I would like to start off by giving props to everyone in the forums for having an intelligent discussion of this episode without going down the pro-life/pro-choice debate road. This is a heated issue, and it shows what a mature group of people interact on the forums, and I’m proud of that fact. Now, if people would just learn not to start new topics to ask about a song played in an episode, everything would be perfect. Anyway, on with the show!
Carrie is running down the street in her Psycho Newsies outfit she wore a few weeks ago, yelling, "Extra Extra! Read all about it! I have a shoestring tied around my hair with pompoms on the ends!" as her voice-over tells us that sometimes people get to a crossroads and sometimes it is loud and busy. Carrie runs into moving traffic and cars honk at her and people yell at her, but unfortunately no one hits her. I do think that some guy does yell out, "What the fuck are you wearing, freak?" Miranda is waiting for her at a park or something, and Carrie runs up to her, apologizing that she is ten minutes late. Miranda tells her that she is three weeks late, and then has to explain to Carrie that she's pregnant. Carrie asks her if she is serious, and Miranda is all, "No, I thought it might be a fun thing to say." She then tells Carrie that she took three EPT tests and just had it confirmed by the doctor. Carrie asks Miranda when she had sex, and Miranda confesses to the pity fuck she gave Steve. She then confesses that, since Steve only had one ball and she has a lazy ovary, she didn’t think it was possible for her to get pregnant so they didn’t use a condom. Okay, now, last season she got an STD. Don’t you think that she would have used a condom to, say, prevent the spread of STDs? She doesn’t know who the hell Steve has been with for the past year, except for that one girlfriend. I think it was pretty irresponsible for the writers to only think of a condom as a means of birth control. Yeah, yeah, the writers needed a reason for Miranda to get pregnant, but they could have used the old "the condom broke" excuse, or said the condoms in her apartment were so old they were starting to disintegrate or something. Carrie asks Miranda if she's told Steve yet, and Miranda tells her that she isn’t going to tell Steve because she isn’t having the baby. Then she asks Carrie if she should tell Steve, and of course Carrie has no advice to give.
Carrie then tells us that Charlotte got a surprise of her own that day, and we see Charlotte sitting on the toilet, and she finds out she's gotten her period and is very disappointed.
The girls are at their restaurant, and Samantha is wearing a blue muumuu that Patricia Fields stole from the Three’s Company wardrobe department, and Miranda has about ten orange watch bands around her wrist, but no watch. Charlotte slams a box of Tampax tampons down on the table. Carrie is excited that Charlotte brought party favors, and Charlotte starts whining about not getting pregnant, blah blah blah, five months trying, whine whine whine, women over thirty-five have a harder time conceiving, blah blah blah fertility-cakes. Carrie assures her she will get pregnant, and Samantha makes a lame joke about people being able to get pregnant because of so many babies crying in planes. Charlotte thinks that it's her problem that she can’t get pregnant, and tells the girls all the sexual positions she has taken to get pregnant and how she has had sex with Trey seventy-three times without a condom, and she asks the girls how much semen has been wasted. Carrie looks to Samantha for a rough estimate of how much sperm that really is. Charlotte then whines about how, when she was in her twenties, she spent so much time trying not to get pregnant that she could have been screwing around with anyone and everyone, and that she should have been so lucky to get pregnant by mistake.
The whole time that Charlotte has been whining, Miranda and Carrie had been sharing looks, and Charlotte finally catches her snap and asks them what's going on, but she says, "What the eff is going on?" and Miranda reluctantly tells her that she's pregnant. Charlotte looks like she's been slapped in the face, and Samantha looks slightly embarrassed. Miranda tells them the father is Steve, and Samantha asks, "Mercy fuck?" Charlotte starts to whine some more because Steve only has one ball and it isn’t fair. Samantha asks Miranda what she's going to do, and Miranda just sort of looks at the ground, and they all understand that looking down means "having an abortion." Charlotte starts to bitch at Miranda for deciding to abort, and Miranda tells her that a baby isn’t in her plans right now and that she feels uncomfortable talking to Charlotte about it. Charlotte then decides to leave so they can continue to talk about abortion. Miranda feels horrible about the situation, but Samantha tells her not to, that things like this happen and they have all been there. Samantha tells her she has had two abortions, and asks Carrie how many she has had. Carrie looks at her and is all, "Uh, ONE?" like Samantha should know exactly how many she has had. Carrie tells Miranda the guy was a waiter at The Saloon, and it was 1988. Okay, now, there has been debate in the forums about whether or not the girls were being flippant in their discussion on abortions, and really, although Samantha was nonchalant about how many she had, she was trying to ease Miranda’s mind about having to get one, and Carrie did not seem laidback about it at all and really looked like she didn’t want to talk about it. So there you go, my take on it.
