Oh hooray, HBO "won more Golden Globes than any other network." I'll go get my party hat.
Splashy bus, cha cha cha!
We pan by the hole in Carrie's bedroom wall and some empty shelves before landing on Carrie, toiling at her toilet in jeans and pigtails, plunger in her hand. It keeps flushing on its own, "for no reason." Aidan takes a box and slings a duffel bag over his shoulder, announcing, "That's the last of it." Carrie looks all wan and says in a tiny voice, "Okay." Yeah, now get sad. You can't commit, then boo-hoo when he leaves? Wishy. Washy. He offers to fix her crapper. She's all, that's okay. Oh my Lord, just let him fix the thing. He dives in, and asks her to "hold the ballcock." She goes, "Huh?" Then takes hold of the mechanism IN THE TOILET that he was talking about, gutterminds. It's fixed. He makes to leave, and she says, "Our last words to each other can't be 'ballcock.'" He laughs one sad laugh. She asks him to stay for "another day, or at least forever." What? Come ON now. Aidan says he "can't." Good -- now say goodbye and vamoose, you. Back to Alaska, go on now! She says she "left the ring on the clown table." He says it's hers. She says she should "never have accepted it in the first place." Word infinity. They go back and forth for a bit. I'd have to say, since he called it off, she could keep the ring if she wanted. And fighting about it seems pretty small of her, like seeing it would make her feel badly -- but how would seeing it make him feel? Great? Is he supposed to go out and cruise bars with it in his pocket to whip out and make ladies go "ooh!"? Didn't think so. Carrie gets all verklempt in her rubber gloves, threatening, "If you do or say one more nice thing..." she trails off, allowing me to finish her sentence in a myriad of ways. What will Carrie do? Break his heart some more? Not marry him again? Whack him with the plunger? She'll freak the hell out? She'll GO OFF? It is AAWWN? She fusses around and says she can't watch him leave, so she'll just stay in the loo. And so she does, for three hours. And in the envelope Aidan left for her is not "the goodbye letter," as she thought, but a note from his lawyers. Woo hoo! I mean, "awww."
Over a meal with the ladies, Miranda peruses the letter, saying that Carrie isn't being evicted, but has thirty days to decide if she's going to move out or buy the apartment back from Aidan. Samantha, wearing the butt-ugliest gold pendant of a mudflap girl, pronounces Aidan's tactic "tacky." No, hon, that necklace is tacky. Aidan is forcing Carrie to be a grown-up, for once in her life. It's not nice, but he bought the two apartments for their life together. Now that they don't have a life together, well? Mir tosses out expositionally that "life gets complicated," and that she and Steve are "drawing up papers to time-share [their] kid!" Oh, my. Doesn't that seem rather '90s? Or maybe it's too Tom-and-Nicole for my taste. If I ever produce offspring, there has to be someone with me to help raise it. That, or I'm adopting an eight-year-old, so it's, like, already halfway raised. Then when the kid ever gets lippy, I can be like, "Hey! No one else WANTED you! I RESCUED your ungrateful ass! You had better remember what side of your bread has Nutella on it and smarten UP!" Carrie starts whining and creasing her forehead, and Mir calls Aidan's decision "more than fair." Carrie is all, "I'm homeless! I'll be a bag lady! A Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady." Oy, with the melodramatics. Charlotte is all, why not buy your place? Carrie goes, "I'm not a buyer, New York is a city of renters." That is so stupid. Every other woman at the table is all, I don't rent. Carrie cocks her giant marsupial head at Char and is all, you didn't BUY your place, you got it in a settlement. Char gets head-swivel-y right back and says, "Ohh, I PAID for that apartment." Yeah, she did. In a sense. Miranda farts. Everyone is all, eww. Sam asks that she control her ass action because farting (at the table, and in general) is "unappetizing." Mir says she's "so swollen and gassy!" Hee. Sam whips out her new Chanel wallet, and Carrie plotzes. It was a gift from Richard, says Sam. Char gushes, "He's so totally in love with you!" Sam says he's not, and produces the note that came with the gift as evidence. "Style for style, best, Richard." Ooh, "best." I prefer "yours," if not "love." Mir says, "'Best' is the worst." Hee. Sam says, "'Best' is like signing 'not love'!" Carrie, in her "back to ME now" style, blurts out that Aidan wanted her to keep the ring, but she didn't. Sam calls her "a fool." Did Char ever think about giving her ring back? Char says, "Nooooo!" Carrie said if she had kept it, it would have broken her heart each time she looked at it. Wow, a selfish reason to give a thing back, even! Bradshaw, you've outdone yourself.
