This one is the latter.
No new boyfriends here. but a whole lotta re-introducing of old boyfriends here.
And speaking of old boyfriends, there's Steve! He's surprised Miranda outside a cafe and made her burn her tongue on her $7.50 coffee. What a jerk!
"Geez you look great! How ya doing?" He inquires, Steve-like. Steve is one of my favorites. He's always so authentic.
"Good. You know, boring." Miranda is a little less authentic, although I absolutely love this response to small-talk. Like, are you asking to fill time, or do you really want to know about my recent sex-strike?
But Steve has news! He's sending out invitations for... a bar opening? He's opening his own bar.
Miranda is shook. Well, she was excited until Steve's girlfriend, Jessica, from several episodes ago comes out of the cafe to "we" him. ("Oh, we'd love to see you there!") Hence, shook.
"She 'we'd" him, Carrie. Right in front of me." Miranda says over the phone to Carrie a few minutes later at work.
"Miranda, I'm still asleep. How can you have had an emotional mini drama already?" Carrie sleeps till noon, half of Manhattan has emotional mini-dramas before she wakes up.
Miranda is upset because it was -her- idea for Steve to open his own bar. (when exactly did she suggest this?) She wants to know where his drive came from all of the sudden. He wasn't ambitious when he was with her.
Carrie tries to talk her down, "Well, maybe you inspired him. Maybe he named it 'Miranda's' or 'Hobb's Nob'" I can't get over what a great name Hobb's Nob would be for a bar.
"He named it Scout, after his dog." Well, Miranda, perspective: if you had never told him that you didn't want to have a baby with him, he wouldn't have gotten the dog to save your relationship.
Miranda doesn't want to go to the opening, and Carrie convinces her that since she and Steve are friends, she should go to support her friend. Miranda then coaxes Carrie to come with her, and she agrees.
"Of course, absolutely. That's what friends are for--
--FORGET IT. Not going." Carrie slams her invitation on the brunch table in the next scene.
"To what?" Sam asks, and lifts the invitation to read it, "Steve Brady and-- Aiden Shaw?!"
"How did this happen? Why are they even friends?!" Carrie is beyond annoyed. She's Nettled.
Miranda explains that Aiden is Steve's Silent partner. (then why is his name on the invitation?) Sam asks why she wasn't invited, and Carrie gives up her invitation to her.
"Come on, it's a big party, you probably won't even see him." Miranda tries.
"It's not a party. It's a parade of our failed relationships." Carrie's got a point.
Charlotte thinks it's a good thing that Aiden invited Carrie-- that he wants to be friends with her. But Carrie is not convinced. Sam still wants to go, and Miranda is nice about it. Miranda mentions Sam's lesbian lover du jour, and Sam is a little iffy on inviting the missus.
"All we ever do is lie around, take baths together and talk about feelings."
Charlotte is verbally rolling her eyes, "I think they call that a relationship."
"I don't know how you people do it. All that emotional chow-chow, it's exhausting." says Sam.
"I know," Miranda adds, "Don't you just hate that?"
"Women." Carrie ends.
In an effort to get out of the bathtub, Sam invites Maria out to a bar with her that night. Only the bartender knows Sam, you know, biblically. And so does some rando. And they've both propositioned her in front of Maria, and it is really uncomfortable. In fact, Maria has no idea how much sex with random men Sam used to have, and it is becoming a huge sticking point.
In the bath later on, Maria asks Sam how many men she's slept with. Sam turns the question on her,
"How many women have you slept with?"
"12" Maria responds plainly
This silences Sam 'uh, this year?' Jones right up.
---
Miranda hears some weird noises coming from the apartment above her and is frightened. She thinks she has a gg-g-ghoooost!
She talks about it with the foursome, and all of them think ghosts are real. It's pathetic. Sam advises her to calmly approach her -ghost- confront it and ask it to go away. Cause that's how ghosts work.
Really though, it's just to tie the episode together.
The night of the event, Carrie comes over with a pack of oreos to comfort Miranda and it's sweet of her.
---
Charlotte has decided that it's time for Trey and her to go in on a new bed. Their old mattress is hard and uncomfortable, so she's looking for a new, softer, dust-ruffle-free one.
But, like everything, he's gone and told his mother about it, and she's taken it upon herself to try beds with them. It's really awkward.
Bunny is domineering, guiding her to hard, dust-ruffled monstrosities. Char tries to point out new, softer, dust-ruffle-free styles.
"My dear child, you cannot not have a dust ruffle. It's unsightly!"
When Trey shows up late to the bed-shopping party, Bunny guides him to a nice and firm mattress with a dust-ruffle.
"Hello. This is comfy isn't it? Charlotte you really must try this." He says to Charlotte's chagrin.
"I was thinking more on the lines of--"
"Oh Charlotte for heaven's sake, get in." Bunny demands and they all lay side-by-side in the bed in the worst three-some you can imagine. An absolute nightmare for Charlotte.
Later that day, Charlotte realizes how much of her life is being haunted by Bunny, and the mattress shopping really was the least of it.
"Your mother decorated this entire apartment, didn't she?" Charlotte approaches Trey, decoy in hand.
"Of course. Mother does all our houses." Trey says it like that's normal.
"I should have known." She's horrified again. "Plaid, and, and the mallards."
"You don't like them?" Trey is really dumb.
"No! It's like we live in the Museum of Natural Ugliness!" Charlotte then suggests, in the name of 'fresh starts' that she should decorate the apartment to better suit her-- uh I mean their tastes. Trey isn't sure, because decorating is expensive, but he trusts her and I think we're all grateful for that.
That apartment really is the worst. It's where plaid goes to die.
Instead of just deciding it on his own and that being that, he announces that he has to talk to Bunny about it next day. But he wakes up with a cold and can't. She pretty much moves in at this point to take care of his son and I just get the worst vibe from these two.