CIM is at Carrie’s place, wearing a horrible print shirt that also looks like a hostage from the Three’s Company wardrobe department. Carrie is half dressed, trying to pick out an outfit to go out in, and she keeps going back and forth between CIM and the closet, debating whether to tell CIM what is bothering her. CIM finally asks her if she has "gone coo-coo," and Carrie tells him he has to promise that he won’t tell anyone what she is about to tell him, and he agrees. She tells him that Miranda is pregnant and is going to get an abortion, and Charlotte is upset because she can’t get pregnant. CIM has the dumbest line so far this year when he says, "Well, if Miranda doesn’t want the kid, can’t she just give it to Charlotte?" Carrie should have said, "Are you on crack!?" but instead she calmly says, "No, it’s not like a sweater." CIM asks who the father is, and Carrie tells him that the reason he can’t tell anyone because the father is Steve, and Steve doesn’t know. CIM gets pissed off and tells Carrie she "railroaded" him, and of course her response was that she just had to tell him because it had been on her mind all day. Like last year, when she just had to tell him about her affair with Big because she couldn’t get that out of her mind either. CIM is upset that Miranda is getting an abortion without telling Steve, because it's Steve's baby too and he doesn’t have a say in what is going on. Then CIM says the second dumbest line of the year: "Seems like the guy gets the shit end of the stick." Carrie doesn't say, "You are on crack! 'Shit end of the stick'? What about the woman who has the unwanted pregnancy? All this shit is going on with her body, and she has to decide whether to keep it and go through nine months of crazy stuff with her physical and mental health, or get an abortion, which no one would even wish upon their worst enemy! All the guy has to do is sit back and watch it all while having a beer! Shit end of the stick, my ass!" Instead, Carrie watches her spine creep away from her body and just sort of whimpers, "Well, I don’t know. It’s a tough situation. I don’t know." CIM then asks her if she's ever had an abortion herself, and she lies and tells him she hasn’t.
Damn! I guess Carrie is trying a new way to keep thoughts in her head without blabbing them to CIM, because she has a multi-colored handkerchief rolled up and wrapped around her head with a corner sticking up right over her forehead, and a hoop earring with something dangling off it on one side. And Patricia Field has been reminiscing about the eighties too, I guess, because she went to the wardrobe department of Pretty In Pink and stole one of the pink strapless prom dresses, complete with the old corsage still pinned to the dress, and threw that on Carrie, along with an old chunky gold necklace that Mr. T used to wear on The A Team. Carrie and Samantha are looking at a window with designer pocketbooks in it, and Samantha drools over a big red leather briefcase-looking bag called a Birkin, which Carrie tells Samantha costs four thousand dollars and isn’t really her style. Samantha knows it isn’t her style, but if she has it, it means that she has the money to throw around to own a four-thousand-dollar pocketbook. Only Samantha could get away with that train of thought. Carrie then tells Samantha that she's going with Miranda when she gets her abortion. Samantha tells her that she was alone and it was awful, so she's glad Carrie is going. Carrie then tells her that she lied to CIM about her abortion and that CIM seemed relieved that he could still think of her in a certain way, and she doesn’t know why she lied. Samantha thinks that she lied so that CIM could still think of her a certain way. She then tells Carrie that she was right in having the abortion at that time, and she can’t keep thinking about it. Carrie then realizes she could have a thirteen-year-old child right now, and if she did then she never would have met Samantha. Samantha can’t imagine not knowing Carrie, and they lock arms while walking, like good friends do. Carrie says that she should have told CIM, and Samantha tells us the title of the episode when she says, "Coulda woulda shouda!"
To show us that it is getting into summer, Carrie is sucking on an ice pop while typing on her laptop, and she's still wearing the headband and chunky necklace, but she's ditched the dress and put on a black bra. That’s what all the girls wear when it gets hot in the city. Except for the ones with an ounce of fashion sense. Carrie blathers on about making choices and mistakes, "coulda shoulda woulda" and taking different roads in life, and she asks her laptop, "Are we there yet?" Yes, I think we are. At the shark tank, getting ready to jump. Fonzie has his water-skis on as we speak. Aaayyyyyyyyy! Carrie finishes her ice pop and gets a brain freeze. Or maybe it's her headband squeezing her head too hard.
