Season 3, episode 18: Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

“Wake up, Carrie! How many more times are you going to go through this? He is bad for you” – Miranda

TRUTH.

Also truth: “Every time you get near him you you turn into this pathetic, needy, insecure victim … and the thing that pisses me off the most is that you’re more than willing to go right back for more.”

Ouch. But she is NOT WRONG, is she? The truth hurts, and so a defensive Carrie fires back, calling Miranda judgemental and accusing her of throwing away a good thing by breaking up with Steve.

Knowing as we do that Big will jilt Carrie and that Miranda will marry whiny, needy little Steve only for him to cheat on her, it’s even clearer that Miranda’s assessment of the Carrie-and-Big situation is bang on the money, her instincts about Steve were correct, and sometimes using a bit of judgement is actually a bloody good idea. Especially if you’re a lawyer.

But of course, Miranda has to take most of it back for the sake of preserving the friendship, and for once in her life Carrie doesn’t fall back into Big’s bed (even though, in a rather neat twist, after strictly following Miranda’s instructions she ends up sitting on it).

It really is a stretch to believe that Charlotte doesn’t know what Samantha means when she complains about being woken by “trannies” shouting in the street outside her window – for a split second I thought Woke Charlotte was about to break through, and object to the use of crass terminology (“transsexuals, chicks with dicks, boobs on top, balls down below”). This whole sub-plot is highly dubious on various grounds, but I’d forgotten how much anger and violence was involved. So incensed is Samantha by being disturbed when sleeping – or even worse, when shagging – that she stabs a kitchen knife into a chopping board before pouring water over one of the offending rabble-rousers, who later returns to pelt her window with eggs.

Implausibly, Samantha throwing a rooftop party ensures everyone has kissed and made up by the end of the episode (and series), but my god, the cringe is very, very strong when both she and Carrie interact with the “tranny hookers” by acting out sassy-black-woman parodies. Just no. Not now, and not later on when Jennifer Hudson arrives.

Carrie’s column isn’t really woven well into this episode, which seems a waste given that it is based on (her words) “a radical, almost earth-shattering” proposition: what if everything isn’t the man’s fault?

She ponders: “After a certain age and a certain number of relationships, if it still isn’t working and the exes seem to be moving on, and we don’t, perhaps the problem isn’t the last boyfriend, or the one before him or even the one before him. Could it be that the problem isn’t them, but – horror of horrors – is it us?”

The problem with Big and Carrie was definitely both of them, and with Miranda and Steve I concede there may have been room for improvement on both sides. But when it comes to Charlotte and Trey the problem is definitely him. Now that’s they are separated he’s able to admit that he only got married because he felt it was expected given his age, and while Charlotte seemed like the best possible choice of wives, he ultimately wasn’t being true to himself. She ends the episode conflicted about what to do, but I assume there won’t be too many further attempts to flog that particular dead horse.

Carrie’s column: “Is it us?”

Puns: You’d expect an episode in which noisily crowing cockerels featured prominently to be stacked full of them … but the joke is that Carrie insists on calling them chickens.

Season 3, episode 17: What Goes Around Comes Around

“He’s too good looking for me, he’s out of my league – I don’t have any outfits that go with hunk” – Miranda

I barely remember this episode, but it advances the overall Sex and the City plot quite significantly. By the halfway mark we learn that Big and Natasha’s marriage is over, and by the end it seems that of Charlotte and Trey might be too.

In theory it’s about relationship karma, but that’s quite a tenuous link for the four story strands. Really it’s about actions and consequences. Carrie seems shocked – shocked! – that Natasha and her friends hate her with a passion. So discombobulated is she by this revelation that she wonders down an alley and gets lost … then mugged. The universe is trying to take her down a peg or two – literally, as her punishment involves the loss of her favourite Mahnolo sandals.

There’s a silver lining for Miranda, in the form of an incredibly handsome detective with an eye for redheads. Unfortunately, every other woman in town has an eye for incredibly handsome detectives. Except Charlotte, whose head is being turned by an incredibly handsome gardener, Poldark-ing among the roses near the McDougall family tennis courts. Poor Trey is reduced to banging balls over a net after learning the pair have shared a kiss. When Charlotte suggests they separate, a brisk “alrighty” is his predictable response.

