that? He makes her sit on the kitchen island and puts ice on her legs to make her feel better. She then tells him she doesn’t hate the house, but she still hates the squirrel. He tells her that the house will get better, and she tells him she will come only on the weekends. Then they make out. Could the two of them have any less chemistry?
Carrie tells us that "one slow train ride and two fast-food apple pies later…" Carrie and Samantha are in the city, eating McDonald’s apple pies while trying to catch a cab. Carrie is wearing a white pantsuit with white gloves. Did she change on the train, because why in the hell would you wear all white, and gloves, while all hot and sweaty in the non-country? Carrie then tells us that CIM put air conditioning in the cabin, and she spent enough time in Suffern to realize that "city girls are just country girls, with cuter outfits." So city girls are squirrels and country girls are rats? And if Carrie is a squirrel, does that mean that every time she looks into a mirror, she screams in horror?
week, Carrie actually has the balls to invite Big to CIM’s non-country cabin.