The Ick Factor

Cha cha! Splashy bus.

We pan across a New York City sidewalk cafe, uptown-stylee. Pete's, it's called. Carrie VOs that New Yorkers "treat every beautiful fall day as if it were their last." Because the weather on September 11th was really very beautiful. Blue sky, balmy weather. One of those gorgeous days.

Miranda and Steve are drinking in the afternoon. Love it. They're at the bottom of their mugs of beer, in jolly moods. A bickering old couple walks by them, and they stare. Steve is all, "That'll be us in thirty years!" Mir asks Steve to remind her not to end up like that. Then she asks, "Anything else you don't want?" Yeah. Steve doesn't want to pay for the beers. Or slack off, like he used to. Miranda doesn't "want to be so moody. This is fun!" Hee. Optimistic drunken planning is fun. It's way better than drunken fighting. Steve says the most important one for him is that he doesn't want to lose her again. She agrees, not wanting to lose him again. They beam at each other radiantly, like in an UltraBrite or Newport ad. Then, she drops the bomb: Will Steve marry her? I think I heard screams. She's really over the moon for this guy! She's really serious! Cynical, hard-bitten Miranda! PROPOSED! She is so fucking modern and unapologetic, I love it. Steve laughs, then gets all tender on her. "Are you sewious?" She is. He accepts. "HELL yes!" Oh my god!

Aleksandr's apartment. He's tinkling on a piano. I mean, pee-yanny. Tinkling on a pee-yanny. Carrie, in a god-awful sweater coat (sing to the tune of "Lollipop," "Sweater coat, sweater coat, oh sweater sweater coat! Sweater coat! Barf. Ba dum dum dum...."), likes what he's playing. She goes over, forgets her drink, goes back and gets it, then joins him on the pee-yanny bench. It's a little ditty. A tune-sicle. He wrote it for her. She's all, really? Yeah. He calls it, en francais, "The Girl With the Luminous, Shining, Sparkling Eyes." Carrie kvells. Then he feeds her a cherry with whipped cream on it. A leetle dab of cream stays on her upper lip, and he kisses if off for her. Holy field of buttercups, where's Fabio? I think I hear a bodice ripping.

Over breakfast, Carrie recalls the misty, Jackie Collins-flavored evening. Miranda says she's never heard anything so cheesy, and "Ick!" Seriously. I too hate those barf-worthy early months of a relationship, when the bloom is fully on the rose and you end up being mushier than some overcooked Velveeta Shells and Cheese. It makes your friends hate you. Carrie admits she's too embarrassed to even look at her friends right now, but she will tell them one more disgusting detail. About the little jingle Aleksandr wrote on the pee-yanny. And the title. Char gushes that it sounds "very Old World, very eighteenth-century Russia" to her. Carrie says that she lives in New York City, circa now. Don't worry, in like a minute this show will seem as dated as eighteenth-century Russia. It always does. This show ages faster than microwave popcorn. It's tasty when you first open it up, but in a few hours, Styrofoam city. That's okay, flowers don't live forever either. It's all about moments and transition. Fuck permanence.

Carrie continues that she thinks it's romantic when someone offers her a seat on the subway, and Mir concurs. Char says, "We are just starved for romance, and that is the sad truth." Samantha says she's not starved for romance, because Smith has been in L.A. all week and he calls every night. Carrie says, "Phone sex doesn't count." But Sam's had a glass of wine as they do it! Sigh. Carrie reveals Alek's song title, prefacing it as "the ick heard 'round the world." Sam asks, "What's French for ick?" Mir says, "Eecque." Carrie said she floated up out of her body as he was playing the song for her. Char says Alek was just "expressing emotion in an old-fashioned way." Yeah, and for a follow-up, he made ice cream with snow and real maple syrup. Boy, was that ever delicious. Then they sat around and read the bible and knitted shoe cozies until the whale-fat-burning lamp burned out. Mir says she loathes all that phony sentimental crap, which is why she proposed to Steve over three-dollar beers. Everyone looks at Mir like she just grew a second head. She...what? Proposed...marriage? Mir slams down her fork and knife and says it's not a big deal, she's not "engaged," and she's not doing the whole big white-poofy-dress circus thing. "I hate all that shit." Char says, "Every bride has to find their own style." Mir doesn't want a big thing, she only wants to be with Steve. Char bubbles over with emotion, which blackens Mir's mood like a bubbled-over lasagna burns the bottom of the oven. "Oh, Miranda!" Mir snaps that this is exactly what she didn't want. No tears! Carrie sobs that she can't believe it. Sam's misty too. Mir gets up and throws a crumpled bill on the table. She has only one thing to say: "Samantha, I expected more from you."

Charlotte and Harry emerge from the Tasti-Delight (she's got butter pecan, in a cup, with chocolate topping). She's recalling the ickful details of Carrie's romantic evening with Aleksandr. "It's like something out of a Victorian novel!" Harry is not impressed. Oh, he can do better? "It's not just for foo-foo foreigners." He offers to wine and dine her, baby. Give him another taste of that Tasti-Delight. Woo hoo! Date night.