Move over Charlotte! there can be only one lady in this guy's life!
She won't take it lying down in the hardest most dust-ruffled bed in history. She stands up to Bunny and tells her that they're redecorating. And also asks her to stop rubbing vapo-rub all over his chest since he has a new woman in his life who can rub vapo-rub all over his chest.
Bunny is all threatened with her hackles up. "I've been in this house far longer than you have-- and unlike you, I never left!"
Charlotte is unfazed. She finally confronts her ghost and asked her to leave.
Well, it kind of worked. A week or two later, Bunny bombards her way through their apartment and into the bedroom-- to find Charlotte sitting on Trey's dick, on a dust-ruffle-free bed! And she is horrified! Either by the dust-ruffle-free bed or the sex, no one knows! But, no more unannounced visits from Bunny!
--
Speaking of confronting ghosts:
At Sam's, in the middle of the night, that rando from the bar earlier comes to Sam's apartment hoping to score. Maria is there and she's pissed. I would be too, cause he takes one look at Maria and Sam and suggests they make him a sandwich or something. gross. After Sam politely declines his offer to have a sandwich made for him, he refuses to leave until Maria shouts at him through the closed door.
And finally Maria has to confront Sam's ghosts:
"You let men come to your door like this in the middle of the night?"
"Let it go it's all in the past!" Sam is in denial.
"No! It's not in the past. It's serving us drinks, It's on the answering machine. It's at your door in the middle of the night."
Sam responds, "This might come as a shock to you, but I used to have sex with men."
"This man was here for nothing but sex." Maria states.
"Yes. Which I used to enjoy and haven't had much of since I got into this relationship."
Maria's got her hackles up now. They seem to be having two entirely different conversations here, or at least two understandings of what sex means in a relationship.
Sam is still talking about all the sex she's missing since she got into the relationship-- that she wants passion and fireworks. So, passionately, Maria goes to her kitchen cupboards and one-by-one smashes her plates on the floor.
"Do you want fireworks?!" she shouts as she breaks them."You can have fireworks!"
"Those are my plates!" Sam shouts back.
"These are not your plates. You don't even cook!" Maria wins the episode with that line.
--
oh geez, I've forgotten about Carrie in all of this.
Carrie decides that she should at least offer Aiden something as a gesture of peace since she unequivocally is not going to the opening, but wants him to know that she knows that he's extended friendship.
She just doesn't want to be a dick about it. She goes to Scout to find Steve there and gives him a Mulberry plant, you know cause the bar's on Mulberry street, and to talk to him about Aiden.
Steve reveals shocking news that it wasn't Aiden who invited her, but Steve. He wanted Miranda to have a friend for support. At that, Carrie is done with the whole thing. She hears Aiden in the back and high tails it out of there.
"Carrie!" Steve yells at her as she's leaving. She's a runner.
At this point, Miranda returns the favor and comes over to comfort Carrie about her ghosts.
And actually I think this was supposed to take place in the same scene as before cause it's clearly Miranda's apartment, and they're still eating oreos but it can't be the same scene cause days have gone by.
But anyway, Carrie-ing on, Carrie starts off by being embarrassed about her behavior at the bar earlier. Running away and stuff. Miranda asks her how the bar looked.
Miranda is trying to feel happy for Steve-- but it isn't in her, or them, to feel happy for people that aren't the foursome.
Miranda continues, complaining that her life is the same as it always was-- you know, boring-- while Steve has completely moved on with his "own bar, his own Jessica"
Then Carrie points out that Miranda has a ghost and not everyone has one of those!
Miranda points out that Carrie has TWO ghosts:
Carrie's afraid that what she did to Aiden is unforgivable, and will haunt her the rest of her life.
"And there's nothing I can do about it."
"Sure there is! Come to the party!"
"Aiden didn't invite me."
"Steve's a good guy, he wouldn't have invited you if it wasn't OK with Aiden."
Carrie asks if Miranda might still have feelings for Steve, and Miranda doesn't take a beat, "no. god. no."
And then Miranda asks the same, about Aiden, and Carrie isn't sure, but that mumbling mouth of hers says so much.
Don't do it Carrie. Aiden's too nice a guy to shit all over again.
--
Sam gets a caller at a more reasonable time of day. It's Maria, with a present for Sam. It's a strap-on! Cause Sam misses dick so much.
But it doesn't work-- "The strap on, or the relationship?" Miranda asks at the opening later on.
"both." Sam responds with a very stiff neck.
You know, there's only two ways to get a neck injury. :wink:
Carrie parts ways with Sam and Miranda, heading outside to get a smoke and standing behind the door smoking a cigar is Aiden. He got a haircut, started an exercise routine and looks seriously good.
She's juggling a piece of cake, her cigarette, and a drink, and no way to eat her cake.
She should take lessons from Kramer.
"Is that all you could carry Carrie?" he's smooth now too.
"I can't eat my cake." She says lamely.
Aiden takes her cake and starts to feed it to her.
"Now you got your fingers all in it!"
So, he takes a bite of it.
"That's my cake!" She protests.
"So now you want the cake?"
"I never not wanted it."
"Ok lady you take the cake." He says as he feeds it to her all sexy-like.
This show has layers!
"You cut your hair." Carrie tries to flirt with him.
"You have frosting on your lip." Aiden says, preemptively shutting this whole thing down.
Steve comes out to gather his silent partner from the alley.
Carrie is left a little less sure of her being over Aiden. And I find myself annoyed with her again. It's like a buzzing at this point-- just inside my ears. She's so annoying.
That's the end of that one. In our next episode, Carrie tries to get back together with him and comes off like a crazy chick. So, that'll be embarrassing for her.
Can't wait.
