I had a fantastic holiday break, I hope you all kept your toes and fingers warm through that cold arctic chill cause it was cold as balls out here in New England.
Let's jump back into this!
This episode begins in a bar. Carrie is wearing her underwear on the outside of her clothes like a superhero. She's chatting with Stanford when Margaret Cho comes over and overacts in her general direction.
Margaret wants Carrie to walk in some charity fashion show for celebrities. I find it odd that her once-weekly newspaper article makes her a celebrity. Oh well, She declines and thinks it's really dumb that anyone would want her 5'3" self to walk amongst actual model-sized models. Stanford vehemently disagrees, as do all of her friends.
At lunch with the foursome, Miranda pointedly orders extra blue cheese dressing because fuck you, I'm hungry. I love that about this show, women have to eat real food sometimes or else they pass out.
Oop, spoke too soon. Samantha refuses to order anything on the menu because the vegetables aren't *organic.*
This segues nicely into a conversation about self esteem.
Sam has self-esteem out the wazoo. literally. She's going to get nude pictures taken to show off her wazoo! She's doing it for herself, thank-you-very-much, and I think that's really commendable. I would probably only do something like that for my husband. And probably not nude. And I probably wouldn't do it at all.
Carrie still doesn't want to do the fashion show, and everyone at the table outwardly groans. I *almost* think she's brought it up to humble brag and fish for compliments. *almost.*
Her friends think she's nuts for not doing it, since it is such a big deal and she lives for fashion.
exhibit A:
on the other hand, exhibit B:
"Carrie," Charlotte asks, "How many fashion shows did you drag me to during fashion week?"
"Eight, what's your point?"
"Why are you turning down the chance to actually be in one?" Charlotte is right.
Then Charlotte's credibility takes a nose-dive. She brags that she was in a mall fashion show as a teenager and everyone thinks she should have kept that to herself.
Sam comments that she shouldn't give a fuck what people think since the opportunity is so fabulous, and rightly points out that she might get to keep the outfit.
Probably only if she steals it.
Carrie asks what Miranda thinks, but she is too busy pigging out on her blue-cheese slathered lettuce.
--
Next scene Miranda is running on a treadmill at the gym. She's clearly been at it for awhile, and when she steps off is positively dripping with sweat. Some guy walks up to her and starts hitting on her and it catches her completely off guard. She doesn't think she's cute at all.
He is super impressed by her training for the New York Marathon, and wants to get to know her better.
She's like, really?
Me?
She complains about it to Carrie and they're both completely stymied by the possibility that maybe they are cuter than they give themselves credit for, and that's the theme of today's episode.
Can we ever see ourselves clearly?
I think Sam can.
And tbh, I think Miranda has an honest appraisal of her looks. It *is* shocking when someone objectively hotter than you finds you cute, especially when you've just run on a treadmill.
She does end up going out with him, and they have a really good time. Miranda is confident, she's brave, and she's enjoying talking about her love for her life and her friends. She really got a boost to the self-esteem bone by this guy hitting on her.
And he dumps her for it.
She thinks they had a good time and is wondering what happened. So she approaches him at the gym in a later part of this episode, and he says that he thinks she's full of herself.
oop. She immediately falls back into timid!Miranda mode.
---
At Sam's nude shoot, Buster from Arrested Development is there.
I just wanted an excuse to post an arrested development gif. That's all! I promise.
So sue me.
ahem. Back to the show!
Charlotte is having lady-bit troubles, so she goes to the lady-doc. The lady-doc, after scoping the scene, emphatically says that her issues are not yeast-related but likely vulvadynia. So, she needs to take an anti-depressant and keep a journal and it should go away post-haste.
So, I had no idea until I started doing these that people had a really difficult time with this plot point. Apparently Vulvadynia is -NOT- a simple fix problem, and people were really pissed off that the show made it seem like not a big deal. Apparently vulvadynia is very painful and can last years.
The more you know.
The writers were clearly just trying to tie into the rest of the episode-- by making Charlotte take anti-depressants for her hoohaw, everyone at the brunch table can laugh cause her vagina's depressed.
Sam walks in, having completely missed the part about the vagina diary ("Dear vagina, guess who I have a crush on?") and has come bearing negatives from her own vagina shoot. She asks Charlotte to look at them with an arty opinion and Charlotte is completely shocked.
