I'm having the damnedest time trying to think of something clever to open this. I got nothing.
Carrie's running late to meet Miranda. She has like 2 obligations in her life, this is ridiculous. Miranda is late too, but not to meeting her friend or something important like that. She's pregnant!
But not in a good way.
Which is sorta funny, because at the age they are, a pregnancy "scare" is unheard of. Most women that age, at that socioeconomic bracket, intend to be pregnant or to not be pregnant.
"Didn't you wear a condom?" Carrie asks.
"Steve only has one ball and I only have one ovary. In what kind of fucked up world does that make a baby?" Miranda rightly points out.
"Yeah, I see your point." Carrie says.
I love how the show brought up that whole ovary problem of hers in a one-off episode a few years ago. Absolutely apropos of nothing, but also not a super obvious foreshadow. (except at the time I snarked it I remember it being absolutely ridiculous)
So Miranda's decided to nip the whole thing in the bud and you know.
Do the thing. Rhymes with Shmashmortion.
I have feelings about this. Not because I'm pro-life or anything dumb like that. A woman should be prepared to have a child and give it a good life. Or just plain want to have a child.
On the other hand,
I feel though that we as a society are kinda terrified of kids, and it's kinda dumb. I won't really comment on the whole single-mother thing, cause that kind of is terrifying. I have a feeling that even if she and Steve were together she'd want to have a Schmashmortion. She's a 30-something woman who has never even really held a child before. Of course doing the whole breeding thing is so foreign as to be terrifying. But kids aren't terrifying. They aren't this ginormous scary thing. You wait too long and you prepare too long and you'll give yourself a thing about it. At some point you just have to take a leap. You know, if you want kids.
And Miranda never says that she doesn't want kids. In season 1 when Carrie has her pregnancy scare with Big, Miranda painfully admits "I'll probably end up with 5," barring the point that a person in her situation doesn't just "end up" with that many kids, she could have easily said that she hoped to never procreate and the show could have made it funny. You know, the way it handles Sam never wanting kids.
The whole point of the episode is actually kinda my point. Life just kinda happens and even though you prepare and prepare and prepare, sometimes it just throws things at you and you take what happens and deal with it.
"Life is what happens when you're waiting for a table." Narrator Carrie will say at the end.
Miranda and Carrie are swapping looks at Brunch with the other two. Charlotte has started her period and she's not happy about it. It's been 4 months, Charlotte. Clam yo tits.
"What's with the eyes Miranda?"
Charlotte thinks it's about her, and of course it's not, and of course this is the worst time to tell her not only that Miranda gets to be pregnant when Charlotte wants it SO much, but that Miranda doesn't want to be pregnant.
So Charlotte walks out.
"You have your abortion talk." She says as she's leaving.
In the director's commentary, he says that a quarter of the audience step out with her. Sounds about right.
Miranda is upset. "She makes me sound so..."
Sam, the good friend, tells Miranda not to go there. That they've all been there, and they have. Sam has had two and Carrie had one. Miranda hasn't had any.
I like this real talk here. Unabashed, shit happens, no judgement.
Carrie had one when she was 22, after a night with a guy who worked for
Her friends give her a hard time about where he worked and what they did together. It was 1987, you guys, everyone did something embarrassing when they were
It's nice that Carrie can be their laughing stock to assuage Miranda's bad feelings though. Good times.
Carrie has a lot to think about. So much that she can't pick a shoe. Aiden yells at her that she's taking too long, and Carrie is debating telling Aiden about the whole mess.
She tells him first about Miranda being pregnant and Charlotte being upset cause she's not.
Steve suggests that Miranda gift Charlotte the baby. That's actually not a bad idea. But I guess we're not going there. "No, it's not a sweater."
And then Aiden asks who the guy is, Carrie reminds him that he can't tell anyone and it's Steve.
"Oh come on! I feel like you just trapped me!"
Carrie says that she's so distracted by the whole thing, she had to tell someone.
"She's gonna do it without telling him?"
Carrie is mildly confronted with her own issues there-- her stifling single-hood, you know, the one that keeps her from being intimate with men since they are disposable. Of course Carrie wouldn't think about the man's perspective here.
On the other hand, in this situation neither would I. Miranda and Steve aren't -together- together. Miranda has no obligation to Steve.
"What?" Aiden red pills lightly, "it's Steve's baby too."
"Well technically it's not going to be anybody's baby." Carrie says only a little tactlessly.
"And a man shouldn't be able to force a woman to have a baby when she doesn't want one," No one says here in this episode but they fucking should.
Aiden asks if she's ever had one, she says no, and I would lie too. Judgemental prick.
---
Carrie has a lunch date with Sam, and they take a detour in front of the Hermes store for Sam to ogle a ten thousand dollar purse.
Carrie's expression here is my expression.
A cursory googling shows the price of a Birkin bag as between ten and three hundred thousand dollars. Crazy pants.
Sam is on the list. There's a list to buy them.
As they walk away, Carrie tells Sam about the previous evening's conversation with Aiden. About how and why she lied to him, and about what life would be like if she had had that baby 13 years ago.
Her life would be completely different, she wouldn't know Sam. Sam can't imagine it.
I can't imagine her as a mother either. Maybe a step-mother. But one of those mean ones that schemes to get the step-kids out of the way by sending them to a military school ala Meredith from The Parent Trap.
Carrie whines in her laptop, "are we there yet?" in response to a winding extended metaphor about roads and paths and choices and mistakes. Everyone's on the road to 'who we hope to be' and Carrie puts the onus on the universe to get us there a little bit.