Steve and Miranda round the corner, lugging massive Duane Reed bags. Carrie VOs, "And from licking to lugging." Oh. My. Fucking. GOD. How much do I hate Carrie's voice-overs? There are no words. It stops me dead in my recapping tracks. Ugh. I'll try to resume. Mir, Steve, walking with bags. She's ranting about how she wants their wedding to "feel like us," not like "all those cookie-cutter weddings" she's been to in her life. That's fair. I'm sure all the characters that invited Mir to their "cookie-cutter weddings" were aiming for the most generic, undistinctive events ever. Who wants that day to be special, anyway? Steve suggests a boat ride around Manhattan. Mir scoffs. Her Duane Reed bag breaks, and she curses, "Shit! This is SO us! We should get married right here in this mess." Steve's shoe is stuck to a huge wad of red chewing gum. He finds this comical. Mir, picking up boxes of over-the-counter meds, looks to her right and sees a little sign that reads, "This Is A Community Garden Project." Hey. Heeeyyy. She doesn't hate it! We have a wedding site!

Carrie, Sam, and Charlotte shop for a gift for Miranda, the anti-bride. Carrie has some weird pink snug-ugly scarf thing on her head. It looks like a stuffed animal carcass. Char finds a sweet white heart-shaped dish. Carrie says, "Too bride-y." Sam suggests, "Let's try not to piss her off." Char gets a little hysterical and says, "Well, why don't we buy her a stapler and wrap it in brown paper, and smear dog poop on it!" Or you could get that paper that's made from elephant dung. It smells less. Hey, what's brown and sounds like a bell? Dung. I'm sorry.

Sam takes a few steps toward the center of the store and says she has an announcement. One that her friends may not like. Carrie growls that if Samantha gets married too and leaves her all alone, she'll kill her. No, it's not that. Sam says she's always liked her body. "I have fantastic legs, killer abs. My ass is perfection!" Mm-hmm. But. She's "always wanted bigger boobs." Sidebar: I'm recapping right now with my roomie, The Little Girl, parked on the couch. I pause the TiVo just as Sam says she wants bigger boo...and the screen shot of Kim Cattrall forever in moue cracks The Little Girl up. Of course, she's also flying on Vicodin she scored (legally) after getting a kidney stone, but there you go. Bigger boooo...infinity. Bigger booo...merangs. I mean, "-oobs." Boobs. Char and Carrie are surprised. Sam had a "reality call, in the form of paparazzi shots in In Touch magazine." There's five days worth of candid snaps of Sam and Smith Jerrod, and in all of them, Sam's boobs look "teeny-tiny." Carrie snipes at Sam for going to Planet Hollywood. Oh, for fuck's sake. It was probably for an event, you troll. Char says, "You are a confident, intelligent woman. Why would you want to look like a bimbo?" Word. Smaller breasts look better in clothes, and are classier all around. The bigger-boobed of the world have to overcome the stereotype that we're dumber. Life, she is so unfair. The boobless want boobs, and the boobed ones just want to be treated with a little respect. Or we want bigger tips. Either way. Sam says she wants boobs like Carrie's. This point is lost on me, because for a visual, we have Carrie in a denim jacket with that horrid pink panther scarf wrapped around herself. Meaning, we can't see her boobs. Char protests. What about her boobs? Sam makes a grab for them, and Char squeals, "Okay, get hers!" Carrie nods, satisfied. It's a very Donna Martin moment. Though Donna would have probably let Sam grab her boobs.

Aleksandr's love nest. He and Carrie are snuggled on a leather couch, with a roaring fire roaring away like the MGM lion. Aleksandr is all, hey, check out this poem. He begins reading to her in a flat voice with no modulation. It puts me to sleep. I try to pick out some words, and get "snowflakes," "eyes," "fluttering," "butterflies," and "she." It's not dull on its face, this reading poetry aloud, but this moment is giving me the sleepies. Carrie sits and tries to pay attention, and reacts about fifteen times, cocking her head as rapidly as a cockatoo. So, what does she think? "Yee-ow. That is some serious stuff." Now how about some of her poetry? She picks up the November issue of Vogue and reads from Andre Leon Talley's Style Fax. God, do I love Andre Leon Talley. I gave his book one of the only positive reviews it got for the Philadelphia City Paper. I just think he's so smart. I want his life. And his Chanel basketball. She reads lugubriously about Oscar de la Renta's pink full-skirted dress with black patent leather bow belt. "Now THAT. Is pure poetry." The way Andre writes is poetry, for sure. But still. That kind of demeans Alek's gesture. But this is Carrie. Alek says he "knows Oscar" and will tell him she liked the dress. She's all, "Oscar? You call him Oscar?" Ow, my foot. Someone dropped a name. Then he asks why she's uncomfortable with the poetry. She says perhaps they haven't been introduced. "I write a column based on the assumption that romance is either dead or just...phony." God! How rude. If she's freaking out that Alek is just over the top in his gestures, say it. She's being so rude. He says, "You think I'm phony?" No, she feels like a phony. She's "not used to these grand gestures." No one ever played her music or read her poetry. Wow, Carrie dated some duds. I don't believe her, either.