Meanwhile, Samantha learns there’s another Sam Jones in town, and he’s having a party. She’s being bombarded with phone calls due to a case of mistaken identity, and it seems like destiny for the two to meet … until she learns he’s a virginal college student whose party is in a dorm. Of course, that doesn’t ultimately stop her from sleeping with him, leaving him smitten.

Carrie might be allergic to emails, but it’s a little unfathomable that a full-time professional writer thinks the best way to apologise to her arch enemy is via a phone call to her office or, failing that, a face-to-face ambush. Surely a good old-fashioned letter would have been infinitely appropriate? The writers could easily have contrived another accidental meeting of the pair, therefore still allowing Natasha to deliver her stone-cold non-acceptance. Carrie’s takeaway? With Natasha back on the market, that’s one more romance rival for her and her chums. Good god.

The repeated references to American Beauty really date this episode. Remember Mena Suvari? Remember the days when Kevin Spacey was best known for his cinematic performances rather than ultra-creepy home videos? Changed days indeed.

Carrie’s column: “Is there such a thing as relationship karma?”

Puns: Miranda is hopeful that the universe is finally throwing her a bone. I probably don’t need to tell you Carrie’s response.

Season 3, episode 16: Frenemies

“Sex is something special that’s supposed to happen between two people who loved each other” – Charlotte

POOR Charlotte. As if her situation with Trey wasn’t hard enough (by which I mean insufficiently hard when it matters), she also has to have her brunch ruined by listening to how much great sex Samantha’s having.

The only way writer Jenny Bicks can make this scene into anything resembling a fair fight is with a side order of implied slut-shaming – but I’m still 100% Team Charlotte and thoroughly unimpressed by Carrie and Miranda hiding behind their menus and refusing to get involved.

Worse still, Carrie promptly does get involved by telling Charlotte “not to be so hard” on the woman who thinks it’s appropriate to tell her friend with the impotent husband that her latest lover made her come six times. “She doesn’t mean to be hurtful,” Carrie tells Charlotte. But surely that’s not the point?

Of course, that line is partly a set-up for Charlotte to reply that she doesn’t need any lectures – because Carrie is inexplicably lecturing at the local learning annex. Despite brushing off Miranda earlier in the week due to “working” on these talks, she only seems to have managed to write about five sentences. It quickly becomes clear the blind is attempting to lead the blind – although to be fair those who signed up should possibly have figured that out for themselves in advance.

Miranda was needing company because her date night was spoiled by the inconvenient death of the man in question. Naturally she and Carrie rock up to the wake, where they meet a man – but the problem is that he’s Carrie’s ex. He was an asshole back then, and it turns out he’s just as much of an asshole now. Miranda should probably have read a bit more into their initial exchange, when she said “I’m a lawyer” and he replied “I’m not drunk enough”. Rude!

The frenemies of the title include a “spunky broad” Samantha meets while out shopping who proves to be even more inappropriate than she is, and Charlotte’s old sorority sisters, who quite reasonably are aghast when she start shouting about getting “fucked hard” over lunch. The rather dispiriting message is that your friends might be brash, insensitive, cowardly and/or utterly self-centred, but they’re probably still the best you can do. Oh dear.

Carrie’s column: “Are we getting wiser, or just older?”

Puns: None detected

Season 3, episode 15: Hot child in the city

“I’m not the kind of girl who scoots to a guy’s terrace on the first date” – Carrie

Youth is the theme of this episode, which begins by introducing us to Jenny Briar (Kat Dennings) – a super-bratty 13-year-old with millionaire parents who’s hiring Samantha to do PR for her Bat Mitzvah.

Eagled-eyed viewers will notice from the off that Jenny is sporting a familiar-looking necklace … and it turns out she’s a fan of Carrie’s columns as well as her style. “You are fucking fabulous,” she barks, as the women look on with a mixture of horror and confusion.

Meanwhile “haute cafeteria cuisine” is all the rage and accordingly the women are regressing to high-school behaviour. Miranda secures a date after some note-passing mischief by Carrie, and it’s all going swimmingly until she has train-track braces fitted.

A quest for shoe repairs brings Carrie into contact with the owner of a comic-book store, who woos her by sending a cartoon portrait of her to her apartment. “I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly felt compelled to call and thank him,” says her voiceover, straining for a superhero reference. It would have been extremely rude not to, surely?

