This episode begins with Narrator Carrie talking over Miranda at the gynecologist's office. She's laid out with her knees up waiting for doctor to finish putting on her gloves. It's awkward. Narrator Carrie is talking about how humiliating it is for a woman to be at the ob/gyn in the first place (it is?) and asking to go off of birth control (again, is it though?).
These women see judgement everywhere, it is ridiculous!
The ob/gyn asks if Miranda is trying to have a baby, and Miranda laughs like that was stupid-- women don't go off birth control to have babies! That is the most embarrassing question I've ever been asked in my life! But yeah, she makes it awkward by going into details about her (newly lack of) love life and how she went on BC because of her boyfriend and is going off because he's not in the picture anymore.
I know we are less than one minute into this thing, but I have to stop at the implausibility of all this. Who goes on hormonal birth control dependent on having a SO? Honestly! The pills take several months to take full effect, and that is a looooong hoopla to go through when her longest relationship was.. well, several months long. She is dating on and off through the show too, so it isn't like she doesn't have sex between serious boyfriends. If this wasn't an establishing scene for later events (much later in fact!), I would guess that Miranda had an IUD or implant because she clearly does. not. want. to. breed.
Charlotte, I can see taking the pill. Sam is a condom gal, but I bet she has her own birth control form that she uses reliably. I could also see her getting a tubal ligation, but those are notoriously difficult to get for single child-free women. And Carrie: it was established that she uses a diaphragm and that definitely jives with her personality.
Anyway, back to Miranda. Miranda has just found out that the test her ob/gyn threw in for good measure came back and she has a lazy ovary. (((again, the ridiculous implausibility of all this just pulls me out of the episode. 1) why would she care to have that checked if she's not immediately going to have kids 2) IS there a test to see whether one of your ovaries doesn't produce eggs?))) The only redeeming factor of this whole Miranda plot, is that it is yet another establishing scene for some stuff that will come to fruition in the fourth season.
In the usual foursome, a waitress is taking away a dish from Miranda's place-- it's a hard boiled egg salad-- and Miranda is lamenting the fact that her right ovary has given up hope that she'll ever get married and have kids. And it's ironic, because that ovary went to Harvard. I like the image of various body parts going to ivy league universities:
Charlotte tries to make Miranda feel better by talking about her tilted uterus (is there a test for that too?) and Miranda says that once they make the leap over the tilted uterus, the sperm will at least find an egg there.
apropos of nothing: Sam's line here makes no sense grammatically, she's talking about seeing a male lady doc: "I tried going to a man, but it is too weird: having a man spend all that time down there and you leave without an orgasm and a bill." It makes it sound like she gets her annual pap smears for free. Thanks Obama!
They move on in the conversation as Carrie is emptying her purse looking for cash to pay for her meal. There was a pair of slinky underwear in there, and all her friends point out how strange it is that she's been dating him for this long and she doesn't so much have a drawer there.
Carrie says that with Big, it's best not to talk about any of this. "Speak softly and carry a big purse."
Charlotte concurs, she shouldn't leave anything at the guys' place because she needs to remain a "creature of mystery" Miranda retorts: "What's the big mystery, he knows she wears underwear"
The next part of the fourway makes absolutely no goddamn sense.
Sam is talking about how she doesn't leave underwear at her guys' places because she never goes back to those places. Sounds fine, but Charlotte presses "What happens to it?" "Nothing, I just don't go back!" And Carrie reiterates strangely "Doesn't that get expensive, disposing of lingerie every time YOU sleep with a guy?" And Sam responds, "That's why I stopped wearing underwear on dates." And the final joke from Miranda "And that's why I'm never borrowing a dress from you again!
It makes absolutely no sense. Why would the conversation move into that? She doesn't leave underwear.. and then what? She does? If she wears underwear it somehow slips off and gets left at guys' places regardless? So in order to avoid having her underwear be apparently stolen from her, she doesn't wear any.
Please someone explain this to me?! I've seen this scene over a dozen times and every time, I'm like... why would she ever lose her underwear? She knows she doesn't want to come back to guys' place as soon as she goes home with them. She doesn't dispose of anything.
They continue their conversation, talking about things that they've left behind at various guys' places, and things they've kept that have been left behind at their place.
Carrie seemingly has stolen half of her music collection from old boyfriends. Sam calls those things sexual souvenirs. And Miranda says she wants a shirt that says "I dated a bartender, and all I got was this lousy ovary!" They give her looks of abject pity.