Kaboom -- Charlotte is at a jewelry store, facing an upbeat saleswoman. She's getting her 2.17-carat ring (from Tiffany's, don't you know) appraised and seeing what it can be turned into. The saleswoman gushes that a floating diamond necklace would be "to die." Or maybe a pendant? Or earrings? Char draws back a bit and asks if this turning an engagement ring into some other piece of jewelry thing is often done. The saleswoman points to her earrings, which used to be her baguettes, until her husband turned out to be a "fag-uette. He had good taste, though." Sigh. Char grabs her ring and runs for the door, not ready to give up the rock.
Carrie sits in her bank, trying to get a loan, in a hiddy black plastic-bead necklace and a bright, cute tulip sundress. Her bank officer is all, let's look at your assets! Oh, you have none. Plus, Carrie has no income other than her column. Okay, I write some stuff for newspapers, and a weekly column written from home would have to pay her at least $5000 a month for her to live the way she does. And newspapers don't play that. I mean, "pay that." Especially the weekly variety, which is what she's supposed to be writing for. But whatever, right? In checking, Car's got $700, and in savings just $957. Not a lot! She tries to appeal to the bank lady, telling the sad story about breaking up with her fiancé and having only 25 days to buy or fly. The bank woman is all, yeah. That's real sad. But we don't give out money for sad stories. Or, Carrie isn't "a desirable candidate for a loan." ! Oh, the end, she is nigh.
So, Carrie realizes she has to make some "lifestyle changes." Please say fashion accessories are topping the list. Oh, she means taking the bus instead of cabs. She asks a woman how much the bus is, then pops her monocle at the news that the fare is a buck fifty. Don't ever move to Philly, dear, it's TWO FREAKING DOLLARS to ride. Cheaper if you buy tokens, but don't take on too much at once. Carrie blabbers to the woman, who probably couldn't care less, that the last time she rode the bus it was seventy-five cents! "Did you know for three more bucks, you could take a cab?" The look the woman gives her is, Cabs are that way, freakazoid. The bus rolls up, and there's the goddamn ad on the side for Carrie's column. The woman turns to Carrie and is all, "If you're ON the bus, how come you have to TAKE the bus?" Hee.
Carrie types on about how she's thirty-five with no financial security (didn't she see the inevitable coming?), but with "many life experiences behind" her, and she should "get credit for enduring them." Oh, give me strength. In VO, she really hits "life experiences," in a desperate attempt to make Carrie seem sympathetic, like broken hearts are some kind of accomplishment. And, um, career? No small potatoes. God, is her brain really located south of her belt buckle? Think, damn you! The toilet ghost-flushes, and Carrie looks in the direction of the toilet furtively. Another problem! Which you will NOT get credit for fixing. So Carrie says she's loaded up with "war wounds and self-doubt," boo hoo, and asks the Question of the Week about failed relationships and blah blah blah: "What's it all worth?" In dollar value? Not a damn thing. Oh, but her trials have fed the column. In that case, a little something.
Char's on the phone, in a great flowered sundress, buttering up gallery owners who have already received her résumé. Not that she needs to work; she just wants to. A piano tinkles "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" as Charlotte opens a desk drawer, puts on her engagement ring, and wanders around her "2.17-carat Park Avenue apartment." Ah, the rich, they get sad too. They do! Don't ask me how I know.
Richard flips on the light in his bedroom, and Sam sees another gift waiting for her on the bed from Le Petit Coquette. She pronounces it "cock-ette," hee. She rips open the box, and he tells her to read the card first. She grits her teeth and obeys. "'Sexy for sexy, best, Richard.'" He tells her to run a bath while he pours some Cristal, and she says she'll "try her very BEST."