The dialogue continues in a similar vein when Charlotte goes online in search of solutions to Trey’s erectile dysfunction problem. “Ordinarily this was the kind of thing Charlotte would shy away from,” chirps Carrie in the background. “But since her marriage was shy of wood…” (groan)

Comic-book guy is hot, good fun and lives in a fabulous apartment overlooking Central Park. Unfortunately it’s not actually his apartment – it turns out he lives there with his parents. “Not sexy honey – dump him immediately!” declares Samantha, and it’s hard to disagree. After a brief honeymoon period during which Carrie observes live-in parents are like “servants you didn’t have to pay”, the relationship goes belly-up due to some predictably childish behaviour … but on the plus size, Carrie walks away with a big bag of super-strength pot.

Charlotte’s ongoing buzzkill of a storyline doesn’t have much to do with the episode theme, besides a sad nostalgia for the days when holding hands and a kiss on the cheek was enough and there was no googling of bionic penises. Her discovery of Trey wanking over Juggs does, however, lead the couple to a therapist who utters the immortal line: “A client rather whimsically dubbed his anus the chocolate starfish.” Trey’s response: “Are you quite sure you went to Yale?”

When pondering her column Carrie isn’t quite sure whether Jenny and pals are acting too old or she and her friends are acting too young. But when Samantha hears them talking about giving blowjobs to win the attention of boys she realises that for all their wealth and privilege they’ve been denied what really matters – a childhood.

Carrie’s column: Are we 34 going on 13?

Puns: (on potential cures for Trey’s erectile dysfunction) “Ordinarily this was the kind of thing Charlotte would shy away from, but since her marriage was shy of wood…” (groan)

Season 3, episode 14: Sex and another city

“I feel like one of those freakin hairless dogs!” – Carrie, after her first Brazilian

Ooh, Vince Vaughn! Except it’s not really Vince Vaughn. Or rather, it is Vince Vaughn, but he’s playing a character – unlike Matthew McConaughey, who in the last episode was playing himself. Confused? You might be.

The pals are somehow still in LA, milking Carrie’s freebie for all it’s worth, and Charlotte gets so scunnered with Trey and his refusal to discuss their sexless marriage that she hops on a plane to join them.

A week in the sunshine and a reunion with an old friend threaten to transform Miranda from angry and cynical to mellow and spiritual – until, that is, she realises that said friend has an eating disorder and an anger problem. It turns out nothing in LA is quite how it seems on the surface, just like Charlotte’s picture-perfect marriage back home.

Samantha decides to fake it with a knock-off Fendi bag, but ends up being escorted off the grounds of the Playboy Mansion after a run-in with a bunny. The groups’s attendance at a party at said mansion isn’t really explained – we should probably assume Miranda and Charlotte made their usual sensible/prudish objections before being roped in – but it’s worth it for Miranda’s deadpan reaction when they stumble into a grotto pool party: “Look at that – tit soup.”

Meanwhile, the character played by Vince Vaughn dupes Carrie into thinking he’s a big shot when he’s actually just a house-sitter – a house-sitter for Carrie Fisher, no less! The real Carrie Fisher, that is! Our own Carrie is simultaneously mortified and  star-struck when Princess Leia storms in on her in flagrante, and her attempt at writer-to-writer bonding is shut down in brutal fashion. “I have a child … I really can’t do this,” she mutters.

Fashion: Carrie’s pool party outfit is so spot on that I’m almost – almost – willing to forgive the ridiculously-sleeved blouse she wears on her fruitless Fake Fendi quest. As usual, Miranda opts for a needlessly frumpy ensemble, a mere episode after expressing a desire to ramp up her sex appeal. In other scenes Carrie rocks some amazing accessories – including a gold lightning-bolt necklace (teamed with a gold boob tube and white tuxedo jacket and shorts) and an outstanding pink metallic bum bag.

Carrie’s column: When it comes to bags, men and cities, is it really what’s outside that counts?

Puns: It’s been a while.

Season 3, episode 13: Escape from New York

“My husband can’t be impotent – he’s gorgeous!” – Charlotte

Fair play to Carrie, for once – she’s been dumped by Aidan but generously allows Charlotte’s sex-free honeymoon to be top of the pair’s brunch agenda after they exchange their latest bad news. “So, shall we get more coffee, or shall we get two guns and kills ourselves?” she quips first.