Carrie tells us that, for Samantha, "the road to success was paved with stars," and apparently Samantha felt she needed to coordinate with the pavers, so she Bedazzled some stars onto her clothes. Samantha is wearing a horrid pink suit with a star garland wrapped around one shoulder and falling down onto her arm while sitting at a restaurant with Lucy Liu. You know, the one from Ally McBeal. No, not the young one from The View. No, they aren’t the same person. I know, my mother gets confused about that too. Samantha can’t get over the fact that Lucy is from Queens, so Lucy tries to do some Queens attitude that just looks and sounds like someone not from New York trying to act like someone from New York. ["A friend of mine went to high school with her at Bronx Science, and the IMDb says she's from Queens. Not that I don’t agree with you, though." -- Sars] As Samantha takes the check, Lucy tells her that she's looking for a PR person in New York, and that her last guy was a big liar. Samantha tells her that if she wants the truth, she should know that her last dress at the Golden Globes was a disaster. Lucy is all impressed, because she thought it was bad too, but a bunch of queens told her that it "was fierce." Samantha makes a lame joke about queens and Queens, and Lucy thinks she's funny. Lucy then tells Samantha that she was a waitress, and looks at the check to see how big a tip Samantha left. Lucy is all impressed that Samantha left a twenty-five-percent tip, and Samantha tells her that when she represents someone, it is "class, all the way." I refuse to believe that anyone could take Samantha talking about class seriously when she's wearing such a no-class outfit.
Samantha is at the Hermes store, asking to see the Birkin bag. The salesman tells her the bag costs four thousand dollars, and that there's also a waiting list to get the bag and it will take her five years to get to the top. Samantha is as shocked as I am, because in five years that bag isn’t going to be the status symbol it is now. Carrie tells us that Samantha isn't one for waiting, and Samantha tells the salesman that the bag is for Lucy Liu, and she wanted Lucy to wear the bag to a premiere week where it would be photographed. The salesman goes to get their PR person on the phone.
Carrie then tells us that Charlotte didn’t want to wait either, as we see Charlotte make an appointment with a fertility doctor for testing.
Miranda then makes an appointment with her doctor over the phone, but she can’t make herself say the word "abortion," so she says that she is pregnant and "needs not to be." Well, we all know that in the sitcom world, if you can’t say "abortion," you certainly can’t get one.
Samantha walks out of a building and onto the sidewalk, and she sees a middle-aged woman in a track suit with the Birkin bag she wants, so she calls the Hermes PR woman and asks why it is taking so "fucking long" to get the bag, and that Lucy Liu is a "fucking star" and a "fucking nobody" has the bag they want, and she wonders if "Hermes" means "we take our fucking time." There are times when Samantha says "fuck" and it works. This time, it does not work. It sounds like Kim Cattrall is just reading from a cue card. If I were the PR person on the other end of the line, I would have just hung up on her.
Oh, good God! Carrie walks into her apartment wearing a scrunchie with her hair and hair extensions in a high ponytail, a micro-mini Catholic school skirt, a white lacy halter top with black bra, a big white jacket, and white high heels with beige fishnet socks. And she is holding her Gucci fanny pack. You know, you keep asking yourself, "Can the outfits get any worse on this show?" and then your question is answered with a horrified "yes!" I swear, year, if talk-show hosts keep blithering about the fashion trends SATC starts, I will poke the hosts in their eyes with hot daggers. There is no way anyone who isn’t mentally handicapped would look at the outfits worn this season and try to wear the same things. So Carrie is looking at mail while walking across her apartment, and she turns around and screeches. Did she walk past a mirror and see what she was wearing? Oh, no, it's Steve -- he's there because he and CIM were playing basketball, and CIM had to go to the bathroom. Is there only one basketball court in the city, and it's right by Carrie’s place? Carrie feels all uncomfortable in front of Steve. Steve asks how Miranda is, because she won’t answer his calls. Carrie just ignores him and runs into the bathroom where CIM is. She whispers to CIM and asks if he told Steve about Miranda, because he's asking Carrie about her. CIM tells her that Steve always asks about Miranda. Carrie whispers that it's okay if he told because it's obvious that she can’t keep secrets either, and CIM whispers that he didn’t tell Steve, even though he thinks Steve should know what's going on and he wishes he didn’t know. They have a whisper argument about Steve and Miranda and whatever, and Carrie is acting psycho about Steve listening to what they are talking about and tells CIM to leave, so he does.