Later, while using a travel blow dryer at Bigs, Carrie is thinking about the archeological relics of her present relationship. What will Big find of hers when she decides never to return again?(or rather much more accurately, when Big locks her out) What should she leave? Well, at this point she should be talking, not about never seeing his place again, but rather, what things does one need for convenience when one sleeps over at his place. DOY.
She decides to leave her travel blow dryer and the next time Big opens the medicine cabinet, he sees about five or six more products of Carrie's. For her convenience. He does not look happy.
(Behind him scowling into his medicine cabinet: Carrie is currently brushing her teeth using the pink spare brush head from a few episodes ago. WHOO continuity!)
Narrator Carrie says "Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it"
How fucked up is your relationship if you can't even leave tampons at your long-term boyfriend's house without feeling like you're playing with fire? I mean, WTF?!
---
Charlotte is out on the town, coming back from seeing a musical with who she assumes is a gay friend. She has dropped her guard, is making humor with him, and generally getting along in a nice familiar way. He has the look and sound of a very feminine gay man, not to mention, he is a pastry chef who lives in Chelsea. Interesting little detail I never noticed, but the pamphlet this guy is holding has a distinct red ribbon on it.
As she gets into a cab to go home, he kisses her right on the lips, catching her completely off guard!
In the next scene, the foursome have a conversation about metro-sexuality (except, you know, a few years before South Park coined the term) they encourage her to go out with him again, since being in touch with his feminine side couldn't be a bad thing!
Miranda reveals that she is taking hormones in order to jump start her ovary. (WHY?!)
Carrie makes everyone take note of her purse-- which isn't new, it's just teeny and does not contain a spare pair of underwear. They congratulate her on being bold to Big, especially when Carrie reveals that she's left *something else* at Big's-- a number two-- and Charlotte reels in horror at the thought of someone dropping a deuce at a boyfriend's place. Miranda says she had previously spent an entire relationship not doing that at a guys place, including weekend away doing that in the lobby rather than in their hotel bathroom.
These women are totes mature, amiright?
Sam says one of the best lines in the entire episode to Charlotte: "Honey, you're so uptight, you need to do a number seven" ha!
The foursome are interrupted by the bartender who gives Sam a drink from the guy at the end of the bar. It's a very old boyfriend of hers, the only man she's ever loved, who left her for a younger model. (literally) Sam boldly goes over to say hi and flirt, and her friends rightly warn her that he is a dick and she shouldn't give him any time. she insists that she's evolved past him and wants to hurt him like he hurt her.
Like I said, totes mature.
---
Big shows up at Carrie's house with a bag from Barney's. She is excited and expectantly opens it up-- to find all the stuff she'd left behind at his house.
Carrie says that his place is like teflon for women, nothing ever sticks!
She talks to him, communicates that she needs things to look nice in the morning. She explains that it would be nice to not have to carry things around like a nomad. And she offers to him space in her house for his stuff. He acts completely obtuse about it, doesn't want to leave anything at her place and doesn't want to move forward in their relationship.
She asks how two people in a relationship should be ideally, and he says "Exactly what we have. We're together when we want to be, and we're apart when we want to be." Carrie adds a description of a scene from a Woody Allen movie I've never seen-- Woody Allen waving to Mia Farrow from across the park. Some semblance of separate-togetherness. It is clearly infuriating to Carrie, and not at all what she wants from Big in this relationship. But she can't talk to him about it. For some reason. She decides that she must be the last dinosaur and all the other men in Manhattan want to be separately-together too. D:
Writer Carrie asks "Are New Yorkers evolving past relationships?"
She gets immediate advice from Sam, who is relationship's biggest enemy. She is less than helpful.
--
Charlotte and her gay-straight boyfriend stay in for the evening. He is cooking a recipe 'from Martha,' is wearing a very feminine floral print shirt, and Charlotte compliments him on his choice of silk place mats.
(who uses place mats and why silk?! That would be impossible to clean!)
They start making out in the middle of his kitchen, and he stops right in the middle, as it was getting good, to ask if her dress is Cynthia Rowley. She meekly nods.
--
Meanwhile, Samantha's fantasy rug pulling event is going well. Except, instead of dumping him before making love, she decides to have one more roll in the hay. This was not according to plan.
She calls Carrie to chat about her new plan to remind him of what he was missing. She then brags that she's better than him now.
Narrator Carrie says something about how Samantha has become an interesting hybrid-- the ego of a man, stuck in the body of a woman.
