This is one of many instances in the show's running of a really cool, seamless, scene transition. It opens with black and white film of Elis island and old fashioned people, narrator Carrie is talking about that hope that the immigrants brought with them all, and then there is black and white scene in the bar, with an old fashioned mustachioed gent and his partner who is wearing an old fashioned looking bandana/scarf thing on her hair, as they move from the frame, it changes from black and white to color and suddenly we're in the present. It is nifty.
Narrator Carrie is trying to compare the plight of all those immigrants with hopeful single women cramped in the bar trying to get to matrimony. It is kind of obtuse, isn't it? We see Sam, having dinner with a handsome gent. She's obviously not trying to get to matrimony here, just the "hot meal in transit" that Narrator Carrie talked about. Narrator Carrie goes over the guy's pedigree, as they heavily flirt with each other. They end up at his place, and there is a striking image of old New York on the wall of his flat. Nice touch.
And we have a talker. He's talking about his lawyer cases of sexual harassment, I guess it's hot? Then he implies that she is old, nails her age between 40 and 41, and she's bewildered. She's been celebrating her 35th birthday for years. How could anyone know she's 40 or 41?! (it IS rude of him to bring it up like that.. he's no spring chicken!) She exits the room to go "freshen up" and when she comes back, she finds he's in the smallest ceder lined den of iniquity in existence. He's all tied up, there is music playing and he's begging her to slap him around. What a freak!! At the very least, he didn't force her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.. Or bring up a contract lining out everything he wants done to him and when and force her to sign it after only a weekend together or else they can't even date. Not that he wants to date. He just wants to fuck. hard.
(Sigh, Oh Chedward!)
Sam relates the story to Carrie and Miranda at a party.
After a few turns Miranda says, "You see, this is why I don't date: the men out there are freaks!"
Carrie responds, "Well that's completely unfair."
Miranda continues, "I'm sorry. If a man is over thirty, and single, there's something wrong with him. It's Darwinian. They're being weeded out from propagating the species!"
Carrie calmly retorts, realizing the implication, "OK, well, what about us?"
"We're just choosing!" After a beat, "I'm getting more shrimp!" And she leaves the table.
Sam talks to Carrie alone for a minute. She says the worst part of the date was not the freakish BDSM, but the fact that the guy thought she was forty. Then she asked whether Carrie thought she looked 40. Carrie is nice and says she doesn't look a day over thirty-five. They share some reassuring smiles. Geez, I hope I am not all hung up on age by the time I'm 40. Hopefully I'll have important things to show for my life on Earth, rather than only focusing on how old I look. Ugh. Being a woman sucks. I will have a 20 year old child though. How strange is that?!
Charlotte turns up to talk about how she just met this amazing guy- Mitchell Sailor- "When Charlotte really likes a guy," Narrator Carrie explains, "She said his whole name. It helped her to imagine their future monogrammed towels."
Mitch Sailor? Sam reveals that he's Mr. Pussy. They escape to the bathroom to talk in privacy before she continues. He's renowned, he just loves going down on women. Charlotte is disgusted! And Miranda says that she told them there'd be something! They talk about eating out (I never understood that, Miranda says, shouldn't it be eating in?), and whether Charlotte does that. Charlotte's so repressed, she can't even talk about it with her girlfriends. Narrator Carrie talks about how the only thing that goes down with any regularity on Charlotte's dates was a gold American Express card. She says with certainty that she is not dating anyone who is known as Mr Pussy. Maybe she wants more than that.
"Oh sweetie," Sam says, "If a man is good at that, there *is* nothing more"
(a sea of Amens from the other two and a good portion of the audience)
A woman comes out of one of the stalls to say they have to be talking about Mitch Sailor-- and to say how amazing he is. She blacked out from coming once. lol.
They come out of the bathroom and Mr Pussy is going to town on an oyster. The girls look excited, Charlotte's look is more of abject horror. The camera zooms into Mr Pussy's face, his mouth is moving in a very suggestive way. It is really just hilarious.
In the next few scenes, Carrie goes on a series of blind dates.
The first one is with a documentary filmmaker who says that he only does the "docu bullshit" to earn a rep. He wants to parley into the action movie arena and he wants to make money. He would sell toilet bowls if it would make him a millionaire.
What about the seagulls?
Fuck the seagulls.
The background music suddenly changes to calliope music, Narrator Carrie does a cute little circus freak announcer voice, step right up, two vodkas and a 12 dollar pasta will get you in to see the Man with No Soul! his cigarette smoke is curling around his face menacingly.
The second blind date is at the movies (the teller at the ticket counter kind of looks like one of those fortune teller in a box from a carnival!) with a man who seems nice, they talk about movie candy, and then suddenly he's yelling at the couple behind them for seemingly no reason: "Why don't you and your girlfriend sit in our laps for the movie, then you won't miss a fucking word! Dick!" Then he turns to Carrie and smiles at her.
