Credits. Cha, cha-cha, cha-cha. Cha, cha-cha, cha-cha. Cha, cha-cha, cha-cha, cha-cha, whee, go xylophone! Splashy bus! Ohhh, the five-dollar tutu, she is ruined. Cha cha cha.
Carrie climbs up a long ladder, grimacing. She VOs that her "career had reached new heights -- literally," since an editor from New York magazine had assigned her a piece about the thrills of the flying trapeze. Pretty sweet piece for a freelancer. I wonder how far Carrie can drag the metaphor. From the ground, Stanford calls up to her, wondering if she really wouldn't rather be at Jeffrey, where they're having a sale. Carrie grabs the trapeze. Stanford calls, "You're the queen of the world!" She hollers back, "You're the queen of the world." Yuk yuk yuk. And no, that title is reserved for James Cameron. Or maybe Aaron "Don't Bogart That" Sorkin. The trapeze instructor tells Carrie to keep her head up, and not to look down. She takes her first swing, with a "wooo!" She's graceful but a little tense. Well, wouldn't you be? Then she swings her legs and screams. Stanford yells, "Swing out, sister!" Hee. Break ooout!
We're still trapezing. Carrie VOs that after just two hours doing that thing, she "was hooked." She screams, "Stanny, are you watching, I'm about to try a catch!" He says, "Maybe you should quit while you're a...live?" Hee! From the other swing, a buff trapeze dude instructs Carrie to "trust" him and "let go." Neither of which have ever been her strong suits. Is there an extreme or otherwise daring sport that allows one's neurotic tendencies to come into play? Carrie might excel in that. Is it curling? Nah, that's weird, but not extreeeme. If I could only think of some activity associated with a brightly-colored soda that would allow chickens and scaredy-cats to completely hang loose. Wait! Is it hitting a bucket of balls off Route 38 in Camden, NJ? That's kind of extreme. Anyway, Carrie just cannot trust and let go. She falls to the net below and bounces gently, alone, alone. Always alone. Never riding a bicycle with seven people, only riding alone.
Samantha is stuck, in a giraffe-y, Norma Kamali-esque printed dress. She wrangles with the zipper hilariously. Finally, Kim Cattrall gets to do some brilliant physical comedy outside of the realm of acrobatically shtupping some hunk. I missed it, but Gustave mentioned in the forums that Tracy Ullman was just on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. She did a full-on body spasm to illustrate "being rode really hard" (tm Gustave) as La Cattrall's range. Well, she was complaining that Kim doesn't have much to do, and I agree; this season she's been a bit underused. But now? This dress bit is hilarious. It's illustrating the frustrations of living alone and having no one to help you in and out of zippers. Which I will be experiencing soon enough. And, in yet another personal digression, I want to thank all of you that wrote in with kinds words re: my break-up. I never thought so many people (well, anyone) would care enough to send thoughtful email to me, but you did. It really touched me. In a good way. Thanks. Keckler even offered to send me cookies! I'll tell you how good they are in week's recap. And Sam, to get out of her stuck zipper, ends up calling Jerry. "Hey, Smith? Wanna come over and do me?" But what she needs is an "un-doing" -- get it? GET IT? Yeah.
Charlotte and Harry sit on a rock in Central Park, with concentrated smiles. It's so funny; Harry's cross-legged on a rock, in a suit. Char's in a white dress with a blue ribbon around her waist. She chides Harry to show less teeth, then to unfurrow his brow. Natural, natural smiles! She grabs his face and tells him that she reads the New York Times wedding section "religiously" and that she "know[s] what they're looking for." I would guess they look for clear copy, a nice photo, a bit of diversity, and timeliness. Or maybe it's all who you know. As she rants to Harry about her NYT wedding section obsession, his face warms and gradually lights into a beautiful smile. "Charlotte York, I cannot wait to marry you." Char screeches, "That's it! That's the look I want!" Harry says mock-complaining, "I was having a MOMENT," then impulsively kisses her. The photographer snaps a picture. Charlotte whines, "Nooo! No kissing pictures! They're tacky!"
Speaking of tacky, Debbie has bought little Brady a yellow t-shirt with a clown on it. Talk about a serial killer's wet dream. There are cute shirts for kids, but usually they include sailboats or trains of bears. Clowns are creepy, except in a circus context. I'm not afraid of clowns, generally speaking, but I have an issue when someone dresses an infant in creepy clown clothes. Like, do they also collect John Wayne Gacy paintings? Would they let a child watch Shakes the Clown? 'Cause that isn't cool. Steve thinks it's cute, and says Debbie bought it over at the 6th Avenue flea market. Debbie also bought a present for Miranda: an aromatherapy candle. Steve also wants to set up a time for Debbie and Miranda to meet. Mir says she doesn't need to meet Debbie. Really. She trusts Steve.