I don't know how to take this episode. It feels.. so dated. Like, I don't think we're allowed to talk about these kinds of things in this way anymore. People are in general much more accepting of non-binary people, at least among young, educated people. In a future episode, Sam talks about how in the future it won't matter if you're gay or straight, just if you're good or bad in bed, and I honestly think we are moving toward that. So many more people are OK with bisexuality, and more and more women at the very least are openly bi. So, this talk about men being one way, and women being other ways feels forced. From what we know now about gender and it's spectrum, gender identity and expression, not to mention how archaic some of these 'masculine/feminine' traits are in the first place, the whole episode feels completely out of touch.
This episode mentions bisexuality not even once. I'm pretty sure that if Charlotte's gay-straight boyfriend had come out, very plausibly, as bisexual, well, Charlotte would have had a huge problem with that.
Anyway.
Sam's fantasy doesn't work out the way that she hoped. She ends up falling for him really hard, thinks that maybe she isn't as evolved as she thinks. And just as she's gotten comfortable with him, he pulls the rug out from under her. He's getting back together with the younger model. D: Sam apparently hasn't evolved past having feelings. Which is good.
--
In the next scene, Carrie, Charlotte, and Stanford are having deserts at Charlotte's gay-straight boyfriend's pastry shop. It is an experiment. Charlotte wants the gay point of view from Stanford. Stanford reiterates that the very flamboyant man is actually straight and laments that all the good ones are straight-- even the gay ones.
Inconsistency instance: Stanford talks about how when he was a young boy, his father gave him a book of female anatomy and he rejected it, since he knew that he was gay. BUT in season 6, while talking to Anthony, he reveals that he had a girlfriend while he was a senior in high school who broke up with him right before prom.
--
Miranda decides to date a man with hair plugs. She insists that she's out of options and needs to settle-- with anyone apparently. It isn't just the plugs though, he seems kind of awful in general.
For some reason, she brings up the idea that she is considering freezing her eggs, and the hair plug guy gets passionate about how he doesn't think that women should eliminate their biological clock, that all women who have babies late in life are desperate, and makes a face when talking about designer sperm and simulated wombs and presses that nature has taken care of it, and nature has decided for those women to not have babies. He thinks it is a gross misuse of science and technology.
His ridiculous talk of designer sperm which don't exist make it it seem like he'd never even heard of freezing eggs before this moment, but not only is he already the expert of the entire subject, he's ALSO the expert of what Miranda should do with her body.
She shouts at him that she doesn't need morality of science lectures from a man with crop circles on his forehead. good girl.
Narrator Carrie talks about how Miranda decides then and there to go off the hormones since she's only 34, has one good ovary, and doesn't want to put all her dates off with her loudly ticking biological clock. I don't understand why she would make this decision, she made some good points back there of why she wanted to save her eggs, you know, in case she does decide that she wants kids but her other ovary has decided to shut itself down.
Whatever though.
Stupid mansplainer.
---
Charlotte and her gay-straight boyfriend make love to the musical stylings of Cher. She has to ask him first if he's ever been with a man, and he fairly asks if Charlotte's ever been with a woman. (yum!) They do make love, (he's a very very generous lover) and the next morning, he's made a delicious delicious breakfast for her.
But there. What is that? It's kind of a squeaking. OMG! IT'S A MOUSE! The two proceed to freak out by a mouse stuck to a trap on the floor! The gay-straight boyfriend has hopped onto a chair, is flailing about like crazy, and Charlotte realizes that she can't be with a man *that* in touch with his feminine side.
And there, yet another example of stupid dated gender roles. I don't think I am *that* masculine (although I am very masculine) but I've taken care of more than my share of mice roaming the house, both dead and alive. Take a frying pan and squash the beast and wash your hands and be done.
No flailing, no freaking out. Do the thing.
goodness.
What even IS masculine v feminine, amiright?
--
In the final scene, Big has slightly redeemed himself by acting cute in bed with Carrie. He has completely won the relationship, none of her stuff is at his place, and she is feeling pissy about that.
She tells him she has to leave so she can blow dry her hair at home and he grabs her and pulls her back to bed. "NO! You stay here!" he grunts like the caveman that he is.
She decides to leave a pair of underwear at his place, and she tells him so by hitting him in the face with said underwear. While she is rummaging through his sock drawer putting in the thong, she finds a picture of them together and realizes that she doesn't have to leave relics, since she already is there.
For now.
Like, they have a lot of fun together and can be sexy, but he is such a raging asshole to her. I can't even.
Join me next time for the culmination of Carrie and Big. Watch the whole thing end in tears! I'll bring popcorn!
au revoir!