Miranda and Carrie are having pizza, and Miranda tells Carrie that her doctor doesn’t do abortions, so she's on a waiting list at another doctor. Carrie apparently was in such a rush not to be late that she forgot to get dressed; it looks like she's still wearing her towel and just put a belt around it. She asks Miranda if she's going to tell Steve; Miranda has no plans to tell him. Carrie tells Miranda that she told CIM, and that he had strong opinions about Miranda telling Steve. Carrie asks her if she would want to know if she were in Steve’s place, and Miranda tells her that she wouldn’t want to know, and she really doesn’t want to know about it now. She asks Carrie if she told the guy from The Saloon, and Carrie tells her she didn’t, but it's different, because she barely knew the guy and only had one drunken night with him. Miranda tells her that if she told Steve, then he would want her to have it, and Carrie gives her a look like it might not be a bad idea. Miranda gets very annoyed and snarks, "You know what? You’re right. Forget my life, I’m having Steve’s baby! Pizza for everybody!" Woo hoo!
Charlotte and Trey are at the fertility doctor’s office, and the doctor tells them that her blood and mucus test says that she has a lot of anti-sperm antibodies, and she only has a fifteen-percent chance of getting pregnant naturally. Then the doctor tells them they shouldn’t wait long to consider in vitro fertilization. Now, I don’t know much about fertility treatments, but aren’t there a number of things a couple should do before in vitro? Isn’t that, like, the last thing to try? And for a couple that has only been trying for five months, it seems like the doctor really wants to rush things. Could the writers not do a little research on this before writing it into the show?
Charlotte is walking home from the doctor when Miranda comes up in the other direction. Charlotte sees her and turns around, and Miranda catches up to her to ask her why she is avoiding her. Duh! Charlotte tells her that she's not avoiding her, but Miranda doesn’t believe her and tells her that she didn’t mean to get pregnant and didn’t mean to hurt her. Charlotte doesn’t want to talk about it, and Miranda tells her she doesn’t want to think that Charlotte hates her because she thinks she can’t get pregnant. Charlotte tells her she really can’t get pregnant, and Miranda doesn’t believe her until Charlotte wigs and shows her the paperwork from the doctor showing that there's only a fifteen-percent chance of her having a baby. I would think that Miranda had less than a fifteen-percent chance of getting pregnant herself, and look at the situation she's in. While that number doesn’t seem very high, it still is a chance, and Charlotte should be happy that there isn’t something seriously wrong with her body. Charlotte then asks Miranda if she can go home now, and Miranda asks Charlotte if she wants her to walk with her. Charlotte tells her no, and Miranda tells her that she's going to walk behind Charlotte, then, and if Charlotte wants to talk, to turn around and she will be there. Carrie tells us that Charlotte walked all the way home, and she didn't turn around, but she knew that Miranda was behind her. While it was a nice thing for Miranda to do, I would be bothered if I told a friend I wanted to be alone and that person followed me around. When I tell someone I want to be alone with my thoughts, I mean it, and I think the last person Charlotte wants to talk to about her fertility problems is a woman who got knocked up by mistake and doesn’t want to keep the baby.
Lucy Liu walks into the same restaurant she was in with Samantha the first time they met, and she has the Birkin bag. She sits down at the same booth they were at before, and Samantha is sitting there with a look of shock on her face. Lucy tells her the bag was delivered to her hotel room, and while it isn’t her style, it is a free bag. Samantha confesses that it isn’t a free bag -- she bought it, and used Lucy's name to get it. Lucy looks annoyed, and tells Samantha that the Hermes PR woman called her and told her that Samantha yelled "fuck" at her twelve times. Samantha denies it, and makes up a story about how she was on her cell phone so the PR rep must have heard another conversation. Lucy calls her a liar and fires her, and walks off with the Birkin. Samantha starts hissing "fuck!" a bunch of times under her breath. Oh, the comedy of it all! Except for the part where this whole storyline wasn’t funny in the least bit. Last week Samantha was yelling at men about being treated equally, and this week she's scheming for a pocketbook. Maybe there just shouldn’t be any storylines with Samantha in them anymore. Just let her eat and shop with the girls and dole out advice, and spare us the dumb subplots.