The Calliope music swells a bit, and Narrator Carrie says "Ladies and Gentlemen, stand far away from The Man with Two Faces!"
The third blind date is at a book sale. All the books are a dollar, Carrie is flipping through one of Circus freaks. She catches her date (a man who'd made two million last year) stuffing a book into his pants.
"Please keep the kiddies far away from the cage of The Man Who Steals Cheap Used Books for No Reason!" They've really lowered the bar on who is on display at Freak shows, haven't they?
Carrie looks into the Camera and says "Okay, Now I was afraid!"
She's at home, flipping through her new used circus freak book. Narrator Carrie is talking about how the men really have de-volved, and maybe they should have never outlawed freak shows because then the freaks were all rounded up.
--I don't think they've outlawed freak shows. They just fell out of popularity because of the exploitation. I'm pretty sure there is a whole carnie tradition, especially among body modifiers. The freaks themselves, now, are not as exploited.. which I think is a great thing. Let's try to exploit as few people as possible, shall we?
Anyway.
Carrie types into her little laptop: "Are all men freaks?!"
In the next scene, Charlotte is in bed with Mr. Pussy. He's going down on her, and she can't stop giggling. He tells her to relax, and oh! she does. She comes the hardest she's ever come in her life, that is, until the next night, Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Friday. Friday.
(seven! seven! seven!)
Charlotte saw god seven times that night-- for a lapsed Episcopalian it was a very good Friday. If Mitch was a freak, Charlotte was ready to join the Circus!
The next scene, Carrie is sitting at a fountain in Central Park. There is a fire spitter not 10 feet away, and I really have to question the safety of that. goodness! She meets a very cute man who talks about how freakish and bizarre the -women- are, like the woman who sleeps with her shoes on. Carrie says she'd not not want to go out with him. a non-date. They agree and go out, but she's pretty sure she can feel scales between his fingers.
Sam runs into an old friend on the street who looks amazing. She says it's the work! She's had fat from her own ass put into her face. Sam is desperate to never be told she looks forty, so she signs up for the procedure. At the end of Sam's story line, after she has the procedure, her surgeon ends up recommending LOTS more plastic surgery, drawing all over her body. It sort of looks like a clowns face when Sam looks in the mirror, sobbing.
They have a small get-together at Carrie's house. Charlotte says that she really sees a future with Mitch Sailor. The girls are a gasp. You don't marry Mr Pussy, you enjoy him and then set him free.
Have you ever even been on a date? Do you talk? Do you even fuck? Have you had dinner together, seen a play?
No.. but.. we could!
Carrie mentions the "sex haze" which is the part in an early relationship where the sex is so good that you start to act like a crazy person, then you start to imagine the relationship as something it's not.
"Charlotte's not having a relationship, she's having multiple orgasms."
Miranda and Carrie go out on a double non-date with Carrie's new guy and his friend. Carrie is trying to set Miranda up with him, but it turns out he's *also* a freak-- he's Manhattan guy-- one of those people that hasn't set foot off the island in a decade. Miranda invokes her safe-word-- "I have to feed my cat"-- to get out of any future conversation with the freak, and warns Carrie upon her exit that you can tell everything about a person by who they're friends are. If Manhattan guy is a freak, then Carrie's guy is a freak too!
She hopes not. They continue their date as a couple, she asks if there's anything freaky about him. He shows her his tweety bird tattoo he got at a drunken bachelor party. I have to be critical here. That tweety bird is *clearly* a temporary tattoo, the lines are way too fine for the size of the bird.. but carry on.
Carrie shows him a scar she got when she was in a fight with the third grade bully. He calls her scrappy and it's a cute little moment.
Charlotte tries desperately to make a relationship happen with Mr. Pussy. They are at dinner, and Charlotte is asking about his childhood. He doesn't talk. at all. Instead, he picks up a fig from the platter and starts eating it as if it were a cunt. (the calliope music swells up again) She realizes that she has stayed too long at the fair and has to let Mr Pussy go. Also, she can't ever be in the same room as a fig-- some people might call that a little odd.
If the rest of the species had devolved, then Carrie's guy must be a FREAK not to have devolved with it! She wakes up at his house and, after he leaves for his soccer game, tears his apartment apart to the tune of the flight of the bumblebee. She's looking for something-- freaky. He walks in on her prying apart a locked box that she thinks must be full of terrible things. It's not. He thought she was one of the normal ones.
She's not.
She leaves and Narrator Carrie talks us down from the episode. We all get a little freaked out from time to time. We just hope to find someone to pat our three-heads and make us feel better. If there's hope for the world's fattest twins, there must be hope for the rest of us freaks!
The end! Next time on Sex and the City, Carrie's life is completely ruined by mis-punctuation.
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