So here we are, at the penultimate episode of Carrie and Big's
relationship. Let's watch the cracks continue to grow and their
foundation yawn and heave, shall we?
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment