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.
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!
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