There’s not much time to commiserate, however, as Carrie and the other two are off to LA for a holiday she’s manged to blag because someone wants to make a movie based on her columns. Which is ironic, given that the second Sex and the City movie revolves around a blagged holiday.

If you’d asked me what I remembered happening in Carrie’s meeting with Matthew McConaughey I’d have said he propositioned her and she walked out, but I remembered it wrong. Yes, he does tell her he wants to sleep with her, but when he says it he at least appears to be channeling Mr Big – the role he fancies in Sex and the City: The Movie. Carrie doesn’t ditch the follow-up meeting because he’s sleazy, but because his idea of script development involves barking “What the fuck is Carrie’s problem?” as if unaware that she – Carrie – is a real person and not a character.

Little else of note happens in the episode. Miranda has a liberating moment on a bucking bronco, Samantha sleeps with a dildo-model-slash-poet, and Charlotte establishes (albeit not very scientifically) that Trey is capable of getting it up (hooray!), just not with her (ouch).

Two things really date this episode – the naff silky nighties and the fact that Charlotte’s wedding photos are physical prints.

Carrie’s column: Can you ever really escape your past?

Fashion: Samantha’s blue LA outfit is very Samantha and very silly. Carrie’s red get-up effectively communicates the message “I need to be single for a while”. But Samantha redeems herself by wearing a nice blouse to her dildo-distribution brunch.

Puns: None as such, but a lot of sniggering about dildos.

 

Season 3, episode 12: Don’t ask, don’t tell

“Marriage doesn’t guarantee a happy ending – just an ending” – Samantha

Jeez, these women are right cows when it comes to weddings. The trio have all agreed to be Charlotte’s bridesmaids but each one seems to view this as an enormous favour – and each proceeds to give her a different pre-wedding headache.

First there’s Samantha, bitching and moaning about her dress until Charlotte points out she was only included so she didn’t feel left out. She of course proceeds to sleep with the best man, because god forbid she spends even one night in bed with a good book in the interest of reducing the risk of awkwardness at the reception.

Then there’s Miranda, who resorts to speed-dating (or multi-dating, as the show calls it) in order to find a date for the big day. Um… what? In what culture is it cool to bring a complete stranger to a close friend’s wedding? No-one there is going to notice or care that you don’t have a date, because this isn’t about you.

Then of course there’s Carrie, one-upping the rest by choosing the morning of the wedding to tell Aidan she repeatedly cheated on him with Big. She seems to think she deserves some such of prize for honesty, rather than to be instantly dumped.

“Maybe the whole idea is overrated”, she’d pondered earlier on. “Maybe coming clean is the ultimate selfish act, a way to absolve yourself.” Yes, or a way to make your friend’s wedding day all about yourself and spoil the photos with your puffy eyes.

Of course, the day is already marred by Charlotte’s startling discovery that Trey has bedroom performance issues.Not to worry, says Trey: “Sex is such a small part of it for us … that’s what I love about you.” Oh dear. Samantha was right; you really shouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive first. But Carrie has the right approach when Charlotte drops this bombshell moments before the big “I Do”. She decides honesty isn’t the best policy, and provides a reassuring explanation involving a poorly-timed wank.

There’s been barely a nod to Trey’s Scottish roots up until now, yet suddenly he’s wearing a kilt and Charlotte’s walking down the aisle to Scotland the Brave. I’m not convinced our Char would have gone along with this, given how much thought she’s been giving to her wedding day for the past three decades or so (I believe this episode provides the first confirmation of their ages – the core trio are all 34 at this point). Her dad’s there, but reduced to the role of an extra, in keeping with the show’s erasure of familial ties and focus on opt-in friendships.

There’s another poignant ending as a heartbroken Aidan slopes off and Carrie joins the others as her voiceover concludes: “It’s hard to find people who will love you no matter what. I was lucky enough to find three of them”. Sniff!

Carrie’s column: In a relationship, is honesty really the best policy?

Fashion: The champagne bridesmaids dresses aren’t brilliant, but they’re a lot nicer than the pantomime efforts Carrie chooses for her disastrous non-wedding a few years later.

