That really says it all. She thought she'd waltz into a new job at Vogue and fit right in with her purse puns. Now, I adore purse puns (no pursing my lips here!) but her editor just wants vague copy. Less like her articles, more like an advertisement.
As much as I love watching Carrie knocked down a peg or two, I think that's a waste of some good writing talent. Seamlessly weaving in a few puns here and there in a fashion magazine is absolutely worth the extra $2.50 a word they're paying her.
Oh, and how fabulous does Carrie look with her new season 5 haircut? A whole two episodes early!
Smashing!
After being completely eviscerated by her new older-lady-boss-editor, Enid, her other new older-gent-boss-editor, Julien takes pity on her and decides to mentor her in his office. Mentor her with shots. XD
He calls her "cookie" and immediately I don't like him. But Carrie is feeling much too drunk and sorry for herself to notice that he's not so much mentoring as Creeping.
--
Sam is feeling creeped out as well. She finally got Richard to say the Love word, but he's still cruising for other chicks in front of her. Read the room, dude!
His birthday is coming up, and Sam wants to give him something great, but all he wants is a threesome with their twenty-year-old waitress. hot. Sam doesn't think so, but she's put between a hard place and well, a hard place, and reluctantly invites the twenty-year-old waitress to bed with them.
She rationalizes it with the foursome by saying at least it's not a hooker he wants.
"These are the options?!" Charlotte distresses.
Samantha explains that it's just a fantasy he has, and at least she's part of it. And then Charlotte explains the fantasy for anyone not paying attention "Yeah, the fantasy being he's attracted to someone young enough to be his daughter."
And then Sam explains the very real inversely related problem that men and women have when it comes to age. Men get better looking as they age while women are cast off by 35. It really isn't fair.
Charlotte says that she should be careful fulfilling a man's fantasy "Cause if it blows up, you're just the idiot who did it with him on the golf course, or something."
Nice save, Char.
Then Miranda shows up late to talk about real problems. She's pretty far along in her pregnancy and can't find time to shop for baby essentials. She laments there ought to be a place that sells just *one* crib and they send home helpers to help you raise your child. Honestly, she's overthinking this. The first few months you don't even need a crib, a laundry basket or spare drawer will suffice. XD
"When am I supposed to find time to prepare for this baby? I don't have a vague idea how I'm going to do any of this!"
"Well I don't have a Vogue Idea!" (CARRIE SAID THE NAME OF THE THING IN THE THING!)
Charlotte offers her expertise, and more suitably, offers to throw her a baby shower.
Miranda *hates* baby showers. She agrees to have one though, as long as she can have fried chicken and no shower games or anything baby. No storks!
Later on, Charlotte goes over to Miranda's house to talk about the shower. Instead of expertise (why Charlotte would have any more expertise then, say, Samantha is beyond me), Charlotte badgers Miranda about how there are a ton of sharp edges in her apartment and it is completely unsuitable for a newborn baby who clearly has a magnet in his head for sharp edges. She asks Miranda a bunch of, eh, maybe valid questions about what type of mother she wants to be.
"I want to be... A good mother!" Miranda says. Good answer, I say. That's the most important part. You'll pick everything else up as you go.
"No, a marsupial mom or a stroller mom? Breast feeding or bottle feeding?" These are not the most important questions Charlotte.
You're being kind of a dick here.
There are many many more topics raised here that are really overwhelming for Miranda and in about 3 months will be completely laughable to her. Where the baby sleeps, for example. She hadn't thought about where the crib would go when the baby outgrows the bassinet.
This is making my inner parent roll my eyes So hard. That's like, 2-4 months down the road. She'll get there Charlotte. All these little details don't matter. Let's get through labor first. Everyone starts at the beginning.
It's evident that Charlotte is hiding her very raw jealousy toward Miranda. She wants so much to be happy for her friend and to help her, but this is Not helping. Miranda gets extremely defensive and the show plays it like she's in the wrong, but I don't see it that way at all. Despite what Charlotte says about "letting other people in," Miranda is basically on her own from here on out. She'll get some support from Steve, Magda and to a lesser extent, her friends but they'll have No Idea. She's on her own and she is in a vulnerable position and Charlotte is poking at it.
Not cool, Charlotte. Not cool.
In fact, Charlotte is going WAAAY overboard with this baby shower. She keeps calling Miranda at work to ask inane queries. She's eschewed Mother-to-be's desire for fried chicken, and insists there ought to be a stork.
"You keep this up you're going to have a shower without a Mommy!" Miranda has had enough.
"Miranda, You better show up. I'm not getting stuck with a bunch of lawyers who, if they're anything like you won't even appreciate a beautiful Putenesca!"
"Watch out for the sharp edges!" Miranda calls out as Charlotte exits the scene. I think this might be the best line in the episode. XD
In a true friend moment, Carrie talks Miranda down. They have a very real, warm heart to heart about what this kid is in for being raised without a father figure. Carrie thinks that she has a father figure and it's Miranda. She has a point, and I like it. It gives Miranda a new perspective, anyway.