If your life is a certain way when you're 35, it's probably who you are. Accept it, change it, do whatever, but at least acknowledge that this is it. This is life. For better or worse.
I guess she kind of does in the end.
:shrug:
This is getting too long. Sorry.
I don't really want to get into Sam's story line with the bag. It is lame, and has nothing to do with the rest of the plot.
--
At the same time that Charlotte is calling her doctor for fertility testing, Miranda is calling her own doctor for the opposite.
--
Aiden finally guilts Carrie into telling Miranda that she should tell Steve. It's a mess and none of their business.
Miranda is annoyed at hearing that Carrie told Aiden.
"He's gonna tell Steve!" Miranda worries.
"He will not, I made him swear on Chanel."
"Well, as long as he took the oath of fabric." Miranda says the best line in the episode. What? I like fabric.
Carrie Red Pills all over the pizza parlor. "He seemed to have pretty strong opinions about the guy having a right to know."
"You know, I didn't think this could get any worse but, ha ha, it has. Now I'm supposed to think about what I'm doing to Steve?" See, this is exactly why Steve doesn't have to know, this is her deal, her body, her emotions. And now she has to worry about potentially hurting Steve's feelings. :rolls eyes: They aren't even TOGETHER.
It's not about him At All.
Miranda takes a moment to joke at Carrie, "Did you tell the guy from TGI Fridays?"
"Jesus, it was the Saloon. And no, I didn't. It was completely different." Carrie hypocrites.
Miranda says, "There's no way I'm telling Steve. He'd want me to have it." and Carrie looks at her like that means something.
"You know what. You're right. Forget my life, I'm having Steve's baby!" Miranda says sarcastically, "Pizza for everybody!"
--
Charlotte finds out in the next scene that she can't have a baby since her uterus doesn't want babies. :sadface:
She sees Miranda on the street as she's walking home, turns around and walks the other way.
Miranda is annoyed at this, as anyone would be, but Charlotte explains that she doesn't want to see her right now because of her stupid uterus. Miranda is a good friend and offers to walk with her. Charlotte says that she doesn't need her too, but Miranda says she'll be here if she wants her to and walks behind her the whole way.
Like, probably just a metaphor again, but absolutely above and beyond ridiculous.
What if Charlotte had gotten a cab? Would Miranda have gotten the next one and asked it to follow the first one?
--
Carrie decides to have lunch at T
Like, why order soup then?
Rude.
She decides that she made the right choice back then.
As if she could have done anything about it now, except regret it. Definitely not 'coulda woulda shoulda.'
--
At the shmashmortion office, Carrie is being a good friend and helping Miranda with the admission papers. Miranda can't help spinning.
"Does it hurt?" Miranda asks.
"Not really. Mostly it's just unpleasant." Carrie says, honestly.
"What about after? How long before I feel back to normal?" And she's made the mistake of asking during a tumultuous time when Carrie is feeling ridiculous, so Carrie answers, "Any day now."
I am pretty sure I already shared this thought, but sometimes I think this show unintentionally gives fuel to the fire that is pro-life, anti-sex, anti-women garbage that is so pervasive in our society.
Plenty of women have abortions and come out of it the other side much better for it with no emotional or physical repercussions. Can we please stop lying about it? We're supposed to be the side of compassion and understanding, they're the ones that lie and say women will get breast cancer, depression, and be unable to have babies after an abortion.
"I'm doing the right thing, right?" Miranda asks her friend.
"Miranda I cannot answer that." Well sometimes she knows when to shut her trap.
"Charlotte only has a 15% chance and she's really trying. What if I wake up at 43 and find that my one semi-decent ovary gave up and I can't have kids."
"43?" Carrie asks the important questions.
"It's my 'scary age'."
"Mine's 45" Carrie says.
My new one is 50. Before, it was 30. shhshh. Don't judge.
"This happened against all the odds. My stupid egg found it's way to the three sperm he had left. Oh god Carrie. Is this my baby? I mean what am I waiting for?"
"Sweetie. Do you want to leave?"
"No. I can't have a baby. I could barely find the time to schedule this abortion."
Just then the nurse calls her name and she gets up.
In the next scene, Sam is bringing tea to Miranda. They're all there helping her recover. I love when they show Sam as maternal, btw.
Charlotte's brought flowers, "...to do whatever flowers do in a situation like this."
"I felt the same way about Entemmen's lemon strudel." Carrie jokes.
Charlotte's reaction could go either way, but she's overjoyed, "We're having a baby?!"
In the final scene, Carrie is late for the second time this episode. She's so late that the restaurant had to give her and Aiden's table away so now they have to wait.
And they can't wait at the bar because there's a wait to wait.
And then Aiden says "We'll be outside. Forget us." And I was totally shocked when they did eventually call their names and say their table was ready cause I would have taken them literally. ><
Carrie and Aiden go next door for some brewskis that they drink out of paper bags while they are still apparently waiting for a table.
Carrie tells Aiden all about the conclusion to Miranda's arc, that she's having the baby and now it's none of their business. Now.
Then she finally admits that she lied when she said that she didn't have an abortion. She had one when she was 18 and the condom broke-- actually there was no condom-- actually she was twenty... two. She was twenty two.
"Is your name really Carrie?" He says even though Lying is a huge problem with Carrie and has been since the beginning.
She asks if he hates her, and I guess I can really relate to that. I have a serious fear of abandonment, and it manifests in always assuming the people around me will go tired of my neuroses and leave me. That yearning to be perfect for them can be toxic, yo.
"They say life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. but Sometimes in New York, life is what happens when you're waiting for a table."
In New York, you wait for tables long enough that life can happen while you do it.
Well, that was sort of fun.
See ya soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment