Season 3 Episode 6: Are We Sluts?

Ah, the episode that confronts head-on the criticisms of jerks, prudes, and sexist assholes.

Are Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte Sluts?

let's find out.

The episode begins at Carrie's doorway.  She's making out pretty hard with the guy she just started dating, Aiden. ah, Aiden.  He's the best.

Only, he doesn't want to come in.  He says he has to feed his dog, Pete, and can't spend the night.  She's a little miffed, she was so ready to bone.

Meanwhile, a few hours later, Sam is greeted by a nocturnal guest at 2 in the morning.  :eyebrow waggle:  Next morning, however, she finds that one of her old-lady neighbors has been mugged by someone who came in the building after Sam's guest. (there's a whole video which shows that the mugger sneaked in after him)

And Sam feels terribly guilty about the whole thing, and embarrassed.  And she slinks out of the scene, hoping nobody noticed that she was the male-orderer.

At brunch the next day, mum's the word.

Charlotte doesn't want to talk about how on her third date with an investment banker, during coitus, he shouted out "you fucking bitch you fucking whore!" Absolutely terrifying her and making her feel like maybe he has a point.

I feel bad that she immediately gives him that power.  It was rude what he did, and jarring.  And only appropriate if she consented to that kind of thing.

The other three seem to gaslight her discomfort: of course he said that entirely appropriate thing that made you uncomfortable, you guys were fucking.  It isn't like he said it to you at the dry cleaners.

For the record, I think it would have been *more* appropriate at the dry cleaners, because at least the context would show his mental state.

And finally, Charlotte wonders aloud:  "Do you think I'm a whore?"

"Oh please! If you're a whore, then what does that make me?!" Sam asks.

And then the rest of her friends pile on, Miranda admits that Charlotte has had a decent amount of bone in her, so clearly she is a prostitute.

Charlotte starts spinning about how no one wants to marry a whore.

This whole conversation is making my head spin.  WTF?

Carrie finally mentions the thing that she didn't want to mention, which is that after a week and a half of dating, her new beau doesn't want to do it with her and she's still annoyed.

Sam unhelpfully tells her that if he doesn't sleep with her before some undefined period that the man who was previously rubbing Carrie's ass provocatively will unceremoniously drop her in the friend zone.

And Carrie, stupidly, gives her friend's idea weight and carries it with her all week.

On her next date with Aiden, she wears one of her 'leave little to the imagination' dresses, and is sending ALL the sex vibes his way.  At her doorway, while she is trying to get the door open, he cock blocks her again.

She is just done with him then.  She rushes in and closes her door in his face.

He knocks gently, and this is all a sort of metaphor for what he says next: "What's going on up there?"

And this is why we love Aiden.  He wants to understand her, he wants love her for her.

And she just wants to shut him out and lie to him (but I'm getting WAY ahead of myself here).

She asks plainly if he just wants to be friends, and he asks if she kisses her friends that way.

He goes on to explain himself.  He doesn't want to just sleep with women, he wants to only sleep with women he's in love with.  He's out to get married. (there should be klaxons going off in her head at this point)  And she then wonders 'why did I want to sleep with him after only a week and a half?'

She has a conversation with Miranda about it next day.

Miranda is sympathetic, but has her own, more pressing worries.  She had been told by her gynecologist that she has chlamydia, which she'd never been tested for before.  The Gyno wants her to call up every one of her previous sexual partners to let them know that they should get tested for it.  This is going to prove a daunting challenge for her as one of her previous lovers on her legal notepad is "guy from deli."

(btw, I call bullshit on Lawyer Miranda not getting tested for STIs every time she has a new partner)

--

Charlotte, for whatever reason, is trying it again with the asshole who called her a bitch and a whore, for whatever reason.  They are having a lovely dinner, but Charlotte can't get it out of her mind, the scene. He asks her what's the matter, and he doesn't remember yelling out in bed at all.

She laughs it off and starts to enjoy her date. Until bed.  When he shouts again, and she has to point out, "there it is you said it again."

"What did I say?"

She can hardly say it, but she does, and he is so apologetic. He had no idea and he certainly doesn't think that about sweet Charlotte.

In her final scene having sex with him, he doesn't want to come.  He's afraid that he's going to shout it again, and be made aware of it.  She tells him finally to come and he hates himself.  Hello therapy!

--

Miranda has to convince Steve to go to the free clinic to get tested.  He doesn't want to go, and has a strange idea about how STI's work.  Since men are just carriers, he wonders why he has to get tested at all.

:rolls eyes:

She tells him that she doesn't want to do it with him anymore if he doesn't get tested (and doesn't want to do it with him at all until she's done with her antibiotics.

He goes to free clinic and finds out they need a swab from his urethra.

His test came back negative.  So that's good, at least.

--
Sam is confronted in her apartment building's elevator by a poodle-holding older woman. She says that they all know that it was she who buzzed in the gunman, and she has WAY too many gentlemen callers in general.

"That's ridiculous." But then her face changes and there is a fun little montage in the elevator; a melange of men over the years that she's gotten frisky with.

She's disoriented by the time her floor arrives.

 Later on, she is confronted in the lobby by all her old-lady neighbors, including the one who was mugged, and she's got a big black eye to show for it.  Rather than blaming the missing doorman, they still blame her for the mugger getting in.

She calls Carrie to complain about it and decides that the only way out of this predicament is to move.

Which, by the end of the episode she has, to the trendy meatpacking district. Well that does sound promising! ;)

--

Miranda, is at work, calling all her old lovers. She's at the end of a conversation congratulating -someone- on his being married and not having to worry about chlamydia.

In the cannon in my mind, I like to think it's Skipper.

On the other line, is the man she dated immediately after Skipper, the angry man.  She tries to wade her way carefully through the conversation.  He is not helping.

He knows what chlamydia is, he got tested and *did* have it.  Miranda's pissed.  He could have given it to her, why didn't he call her to let her know to get tested.

"You told me never to call you again!"

"NOW I REMEMBER WHY. BYE!"

 She's had to make a lot of difficult calls that day, and by the end of it is exhausted.  She's also had to confront her own fears about her possible slut-dom.  So, while talking with Steve later, reveals her number. 42.

Steve says that it's not so bad.  (and really if Miranda's in her early-thirties that's only about 3 a year, which is well under Joey's 10 year tenure. )

 Miranda then tries to guess Steve's number, and Steve seems so bashful about it, she low balls it, so he keeps having to say "higher" whenever she guesses.

"Higher than sixty? A lot higher?"

"Hey, I'm a bartender and I'm cute." Steve explains his promiscuity.

"Note" Narrator Carrie explains, "Men who have had a lot of sexual partners are not called sluts. They're called Very Good Kissers."
 --

On her next date with Aiden, Carrie is looking for signs of being "friendzoned."  This'll end well.  So far:
He certainly kissed me like a boyfriend. But he teased me like a friend.
boyfriend: He wiped a dribble of food from under her lip
 friend: he says "I don't care what anyone says, I think Catherine Zeta Jones is hot..." (as if that's debatable)
 boyfriend: "Not as hot as you."

She calls Charlotte for a second opinion.
 "I think Samantha's right," Carrie begins, "I think we're just friends who kiss occasionally"
"Why are you whispering?" Charlotte asks
"He's still here."
"Well, that sounds promising!"
"He's been in the bathroom for half an hour"
"eww."

He calls from the other room for her to come to the bathroom so she hangs up.  She finds he's drawn her a bath with candles and romance and she quips that it "wow! It looks like a Danielle Steel novel in here."

He says that he noticed she was tense and wanted her to relax a bit.  She asks if this is a ploy to see her naked and they flirt a bit back and forth.  He jars her a bit by announcing that he has to get going-- "but that doesn't mean we're just friends."

She somehow convinces him to join her in this very romantic tub, and he does.

Carrie asks, "Now what?" now that they're both naked in the very bubbly tub.

"Now what, what? We're just taking a bath. Oh fuck it, let's just do it."

But suddenly Carrie sees how special doing it could be and doesn't want to.  She wants to wait for the right time too.  aww.

On their next date, Aiden surprises her by telling her that the neighbor kid has been enlisted to take care of the dog, so he is free to spend the night.

So, they -finally- sleep together and it means something.