Carrie and Miranda are shoe shopping. Carrie sniffs a red patent leather pump fetishistically and whines that "this is torture" and she shouldn't be doing this. Mir says she's looking for comfortable shoes, and to shut up, Carrie. Carrie asks a salesman to fetch her some pairs to try on, but under no circumstances is he to let her buy any. She's just trying them on "for fun." The salesman is all, "How fun for me." Heh. Carrie is wearing a white, vintage-looking sun dress with big white granny panties underneath. Then Carrie's all, what's that smell? It's your outfit, dear. It stinks. No, Miranda farted. Carrie covers her nose with the crook of her arm and dashes away. Mir says she's "learned to control the sound," or maybe it's that her "ass is so fat it's muffled the noise." Oh, boy. Mir says she's swollen, gassy, and has never been hornier. "That's why you're supposed to be married when you're pregnant, so somebody is obligated to have sex with you." Hey, why doesn't the Moral Majority or Dan Quayle use that little nugget as a selling point to all the unwed mothers they're cheesed off at? Mir says she's "undesirable," and Carrie is all, no, I AM, recalls the bank lady's comment, and wonders where all the money she made went. Mir says, well, how many pairs of shoes do you have? A hundred, at $400 a pop? "There's your down payment." Carrie is all, that's just four grand. Um, no -- actually, it's FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Carrie gasps dramatically at this Grand Realization that she's Frittered Away All Of Her Money, and says she will be "the little old woman who lived in her shoes!" Mir pulls on her swollen finger and farts again.
Carrie's looking at apartments. Smaller apartments than hers, with less desirable closet space. She hollers at the agent, "How can this place be $2,800 a month! I live in a place that's twice as big and I only pay $750, and it don't [sic] smell like take-out!" Hello, welcome to New York? Plus, you don't even have first and last month's rent! Oh, whatever infinity. The agent is all, "You have a rent-controlled apartment? Stay there." Car asks "what other shitholes" they'll be looking at. The agent says Carrie's "attitude and price limitations" mean she should really "look at Weehawken." Hee. Since Couplehocken, Marriageville, and Handholdington weren't to Carrie's liking, it's Weehawken and Singlebedstadt from now on. And Carrie? Grow up.
Not just yet. In a white suit, gloves, and a vintage purse, she swishes into Big's office. She busts on the size of his office and the lack of blondes in the typing pool, then sits down and tells her Sad Story: she and the fiancé broke up, she needs to buy her apartment, she has no money and is "worth nothing." And she's "not the marrying kind." And she "needs money," and "needs to know what he knows about money." He says he can tell her how to get the money.
Carrie gets the money via a check from Big. Thirty grand, just like that. She whips it out of her bra over dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her friends and holds it in front of their faces. Well, let me see: if her bank wouldn't give her a loan, how is she supposed to get a mortgage? She just shows up with a huge check and says, oh, an ex gave it to me. He's loaded. I can pay the mortgage off, swear! What's that? It's only television? I see. So, Mir is all, don't take the money, because then Big will "have power" over Carrie. Sam is all, "It's only money! Take it!" Char says this conversation is making her uncomfortable. "We shouldn't be talking about money." Mir asks why not, since they talk about "everything else." Mir offers Carrie fifteen grand, and Sam says she can pony up the other half. Carrie looks just like SJP when she accepted her Golden Globe, with her hand on her chest and a demure head bob, calling Mir and Sam's generosity "really, really sweet." Oh, my golly! Char slurps on her beverage and looks away. Carrie shoots Charlotte a look, then reiterates that it's "really, really sweet" of them, but she'll do it on her own. She tears up Big's check right there. Char finally speaks up and says she has news! She got a job as a docent at MOMA. Carrie is all, what does it pay? Because she "can docent." Oh, that's annoying. Char says it's a volunteer position, but "very coveted." The cookies and orange slices arrive, and Carrie cracks hers open to find it has no fortune inside. Carrie says she "didn't need a cookie to tell [her] that." Broken record.