Cut to lunch with the girls. Mir is furious about the gift of a smelly candle. "It was an aromatherapy candle, for serenity and calm. I was a lot more calm before the fucking candle." Hey, at least it wasn't that goddamn loganberry they're always trying to pass off at the Yankee Candle Company. What the hell is a loganberry, anyway? Sam intones that "women with candles have replaced women with cats as the new sad thing." I'm sure she means "in excess of three cats and ten candles per room." I did know one woman with a lot of candles. She said it was her "ritual" to get home from work and light them all. I don't know if she ever, say, used one to light a bong with, but she probably could have. Make that "should have." Carrie thinks it's totally unnecessary to make nice with Debbie, but Char says that there is "a child involved." Mir says that Debbie is using Brady to get to her, and she's "not falling for it!" Carrie picks up the cue and starts talking about her trapeze experience. She loved it, but when it came time to let go and be caught, she froze. Sam says she's "insane for getting into a harness without even a hope of getting laid." Ah, Sam. Don't you ever get tired of being like that?
Then, Harry and his best man Howie Halberstram from Portland come up to the table. Harry says they aren't "crashing." He just brought the proofs from the photo shoot, and the seating arrangement, and then he's off to drop off the invitations at the calligrapher. Howie cracks, "And then we're going around the corner to look for our balls." The girls crack up. Harry introduces all the girls, then says to Carrie, "Nice guy, I see you two happening." Carrie is all, "Oh. Oh!" Yeah, no pressure or anything. Carrie says she's busy after lunch, with her "flying trapeze thing," and takes his business card. He departs, and Mir asks what's wrong with Carrie, since he was cute and funny. Carrie says he's only in town for a week, and with an "expiration date" on it, she can't. "It's expiration dating." Sam says, "it's fun, it's a fling...it's just sex!" Carrie says she's "too old for a fling." She can barely "do a swing." And she's off to write about how she "couldn't do a catch." Char screeches, "He is a catch!" Sam says, "You should do him." I guess she never does get tired of being like that.
Carrie sits and types in her apartment. She says she's grown up and learned to be cautious, and "in life, there's no safety net. When did it stop being fun and start being scary?" She closes her laptop resolutely.
And we're back at the trapeze. She sails through the air, screeching all the way. The guy on the other swing says, "Let go and reach for me!" But she can't. Again. She just can't.
Anthony is on the phone, screaming at the person on the other end that they want lilies, NOW, and the theme is "Yentl chic." Gawd. Charlotte calls out, "Don't forget the candles!" Anthony is on a tear. "You're worse than me! You think this is the first wedding I've ever planned? We want candles, candles, candles, and not those stubby little broken-off DICK candles either! We want loooong tapers." Char emerges in her dress. She's a vision. Anthony says, "You're Audrey Hepburn. Owitz." Char giggles and tiptoes toward him, grabbing his hands in hers. She's so excited! Everything in the wedding is going to be done according to tradition -- the breaking of the glass, the hora...Anthony admonishes Char to "hold on for dear life and for fuck's sake, keep [her] knees together. Nobody needs to see the bride's beaver." Char says, "Don't talk like that in front of my dress!" Just then, the fact checker from the New York Times calls. Char is ecstatic. Anthony listens, and then screams, "FAX IT OVAH!" They do a wild hora dance, and then Harry walks in. Char. Freaks. Out. "Oh no! You can't see me in my dress before the wedding! It's bad luck! Keep your eyes closed! Keep them closed! Oh nooo, this is soo baaaaaad!" Harry asks Anthony if all brides are that bad. No. Some are worse. Anthony once had a bride give herself a stroke. "She pulled herself together for the big day, though." How incredibly charming, in that total nightmare sort of way.
Sam fiddles with her beautiful pearl bracelet, absent-mindedly listening to Jerry say that he's going to miss her when he's down in Mexico shooting with Gus Van Sant. He fastens the clasp for her. She, still playing it cool, says he shouldn't do anything she wouldn't do. Ahem. He's onto her. "Karaoke," she says. She doesn't do that, at least.