Meanwhile, Carrie is walking the streets in a white sundress, carrying a white lacy parasol, thinking about having a mint julep and meeting Rhett to go fox hunting before he leaves to fight in The War of Northern Aggression. She ends up in The Saloon, reminiscing about waiters and one-night stands and abortions. She sees that the waiter, Chad, is still working there; he comes over to take her order. Carrie asks him if he remembers her, and he doesn’t, and she tells him they spent a night at Tunnel together, but he claims that he never went to Tunnel. He takes her order, and as he is leaving, he asks if he ever tried anything with her. She tells him he didn’t, and when he walks off, she tells us that she made the right decision in 1988 and that she is in a totally different place now, and then she leaves.
Carrie is with Miranda in a waiting room, and she's filling out Miranda’s medical sheet and asking her the typical medical-sheet questions. Miranda asks her if it hurts, and Carrie tells her it's uncomfortable, and then Miranda asks how long it will take her to get over it and Carrie tells her it's different for each person. Miranda asks her when she got over it, and Carrie tells her, "Any day now." Miranda asks her if she's doing the right thing; Carrie asks her if she thinks she's doing the right thing, and it goes round and round and no one will say yes or no. Miranda then starts wondering if, when she's older, she'll be able to get pregnant if she wants to be, like Charlotte, and that her pregnancy "happened against all the odds," and she asks Carrie if "this is my baby." What about the emptiness Miranda feels since she lost her mother? What about acknowledging her own mortality and wanting to carry on a little piece of herself for the future? What about the writers remembering more than the lazy ovary, like a major life change that happened only a few weeks ago? Carrie asks Miranda if she wants to leave, and Miranda tells her that she can’t have a baby and that it was hard enough to schedule the abortion since she is so busy. The nurse calls Miranda’s name, and she goes in without bringing the medical sheet with her.
Later, Miranda is sitting on her couch; Samantha brings her a hot mug of something and tells her to "sip slowly" as she puts some more pillows behind Miranda’s back. There is a knock on the door and Carrie answers it, and it's Charlotte with a big bouquet of white flowers. Charlotte asks Miranda how she's feeling, and she tells her she feels freaked out, because she decided to keep the baby. Charlotte is shocked and starts crying with joy and says, "We’re having a baby?!" The girls all smile and giggle together, and Carrie tells us, "And with those four little words, three aunts were born." Ugh. While I think the term "cop-out" isn’t the right one, I really think that the writers really dropped the ball with this issue. If Miranda was having second thoughts, she should have been having them before she was sitting in the waiting room, minutes from getting the abortion. The producers of this show can’t stop talking about how groundbreaking the show is, yet they did the same thing any network show would do concerning abortion. If they decide to have Miranda miscarry, Sex and the City will sink to a whole new low and they will never be able to pull themselves out.
Carrie is rushing across a street again, telling us that she's late for dinner with CIM. She finds him at the restaurant, and he tells her that they wouldn’t seat him until she got there. When they go up to the hostess, she tells them that they let the table go, and there will be a wait. They decide to go to the bar and wait, but there's a waitlist even to sit at the bar, so they decide to sit outside and wait.
The two of them are sitting outside, drinking bottles of beer with paper bags wrapped around them. CIM asks her how her beer is, and she tells him, "It’s classy." Classier than Carrie and her freak outfits. She would probably look better wearing a paper sack herself most of the time. Carrie then confesses to CIM that she did have an abortion; she got pregnant because the condom broke. Then she confesses that she lied about the condom breaking, that there was no condom. He asks her why she's lying, and she tells him that she didn’t want CIM to think less of her because she was eighteen and had sex with a guy with no condom and got pregnant and got an abortion and didn’t tell the guy. Then she confesses that she was really twenty-two. CIM starts smacking her legs and throws her on the ground to roll around on her, because her pants are on fire. CIM then asks her if her name is really Carrie, and then tells her that he was no angel himself. She asks if he ever got a girl pregnant, and he tells her pointedly, "Not that I know of." Carrie thinks it must be great to be a guy sometimes, and he doesn’t respond. She asks if she is still his girl; he tells her she is, and they kiss. Their table is ready so they start to go inside, and she tells him that Miranda is keeping the baby, and not to tell Steve because it isn’t their business. Carrie then tells us, "They say life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. But sometimes in New York, life is what happens when you’re waiting for a table." Which, like so many things in this episode, makes no sense whatsoever.
week, the summer finale. Thank God we get a break from the madness!