I still feel icky about this whole episode, I feel like it gives puritans just enough ammo to continue slut shaming people who sleep with each other before their wedding nights. Not that puritans watch this show, but this episode doesn't do enough to erase some of that icky cultural baggage that is in fucking everything.

No. They aren't sluts because that's fucking sexist.


Yes, there are some negative consequences to being promiscuous, but not having sex won't prevent all of them-- like the mugging. Or getting your heart broken.  Or being yelled at by men, called a fucking whore.  Since when does not having sex stop horrible men from slut-shaming women?

blah.

That's the end of the episode.

<3

Season 3 Episode 5: No Ifs, Ands, or Butts

This is an episode I fondly remember watching for the first time on TBS with my now-husband, Zac.  He was such a dear, watching lady shows with his lady.  :p

It begins with Charlotte out on the street saying goodbye to her newest first date.  They are about to share a kiss, and Narrator Carrie is narrating how hopeful she is about the possible magic that's about to happen.

It starts out OK, and then his tongue is outside her mouth, licking her mouth area and chin.  It is gross.

So, obviously the foursome have to talk about how bad bad kissers are.

There's the clam mouth ("Get that thing out of my mouth, put it in a cab, and take its lazy ass home") the stabby pointy mouth, and well, Charlotte's boyfriend with his wandering tongue.

Sam sagely advises Charlotte to break up with him because a bad kisser is a non-negotiable.  (hence the title of the episode) She thinks she can retrain him.

Just then the chef at the restaurant where they are eating comes over to talk to the foursome about the delicious food she's been whipping up.  She is the master of fusion, trendy food with soul food.  For some reason the foursome applaud her after she tells them to take it down a notch.  I always found that odd:

"Hey ladies take it down, this is a respectable restaurant."

:applause:

Adeena, the chef, happens to be black (this is important to the plot) and her very attractive brother pops up chat with her sister-- and to flirt with Samantha.  They leave the scene, and Samantha gets all atwitter about her future lay.

Charlotte chides Sam for her "African American" talk, and Sam defends herself, "It's not black talk it's sex talk."

Charlotte seems to think it's rude and politically incorrect for Sam to flirt with a black man.

Everyone reminds her that Sam is rude and politically incorrect-- an equal opportunity offender.

"Exactly," Sam explains, "I don't see color. I see conquests."

(I HATE that phrase 'I don't see color' but I won't go into that here. shorthand snark: This show is so dated!)

I still don't understand what is so wrong about Sam's 'atwittering,' so I'm moving on.

--

Carrie is hanging out at home, she's settled in with coffee and fashion magazines when someone is knocking at her door.  It's her best gay friend Stanford!  He tells her to get dressed because there's a sexy new furniture designer in town that they need to scout.

Carrie doesn't want to go, until Stanford points out that he's straight and she says she'll get her purse.

"All these people with nothing better to do than to ogle some lowly craftsman? pathetic!" She jokes to Stanford.

She turns over a price tag and winces.  Stanny tells her that she can get a discount if she lies about being a designer.

Just then, Stanny points out Aiden somewhere on the other end of the store, and Narrator Carrie describes him. "His name was Aiden Shaw. He was warm, masculine and classic American, just like his furniture."

And then Carrie adds, "Jesus Christ, the dog is overkill."

[I just have to add that the writing on the show from this point on is near-perfection]

Stanford encourages Carrie to go get him, that he's perfect for her and ends with "I'll come visit you and the children at your country cabin upstate." (FORESHADOW)

Before she goes over to him and abandons her friend, Stanford points out a perfect, classic gay designer in the showroom. Carrie encourages Stanny to go get him: "I'll come and visit you and the swatches at your country cabin upstate."

That out of the way, Carrie walks over to the sexy furniture designer and is promptly humped by aforementioned dog.

"You should get that creature a chew toy!"

She flirts with him, and he is picking up what she's laying down. and vice versa.  Literally.  He takes her hand to run it down the back of a leather club chair, and "suddenly I had to have whatever it was I just felt"

The club chair in question costs nearly four thousand dollars, so Carrie whips out the lie Stanford prepped her with, and he gives her two discounts, the extra one was for the dog humping.