"These aren't very arty! I can see your... Everything." Charlotte says.
"Oh, that's just the full-frontal, I just did that to warm up!" Sam explains.
"Well, you should have warned me. Really." Charlotte is real close to being offended.
"What's the big deal, it's just a vagina?"
"But it's -magnified- I haven't even seen mine that close."
Sam and everyone else pretends that they've all never seen Charlotte's hoohaw, and demand that she go look at herself with a hand-mirror in the bathroom immediately. She refuses to look at Rebecca, she thinks Rebecca is ugly. No wonder her vagina's depressed!
The waitress walks up and asks if anyone needs anything, and Miranda jokes that Charlotte's depressed hoohaw would like an order of fries.
"What did I miss?" Sam asks.
--
Stanford was previously burned by someone he tried to meet in meatspace. It hurt his feelings, and he decided that the only way to go with someone cute would be to pay them. :cringe: So, Carrie asks Charlotte if she knows anyone who might be interested, and Charlotte immediately thinks of her wedding stylist, Anthony.
It's at the fashion show when they meet for the first time. The hate is immediate. And mutual. Charlotte learns that people aren't barbie dolls, and just because two people are gay does not mean that they have chemistry.
Anthony doesn't want to go out with a bald, average dude. And Stanford hates to be rejected by someone he doesn't want to be with in the first place. ><
--
As I mentioned, Carrie finally does concede to the fashion show. Margaret Cho called and told her that Dulce and Gabanna asked for her specifically and she was immediately on board. At the fitting, she meets a photographer who is really cute and someone she recognizes from all the vogue.
You know, just... from all the vogue.
She's immediately taken by him, but dismayed by all the pictures he wants to take of her. Not to be creepy, he's doing it for the newspapers and whatever. God, fashion is so weird. At her place, she shows off his book. No, really. She actually has one of his photography books.
Fashion is so weird.
exhibit C:
Whatever. To each his own I guess.
---
Sam, despite all her talk about doing the nude pictures for herself, is fishing for compliments from men around her. At the framers, she shamelessly flashes her picture to him. It isn't a full-frontal, and the focus is more on her bum and side-boob than her hoohaw, but he doesn't seem affected by it. She's deflated.
--
At the fashion show, Carrie's ego has been completely inflated. She jokes with Stanford about being a *real* model and it gets immediately deflated when she learns who the other "real" people are. Also, they have to change her outfit from something off-screen that she gushed at during the fitting to a pair of bejeweled nude panties.
"I'm gonna need to speak to someone about that!" but it's too late! One of the other designers was showing something similar before them, and blah blah blah, we need a plot device to embarrass Carrie and get her to drink entirely too much champagne.
After a last-minute ego boost from Sam who says simply, "You're a model!" and Heidi Klum shares her make-up mirror, and then Carrie is ready to strut!
Right before she goes out, the music changes. It's "Got to be Real," very fitting.
She takes a few very bold struts in her jeweled panties when...
Her photographer boyfriend won't stop taking her picture, and yeah.. What an asshole!
Rather than slink off the runway and pretend it never happened, she gets up and starts walking with one invisible heel-- cause that's what a real person would do.
Also, real models do that. If anything, real people would slink into the shadows, change their phone number and dye their hair a different color.
I just googled runway fall and now I feel like an asshole for laughing. Lots of models fall on the runway.
Her confidence, though, touched her friends.
Charlotte finds the confidence to look at Rebecca in the mirror for the very first time. She is so enamored by it she falls in, like Narcissus.
Miranda asks the guy why he didn't want to date her anymore. and we already read how that went.
And Sam orders "real food" because she's hungry and now that she has proof that she has a hot body, so she can let greasy food ruin it. >< the fun thing is, the delivery guy checks out her ass and it reboosts Sam's esteem. So yay!
Carrie tucks her stolen jeweled drawers in her drawer, and struts around her closet in tighty whities while the same music from the fashion show continues to play.
Fun trivia! This is the only episode of SATC where it doesn't fade to black, we just get to look at Carrie's closed closet door for 2 minutes while the credits roll, and at the end she opens the door laughing.
I guess someone thought it would be funny.
It's just..WAY too cheesy for me.
That was fun!
See you next week!
<3