The ladies stroll in Chinatown, fanning themselves with those cute paper fans. Carrie keeps singing her poormouth song, saying the fans only cost a buck and that she'll save a lot on air conditioning. Then she stops. She's sad. "No apartment and no Aidan. It's been a rough two weeks." Oh, BOO HOO! She stops again as the others look worried, then says, "Gimme a block, I'm gonna be fine."
More of Carrie's alone-time in the apartment, with still more VO. She'll miss her apartment. Then, she gets "irrationally angry," and knows just who to "take the anger irrationally out on."
Ding dong! It's Charlotte that's going to get the brunt. Carrie stomps into Char's apartment and starts hollering. Why didn't Char offer Carrie the money? Carrie wouldn't have accepted! And Carrie would have offered the cash to Char! Char says money and friends don't mix. The rich have issues of their own, dear. Carrie says that she realizes she has money issues to work out (I'd say the problem was a failure to save, and having no goals other than meeting the fashions of the season head-on), and that she'll be getting $4 a word to do some freelance pieces for Vogue magazine (which is a ton of money for freelancing, believe me). Carrie yells some more that it "kills" her that Char is volunteering when she doesn't even have to work, and that when Charlotte was having problems, Carrie was nodding and listening and supporting her, not slurping a drink and looking away like at the Chinese restaurant. Char takes a deep breath and says she loves Carrie, but it's not her duty to fix Carrie's finances. "You're a 35-year-old woman! You need to learn to stand on your own!" Carrie sees the huge diamond gleaming on Char's finger, and calls her on wearing it. Char covers it with her hand and says she only wears it when she's alone. And the reason she's volunteering is that no one will hire her! Okay, Miss Carrie-Pants! Carrie says she's sorry, even though she doesn't sound sorry, and that she "got worked up on the walk over." Char is all, "You walked?" No, she didn't. Because the shoes Carrie loves so much "pinch." Carrie stalks out and slams the door behind her.
Samantha strolls out of Richard's bathroom, naked as a kitten, and she sees a man sitting on the bed. She screams, he yells that he's gay, she asks that he turn away as she arrange her towel. The guy is one of Richard's assistants, of the personal shopping variety. He's picked out all of Sam's gifts for Richard (but tells her that he's buying for fewer women now that Sam's on the scene). Sam asks if he writes the cards too; then her wheels start turning and she asks him to do her a favor.
Nighttime. Sam opens her gift (a beautiful bracelet), then tears into the card, which is signed, "Love, Richard." Love! He says, reluctantly, "I love you, Samantha. I do." She's all, "You do? I love...this." She holds up her wrist, indicating the bracelet, then kisses him fiercely and throws him on the bed, to "do what she does 'best.'"
Miranda and Steve are looking over the papers that lay out the schedule for sharing the kid. She's got it figured down to the hour. Steve says he thinks kids are a little different from trains, and may require a little flexibility in their scheduling. Heh. He then offers to rub Miranda's feet for her. She agrees, but asks that he not give her any lip, since she could "fart [him] into oblivion." Then she says she's horny as hell. He says he'll have sex with her, but isn't sure if it's allowed in the contract. "Fuck the contract," says Mir, "and please fuck me." Woo! They go at it, Mir calling it "a mercy fuck" and stressing that they "aren't a couple."
Charlotte and Carrie have forgiveness lunch. They apologize, and Charlotte notes that both of them are on their own again. Then Char puts a little black box on the table and says she wants Carrie to have her ring for the down payment on the apartment. She wonders why she has "all this money," if not to help out a friend? Carrie protests, for a bit, then gives in, insisting that she'll pay Char back in time, and then she opens the box. The ring gleams. Char asks, "Will [Carrie] take this ring?" Carrie says, "I will." They hold hands and smile at each other. Okay, if Carrie had kept Aidan's ring? She could have done this FOR HERSELF. But nooo. It has to be someone rescuing her, again. ["I don't think she'd have gotten a tenth of what she'd get with Charlotte's, but still." -- Sars] Their food arrives, Char says she starts at the museum week, and Carrie says she got Vogue up to four dollars and fifty cents a word. Ooh! If you cared.
Carrie signs some paperwork, and says thanks to the handyman who's fixed her toilet and will fix the wall later. The VO says she's home. It doesn't thank her rich friend for bailing her out, but it should.