(ooh!  I never saw what she paid cause pencil and TV distance, but she gets a twelve hundred dollar discount on the chair!)

"How soon can it be delivered?"

"I can get it to you by the end of the week."

Narrator Carrie explains that in NYC retail lingo, that means "I kind of like you."

On what planet does "I can get it to you by the end of the week" mean THAT?! I've been furniture shopping wrong my whole life, that's for sure.

--

Steve is rampaging through Miranda's life at the moment, bouncing his basketball against her Ralph Lauren brand painted walls.  I just looked it up, and they were really just name dropping here.  I was thinking this paint must be so much more expensive than Behr, but it's exactly the same price and, at the time of filming, available from any Home Depot store.

Steve has news that is making him rampage!  He won a contest at Sam Goody (hey! remember those?!) where he gets to try for a million dollars-- if he sinks a half-court shot at a knicks  game.  He's thrilled! Miranda is significantly less excited.  She reminds him that it is a kind of hard shot and that he shouldn't get his hopes up and that he needs to stop bouncing his basketball against her walls.

what a downer!

Steve asks her nicely to come down to the playground to watch him shoot hoops and practice, and Miranda says that she is busy and can't today, but will another day.

This is about the time that Miranda begins her role as "Steve's Mother."  It isn't pretty.

She has to talk about it with Carrie while eating a cupcake.  I don't know about you, but people eating while they're talking in shows is gross, and people eating cupcakes while they're talking is EXTRA gross, the cake gets all caught in their throat and it makes their voices sound all deep and weird. grosses me right out.

You're welcome.

Carrie asks her why she can't just support her boyfriend, since that is what 'you people with boyfriends' do, and Miranda's like, "You're asking me?"

And Carrie has to talk about her new crush, Aiden, and how she bought a very expensive chair she didn't need from him because he was so cute.  Miranda says the chair is a write off since he asked her out.

Miranda says she's crush proof, since she hasn't had a crush since Shaun Cassidy. Carrie asks about her boyfriend, and I'm kinda on Miranda's side here-- you can date someone and not have a crush on them.  Crushes are juvenile. But anyway, Miranda thinks she's broken and asks if she's normal. "You're asking me?" Carrie responds.

--

Aiden and Carrie have a marvelous first date.  Near the end of it, they are sitting on her stoop, talking about stuff, flirting and being very friendly.  Then.

And then Carrie lights up a cigarette.

This is a clear non-negotiable for Aiden.  He doesn't date smokers. He is friendly about it, but is clearly drawing the line. It is a deal breaker.

She couldn't believe it.  She was crushed.

So bemused Carrie goes up to her little laptop to write about it.  Since when did dating get so dump-friendly?

(oh honey, just wait till the age of the internet when you can be dumped before you even MEET your date!!)
--
Meanwhile, Charlotte is trying again with Brad the bad kisser.  If you can believe it, he's gotten even worse.  She has to stop him from sucking on her chin to tell him he's a bad kisser.

"Come on! it's my thing!"   (god, he is such a guy!)
--
Stanny is on a date with the perfect gay-designer, Marty from a few scenes ago.  They've made it to Marty's bedroom and are about to do it! So exciting for Stanford! But his room is completely filled with expensive china dolls.  There are dolls on all the tables, on shelves and several on the bed.

They have to painstakingly move each doll-- and they can't go just anywhere: "No no no, the southern belle sits on the table!"  This is going to be a problem, I think.

On their next date, oh about ten scenes from now, Stanford and Marty get so excited in their passion, they *don't* move the dolls and one of the dolls' faces ends up shattered on the floor.  Poor Marty.  He breaks it off with Stanny immediately.  A broken face is a non-negotiable.
--

Sam continues dating Chivon, Adeena's brother. They are actually eating dinner at Adeena's restaurant.  She comes over to chat with her brother, and find an excuse to get him out of the scene.  Then the true Adeena comes out.  She doesn't want Samantha dating him because she is white.

Samantha doesn't let Adeena stop her.

She complains (in vivid "African American" talk) to her friends about how Adeena can't tell her to to date. Charlotte thinks she should back down, and Carrie thinks she should stick to her guns.  Carrie compares Adeena and her deal-breaker, to Carrie choosing cigarettes over Aiden.