Miranda has a lovely singing voice. As Brady swings in his swingy-chair, she sings, "He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze." Then she hears Steve and a woman's voice out in the hall. She panics, leaps to her feet, and tells Magda that she isn't home. Get it? She's. Not. Home. Then she rushes into her room to hide. Magda says firmly, "She is not. Home." Debbie says that's too bad, and nice to meet you! Magda says, "She is not. Home." Steve says he has to go grab Mister Elephant, since he forgot it last time. A stricken look crosses Mir's face.
So she hides. She hides under her own bed to avoid meeting the woman that took Steve away from her. Well, that would be true if Miranda weren't too chicken to tell Steve how she really feels. This Debbie person doesn't seem totally insincere, just creepy and intrusive. It's enough reason to hate her for doing the pop-in. I hate an unexpected knock on the door. Call first; it's not so hard. There's a horrible moment when Brady drops his binky and it lands under the bed, right by Miranda, who's clutching her cat. She lobs the binky back out, and Debbie bends over to grab it without bending her knees, so Miranda remains undiscovered. Debbie has on what look like knockoff Candie's, and long fake nails. Urgh. And she sounds distinctly Queensian. Or maybe she's from Jersey. Either way, she's got some kind of regional accent going on that's not as pronounced nor as charming as Steve's. Elmer Fudd is charming, right? Anyway, the sickening couple are off to Blockbuster, though Steve chides her that he gets to pick this time. Mir crawls out from under the bed and tells a silent Magda that there are a lot of dust bunnies under there.
On to Charlotte's "casual" rehearsal dinner. People are really dressed up. Carrie's expiration date waiting to happen, Howie, is there, and Mir and Sam urge Carrie to go for it. Carrie says there's no casual sex anymore. "Nothing is casual, even when it says so on the invitation." Good point. But in the spirit of "getting in the swing of things," she goes for it. So they talk and flirt and make cute, and Carrie loosens the neck of her dress and VOs, "How bad could it be?"
Cut to the sex. The very bad sex. Pounding, super-fast, head-banging-against-the-headboard, unsexy sex. Carrie just rattles underneath him and puts up with it. She VOs that she and Howie "had sex like we were teenagers again. Meaning, he had no idea what he was doing, and I didn't say anything." Okay, I've been there, but not in the last few years. I don't understand how you can fuck someone and not be able to tell them what to do or not do. Life is too short to have bad sex. She could even have hollered "STOP" and she would have been better off than having to suffer through that frantic act. Now, of course, I can't feel sympathetic to her because she didn't speak up. Sigh.
Sam's home alone. Now, she can't unfasten her bracelet. She listens to a phone message from Jerry down in Mexico. "Miss me yet?" Yeah. She also misses the fact that you could help unfasten the clasp on her bracelet.
The New York Times falls with a satisfying thud on Charlotte's doorstep. She leaps up in bed and calls, "It's here! It's here!" Once she cracks open the Styles section, though, she's not so happy. It looks like she has a little mustache. "I look like Hitler! I'm having a Jewish wedding, and I look like Hitler!" Harry says it's an ink stain, and maybe it's just their paper. Char calls Carrie in a panic. Carrie's lying flat on her back, and she VOs that her "fling turned into a pain in the neck." Good god, is more than her flower sore? I'd look askance at the trapeze instead of at Howie. I hope I never have sex so bad that I have to lie flat the morning. I think Carrie should take up yoga. Anyway, Carrie rogers the Hitler-esque smudge and says unhelpfully, "Maybe it's just my paper? And your paper." Um, it isn't just two papers. It's all of them.
Wedding time! Carrie is bent double as she exits the car, still suffering her sex sprain. She tells Stanford that the official story is that she's sore from trapezing, but it was the best man that done her in. Oh my, what is Carrie wearing? A purple dirndl thing, with her hair in pale blonde braids wrapped around dark brown roots. Very unfortunate-looking. I'm flashing back to Madonna's "Bedtime Stories" era; remember the over-tweezed brows and gold tooth? Remember that pic of her in the Heidi dress with the crook? Carrie looks a little bit better than that. At least she isn't holding a crook.