Carrie was raised in a home with a dad who split and is bolstered by the fact that Miranda had a father who was present in her life and she has no idea about men either.
Carrie had been discussing father figures with her Creepy-Mentor-boss-man who thinks that not having a father-figure completely fucked her up in regards to dealing with men. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
[Cannon note: The Carrie Diaries, that Awful CW prequel to SatC, completely abandons this story-line in favor of a more 'dead mother' route. idiots.]--
At the baby shower, Miranda does show up. But there's no weird food and storks. There's fried chicken and minimal baby. Miranda is relieved and grateful to Charlotte for remembering that the shower is about the Mom-to-be.
Carrie and Sam show up with a cake made entirely of diapers and Miranda's like, "What do I do with this?" and it's truly comical. Charlotte clearly added some things to the registry.
"See? I told you we should have gotten a massage certificate!" Carrie says to Sam.
An hour later, Miranda is opening gifts. She has no idea what any of the stuff is even though she presumably has eyes and went to Harvard.
"It's a breast pump." A mother with baby-in-tow explains.
"Oh!!!" Miranda says
"Well, I didn't want you coming to my office to borrow mine." MWBIT jokes. Then she says she has to pee and starts to pass the baby off to the woman sitting next to her when she gets a bright idea to pass him to Miranda.
Miranda haphazardly sets the child on the couch, though he seems barely old enough to sit on his own. She asks for more gifts and the baby starts to tip forward toward Charlotte's sharp-edged coffee table. Gee, maybe babies who can't walk yet really DO have magnets in their brains for sharp edges!
Carrie catches him just in time, and Miranda doesn't notice what a horrible mother she's already turning out to be. nah, j/k, she just doesn't quite have the instinct yet. Carrie keeps hold of the baby and doesn't tell Miranda. Good friend.
Miranda opens up the next gift which is from Tiffany. Not the lawyer, the store. It's one of those fancee silver rattles, just like the one Trey gave Charlotte when they were first planning to have a baby. This immediately shakes Charlotte and sends her into her room to sob.
Miranda and the rest of the women are stunned. Miranda follows Char into the bedroom to talk her down.
"I just need to be alone right now!" Charlotte has buried her head under her pillow.
"Okay, except you know you got twenty people in the other room."
"I'm sorry I ruined your shower," Charlotte says as she peels the pillow from her head.
"You didn't. And there wouldn't even be a shower to ruin if it weren't for you. Look, I know this is hard and I really appreciate you trying to be OK with me having this baby because I need you. I mean, let's face it. You're the only person in my life who knows how important it is to have a cake made entirely out of diapers."
"There's lotion in there, too." Charlotte says with an appreciative laugh. "and baby bottles and a receiving blanket."
"See? I would never have known that." Miranda's ignorance is laughable here. Who doesn't know that about diaper cakes?
(I'm being sarcastic here, I don't know about diaper cakes and I had two kids)
And then Charlotte admits, "You would have figured it out."
No shit.
At this point, Carrie walks in carrying the baby who has wet himself. "And myself, I might add."
"Well, I happen to have four tiers of diapers." Oh Miranda, those are probably newborn sized diapers. Presumably the MWBIT brought a diaper bag with diapers that fit him. And a change of clothes.
Too bad for Carrie's shirt though.
At the threesome later that evening, Sam is not playing very nice. She doesn't want to share her toy and knocked the twenty-year old to the ground.
"Easy Sam, there's more than enough of me to go around." Richard says.
"You tell her, Daddy." Twenty-something says.
Everyone in the room is disgusted by this, and Richard tells Sam to get rid of her. Sam obliges and the girl leaves after one more de-bedding.
Richard says, when they've finished, that one-on-one is nice. So, you know, maybe this'll end well for Sam? Maybe?
--
In the final chapter, Carrie's older-gent-boss is helping Carrie finish up her first purse article. They've succeeded and he offers her an exclusive tour of the infamous Vogue closet. The place where they store all the high-end fashion that they use for photo shoots.
Carrie is like a kid in a candy store. She spots a rare pair of Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes and immediately starts prying them on her feet.
He calls to her from across the closet, and she walks over and finds him sans pants.
"What are you doing?!"
"I'm just showing you these briefs." He says like he's a lawyer or something.
"Well, don't." She's trying to laugh it off a bit, but he's still being creepy as shit. "Julien pull your pants up."
"Ooof," He says creepily, "look at you in those Mary Janes!"
"Stop."
He says he thinks that she has serious issues with men...
"I do right now."
...and that he can help her work through them, seeing as he's older and wiser and she's having absolutely none of this.
"Don't 'Cookie' me, Freud. Pants up!"
Unfortunately, it means that she can no longer work with him, but she does finally get her other boss to let her fun purse pun agenda in every once in awhile.
And that's the episode! Hope you enjoy! I definitely won't be back for a few weeks, but I'm happy to be getting more regular with these!
The season finale is coming up! This one is probably my favorite finale, besides the final finale, so I'm looking forward to it!