Woah, woah, woah! Says everyone at the table (and the audience).

"You're choosing cigarettes over a cute guy?" Miranda voices everyone's opinion.

"He's not that cute." Carrie maintains.

"You bought furniture he was so cute!"

Carrie rationalizes that it wasn't OK for Aiden to dump her over a little thing like smoking, and Sam and Charlotte remind her that it isn't a little thing, and she's killing herself and they only put up with it cause they love her.

And Carrie, rightly, feels attacked.

But.

But he is really cute.

This is around the time that Carrie tells her second, third and fourth lies to Aiden.

She lies that she only has a cigarette occasionally, like with cocktails. (and also waiting for a first kiss on a first date?)

Aiden reconsiders and decides to close up shop to go out with her immediately to get some coffee.

"The second I heard him say coffee I knew I kind of wanted a cigarette" Says Narrator Carrie.

"I'd love it," Carrie says out loud.

The date lasts MUCH longer than she was expecting-- at least without a cigarette break-- and she is sweating bullets out there waiting for an out so she can go smoke her emergency stashed cigarette.  But just then he just looks so cute, inviting her to dinner, and she thinks about how much she is willing to give up for a cigarette.
--

Steve is at it again with the basketball.  He's there to remind Miranda that she promised to go to playground with him to watch him shoot hoops.

She is busy again, and he loses it.  "I ask you to do one thing for me one time for me and you can't do it, wtf is that?!"

"wtf is with the attitude?"

"Do you know how many law things I've been to? How many times I do what you want?"

"Why are you getting so upset, it's just a stupid half-court shot?!"

"Not to me it's not!" (beat-- in the form of him throwing his basketball and retrieving it) "Why do you always have to be so pessimistic you can't make that shot? ...It's not just the shot it's everything... If this is ever gonna work I need you to believe in us a little more. I need you to believe in me even if you do think it is fucking stupid."

And finally, finally Miranda gets it and she shows up for Steve.  He misses his practice shot, and eventually misses the contest shot, but she showed up for him and that was almost better than winning a million dollars.

d'aww.

--

 Sam is out dancing with Chivon, having a ball and getting on with his friends.  Out of nowhere pops Adeena, out for blood.  She tells Sam to leave, and Sam stands her ground yet again.

"Adeena I'm a lovely person. At least get to know me first and then you can hate me."

(Well, at least she's honest)

Adeena is adamant that it isn't a game, that she is concerned about her brother and doesn't want him dating a white person, that Sam will never really understand because it's a black thing.

Sam almost buys it, starts to leave and reminds herself that she doesn't let anyone tell her who she can and cannot date-- she says almost exactly that to Adeena who shouts at her to get her little white ass out of the club and away from her brother.

Sam then criticizes her food, and pokes her hard in the shoulder and turns to walk away.  That's when Adeena grabs her by the hair and pulls it.

Chivon shows up to break up the fight.

Later on, while breaking up with Sam, Chivon says that she didn't have to criticize his sisters food.

Sam walks away from him-- unwilling to be with someone who won't stand up to his sister, which is a major deal breaker to her.

--

"7 hours into the world's longest date," Carrie is shaking like a chihuahua,"all I could think was five more minutes and I can dump this bozo and smoke the emergency cigarette hidden in my purse."

The waitress comes by to ask if they'd like a dessert menu, Carrie is trying to say no, but Aiden does want to take a look and it's too much for her and she flies out of there so fast she forgets her jacket on the back of her seat.

Outside the restaurant, she flings the cigarette so fast that it lands in the gutter.  She is absolutely desperate, so she kneels down, picks it out of the puddle, pinches off the wet part and lights it up anyway.

"Carrie. We got a little problem."

oops.

In the last scene, Narrator Carrie is narrating Carrie dumping the last of her cigarettes in the toilet.

"In the end I really did it for me... I just hope he's worth it."

Excellent Episode! Until next time!

Season 3 Episode 4: boy, girl, boy, girl

I realized sometime this week that I never recapped exactly what happened to Sam in her story line from the last episode.  I don't know why, I must have just forgotten in my keenness to finish off the episode.