Here comes the uncomfortable part: Howie the best man approaches Carrie, tells her she "looks HOT," then tells her he's got a hotel room with a huge tub and king-size bed, and they can have breakfast together in the morning if they aren't "doing other things." Yeah. Carrie says, "We'll see." He freezes, and says he knows that "'we'll see' means 'see ya.'" Carrie clumsily explains that she thought that since he was only in town for a week, that last night was just supposed to be...fun? "A one-night sort of thing?" Oh, Carrie, you ignorant slut. Can you never be blunt? Just say the sex sucked and you never want to see him again in order to reduce the chances of having such awful sex again. Jesus. Isn't there a chapter in Our Bodies, Ourselves about communicating with your partner? Bookmark it. Read it later. And never have such unsatisfying sex again, Ms. Sex Columnist. Anyway. Carrie lets the guy down dishonestly and not so gently, and then he gets upset. "If I had known you were just using me, I wouldn't have made LOVE to you like that!" Carrie squinches up her face like, whaaa?
And now, the wedding ceremony. Everyone kvells. I'm kvelling too. As the rabbi goes on about what a gift and responsibility it is to marry someone, Carrie smiles at Char and Harry. Then she locks eyes with Howie, who mouths matter-of-factly, "Fuck you." Ooh! Shocking. At a wedding, during the ceremony, no less.
Harry and Char give each other sips of wine from a chalice. Some spills on Char's beautiful dress, right over her breast, and she bugs out. Harry just smiles.
Harry slips the ring on Char's finger, and Sam yanks at her pearl bracelet (from last night's party) in frustration, breaking it. Millions of tiny pearls go everywhere. Mir, Sam, and Carrie bend over to scoop them all up, a Sisyphean task if ever there were one, and Carrie's face contorts into a grimace. "Ow! Back spasm," she explains. Harry and his groomsmen bend over to pick up pearls, too. Harry's yarmulke falls right off his head with a plop.
up, Harry can't break the glass. He stomps ineffectually. Char rolls her eyes. Everyone has worried faces. There are still tiny pearls on the floor. Finally he breaks it, and everyone applauds. He and Char step off the dais, and (of course) Char slips on a pearl and almost wipes out. The gasp in the synagogue is deafening. But Harry rights her, and everyone applauds again. Mazel tov!
In the bathroom, Char paws at her stained dress and cries. "It was the worst wedding in history!" No! Just a comedy of errors. Jewish law went the way of Murphy's Law -- you know, anything that can go wrong, will. Carrie says, "You're missing your wedding! You have a special man who will catch you when you fall! I'd love to find a man strong enough to catch me." Oh my fucking god -- EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ABOUT CARRIE. Shut up, shut up, shut up, Carrie. Shut up forever. Last season, last season, last season. Hooray.
During the reception, Samantha pines for her scattered bracelet, and then Howie drunkenly stands up to make his toast. I like mine light, and buttery. But seriously. He congratulates the couple for finding love amidst "all the bullshit!" He focuses on Carrie. "It's tough out there. People leave you hanging. People are a bitch...love means never having to say, I used you for sex! Mazel tov!" Carrie VOs that "it was a mazel tov cocktail." Oy. But apt. Char says the worse the wedding, the better the marriage. Harry says that maybe Howie's toast just got them to their silver anniversary. Then Miranda steps up and makes a nice speech about how happy she is for Charlotte for having the courage for going for what she wants, when "some people don't even have the courage to say the words." Then the paper her toast is written on catches on fire, from a nearby long, tapered candle. She screams. Anthony tosses a glass of wine on it, and her. Char says, "Maybe Miranda just got us to our gold." The newlyweds kiss. Everyone applauds. Oh, I'm misty! It's such a disaster, and so sweet.
Hora time! Howie dances like a monkey on string. Stanford calls his antics "acrobatic," and Carrie calls him a "jerk de soleil." Word. Char and Harry bob around on chairs, happy and finally relaxed.
Bouquet tossing time! Wow, does Char really have a bouquet of nothing but babies breath? How very odd. Those are filler flowers! Maybe they're lilies of the valley or something. Mir and Carrie hide in a doorway. Mir is embarrassed that her toast got so...toasty. Carrie says she was "fabulous." Mir says, "I think you mean flammable." Char aims and flings, and the bouquet bounces right off Mir's pretty head. The crowd gasp is, again, remarkable. Go, sound editors, go!
And Carrie finally finds the guts to let go of the trapeze and attempt a catch. For whatever reason, it's to the tune of some Avril Lavigne-esque (or maybe E.G. Daily?) up-tempo song about just breathing. Carrie misses, but she tried, and when she falls to the net, her friends are there to cheer for her and bolster her up again. Dammit, the screen got all blurry again. Stupid tears.