Well, it is good.  Or bad.  I'm gonna go with bad, having ten years to dwell on the episode and exactly what it entails about Sam.  Like, she legit should have had charges pressed on her, but I'm getting ahead of myself:

Sam ends up getting her massage with the cute masseuse in the hopes of getting some action.  Halfway through the massage, the guy is still asking if the pressure is OK (that is weird, tbh, I've had dozens of massages and after the first few minutes they do their own thing).  Sam realizes that their time together is almost done, so she grabs him by the genitals and provocatively asks if it is OK.

It's most definitely not OK.

Like, not in any world is that OK.  LEGIT SEXUAL ASSAULT.

In the following scene, the manager of the Spa is speaking with him and Sam about how they don't tolerate that kind of behavior and that she is blacklisted from spa. (good start).  Sam defends herself by ratting out the masseuse, claiming that if he can randomly go down on some women, that he should randomly go down on her.

Nice Gal (tm) alert.

Needless to say, he was fired.

And the ladies whom he went down on approached Sam at the Women In The Arts luncheon.  They were pissed that she got him fired.

Sometimes this show is so weird, it's like it's written by aliens.

---


Anyway.  On to the next episode.  This episode is probably my VERY least favorite episode.  I can't watch it anymore without getting pissed about every. single. detail.

It is the bisexual episode.  And it features some very awful, wrong, and dated views on the subject.  And it is annoying because it isn't that hard to get right.  Biphobia is fucking annoying.  (I say this as a proud bisexual)

So, let's start, shall we?

Charlotte's gallery is featuring photography by her future date-of-the-week of women dressing like men.  And it's supposedly controversial.  The foursome are talking about how it would be fun to pretend to be men, or something.  It is all very make-believe to them and rife with 'othering' that I'm sure annoys some trans person as much as the bisexual stuff annoys me.

The photographer seems to be the only person in the room with his head on straight (heh).  He talks to Charlotte about how essentially everyone has dual genders in them, that gender itself is a social construct, an illusion.

He wants to photograph Charlotte as a man, and I did always like that she went along with it.  It does her good to step outside of her narrow viewpoint occasionally.

Carrie meanwhile is going on a date with a bisexual man.  And this is a problem to her.  She says to him that it isn't, but of course it is.  Actually, the foursome first complain about how young he is.  They are against the twenty-somethings again.  I thought we were over this in the last season. It's funny when they complain about twenty somethings, because now and when this aired, the thirty somethings and twenty somethings are all lumped together in a generation we all like to call "gen X" and it is the teenagers coming up back then are what they call "gen Y"-- but are what we like to call "the millenials"

It just shows that is all very confusing that generations are divided by 20 years, because as this episode rightly points out, the generation gap never seemed so wide.  And they are supposedly in the same generation.

I totally relate to what they are talking about though. As a late-twenty-something, I'm grouped with the teenagers coming up now.  I don't relate to them AT ALL.  I am OLD.  I have a house and kids.  I am essentially a 40 year-old in an almost-30 year old's body.


ANYWAY.

Tag, uh, I mean Sean takes Carrie ice skating.  Which is a fantastic date idea, but Carrie is lame and doesn't like to skate. Afterward, He talks about his past relationships, including one with a guy, and Carrie just mentally flips out.

Her friends are aghast that she didn't have some clue, since he did take her ice skating (geez, what's wrong with ice skating?), and they definitely see it as a problem.  Since, you know, bisexuality doesn't exist, it's a "layaway on the way to gay town."

In fact, this whole scene can be found in the dictionary next to "bi erasure."  I don't want to have a stroke, so let's just say it's horribly offensive and completely wrong.


Rather than just accepting Tag, uh I mean Sean for his honest sexuality, Carrie decides to overthink it.  In her little laptop she writes about whether the opposite sex has become obsolete.  There she goes again, conflating sex with gender with sexual orientation.  She's a sexual anthropologist for fucks sake.

Moving on.

Miranda is having a difficult time with her boyfriend Steve.  He's always over at her place, watching shows and leaving clothes there.  He's essentially moved in, but he's not. And this is an important distinction. For Miranda. Miranda is being the stereotypical "guy" about it.  (you know, so it ties into the episode)

She complains to Carrie about how she's not a girly girl and doesn't put hearts over her i's or wear make-up to the gym and she's not excited about the prospect of her boyfriend moving in.

Are these things really related?  It says more about her relationship with Steve and how she has misgivings than it does about whether she feels like she identifies with her gender.

I do think this episode could have done a lot more to explore this issue, especially with Miranda, because she isn't feminine in the typical sense.  They seem to go a lot further with Charlotte and her 'sock in the pants,' but it isn't good enough.

Being a woman means more than being nurturing or wearing fucking make-up to the gym.  Gender is a spectrum, and the show comes SO CLOSE to just saying that outright, but then they get caught up in a bunch of garbage ideas about sexuality and the point just gets missed or omitted.

blarg.

Carrie can't stay away from Tag, uh I mean Sean.  She goes on a more traditional date with him to a dance club.  They compare generational notes, apparently 'groovy' is cool.  And I'm down with the lingo.

At one point Tag, uh I mean Sean is looking around and Carrie asks if he's checking out that guy over there.  Tag, uh I mean Sean, assures her that he was just looking for the bathroom and that he's not an asshole.

See?  This has less to do with bisexuality and more to do with Carrie's crippling insecurities.  (course, Big did not help her with that at all)

After fucking on her floor, she asks him which gender he prefers, and he tells her to stop being a nincompoop.

--

At the photo shoot, Charlotte is having trouble acting like a man. I can't look at her now without thinking of Leslie Knope and her high-powered political haircut:

The photographer claims he can get it out of her, and she boldly asks for a bigger sock. Then she pretty much falls on top of him and fucks him on the floor of his studio.  It's hot.

Course, once she gets the photo from him, she's too cowardly to call him again.  "She might be that type of man, but she could never be that type of woman."

--

Miranda finally talks to Steve honestly about her misgivings about him moving in.  She's afraid that he'll see all her little flaws: stinky sink sponge, not doing the laundry promptly, etc.  She's a little frantic actually since she came in her apartment with a paper bag full of groceries.  She's meant to make him dinner and instead ends up dropping a whole jar of marinara on the floor.

Steve assures her that he also drops things and can be messy too.  Oh boy, can he ever. :cough: skid marks :cough:

Miranda finally gets to the heart of the whole thing.  She doesn't know if she can move forward, but she doesn't want to lose him.

"I'm not going anywhere." Steve says while holding her close.

"I'm crying on your shoulder.  Jesus I guess I really am a woman."

--

Carrie and Tag-- uh I mean Sean, go to a party of Sean's friends.  They're all twenty-something and Carrie looks about like this trying to fit in with them:

J/K, she doesn't even try to "get it."  Course, the "getting it" in question is the guests sexuality.  Which is a little confusing, I'll give her that. Everyone at the party is either gay or bi, and pretty much all of them dated each other.  It kinda feels like when I walk into a conversation and young people these days use the term "pansexual."

On the other hand, a quick googling and a conversation with said young person can go a long way toward just accepting that over time people are becoming much more likely to be LGBT in one sense or another. I've said for years that I think everyone is at least a little bi.  Openness about all this can only make us healthier as people.

One of the guests flashes an empty wine bottle and says it's time to play spin the bottle.

oh, it's *that* kind of party is it?

So a few rounds go by, there's some smooching, sexy guest-star Alanis Morrisette gets the next turn. She starts the bottle as Carrie is lighting up her cigarette.  It lands on her.

"Whoops, it's a girl!  Try again!" (Carrie is playing 7th grade rules of Spin the Bottle)

"It's OK."

"Of course it was OK, I was in Alice in confused sexual orientation land" Narrator Carrie reminds us how horrible she is.

REMINDER: SHE IS A SEXUAL ANTHROPOLOGIST

Alanis leans in across the circle and- be still my heart- they kiss.

(For those of you keeping track, 3/4 of the foursome have now had a lesbian experience)

 But Carrie doesn't enjoy it like I enjoy it.  She gets up from the circle on the floor, claims she's out of cigarettes and then leaves the party.  Narrator Carrie talks about how the young people are so young and that's why they are bisexual and she's "too old for these games."

Alright!  That's the episode!  Thanks for reading!