Puns: “Charlotte had something old, something new, something borrowed, and someone Samantha blew.”

Season 3, episode 11: Running with scissors

“Could I feel any more like a hooker?” – Carrie

Good grief. A few episodes ago we learned that Miranda had never been tested for chlamydia in her entire life. This time we learn that Samantha – Sa-fucking-mantha! – has never had an HIV test. Ever. What planet are these women living on? And why is she telling the doctor she only swallows when surprised? She’s only just finished gargling with funky spunk!

The revelation gets Carrie to thinking about safe sex, but in terms of emotional rather than physical high stakes. She ponders how useful it would be to be given a pamphlet warning about this type of self-protection. She’s musing, of course, rather than formulating public policy ideas, but this is the direction in which sex education has been evolving for the past few decades.

Of course, there probably aren’t any schools materials pointing out the heartbreak risk of cheating on your nice boyfriend with your dickish married ex. Surely no-one’s so daft they need that pointed out? The “affair” has now been going on for three weeks, and with Samantha refusing to judge her for it Carrie turns to Miranda, who is rightly appalled.

“I’m just so confused,” says Carrie. “I mean, does he only want me now because he can’t have me?”
“Yes,” replies Miranda bluntly, to Carrie’s dismay.

In Carrie’s defence, the affair does seem super sexy: the pair are creeping around in down-market hotels with no air conditioning, bickering about the difficulties of fitting illicit shags into their busy schedules. In one particularly special moment, Big utters the phrase “let’s get those panties off.” That’s it. Game over. Mr Big? Mr Bleurgh.

Carrie’s then horrible to Aidan, cruelly telling him she hates his kissing noise before switching to needy and annoying mere seconds later. Aidan really has a lot of credit in the bank here. Frankly I think he could do better, girlfriend-wise.

Soon afterwards the cat’s out of the bag when Charlotte bumps into the panties-off pair exiting a hotel together. Carrie tries to convince her she feels bad for Natasha, but it’s an obvious lie and Charlotte doesn’t let her away with it. Good.

After a session in the marital bed – and fresh from being mistaken for a prostitute – Carrie says she can’t got on like this. Big responds by threatening to tell Natasha it’s over then issues an ultimatum to Carrie – in or out. Carrie seeks clarification – what’s he really offering? A proper, public relationship, “out in the daylight”? “Carrie, in or out,” he repeats, like a slippery Brexiteer MP. Things then take a disastrous turn (that I’d totally forgotten about) when Natasha comes home early to find a half-naked Carrie in the flat, gives chase and falls on her face.

I’m really not sure why Carrie then declares to Big that “we’re so over, we need a new word for over”. Because he was willing to leave his wife for her? Was she, in fact, was the one who only wanted someone she couldn’t have?

Elsewhere, Charlotte’s hijacking brunch with her quest for the perfect wedding dress. “Kill me, please,” is Miranda’s typically on-message response. “Just take a sharp object and drag it across my throat.” Fortunately, everyone is spared the effort of helping Charlotte plan her outfit when Samantha gives her the number of bitchy stylist Anthony. This seems a little cold. They’re bridesmaids, right? Isn’t this stuff part of the gig?

Carrie’s column: When you crawl in bed with someone, is sex ever safe?

Fashion: Charlotte wears a nice grey halterneck dress for her trip to Vera Wang with Anthony. It reminds me of the lovely blue number with lapels she sported when Trey took her to Tiffany’s.

I also love the navy shirt dress  and red scarf combo Miranda wears to make an irrational complaint of sexual harassment against a man dressed as a sandwich.

Puns: Nope.

Season 3, episode 10: All or nothing

“You have no right to do this.
You can’t just come back into my life and fuck it all up” – Carrie, to Big

“Next time we’re going to a hotel,” says Big, lying in Carrie’s bed. “I can smell the guy on your sheets: woodchips and Paco Rabanne.”
“He doesn’t wear cologne.”
“Maybe he should.”

Carrie should be defensive at that. If she loved Aidan she’d surely be sick with guilt at the mention of him, even if the context wasn’t a suggestion that he stinks. Instead, her voiceover informs us: “It all felt so easy and so good”.

Technically, there had been no exchange of L-words at this point, a fact Samantha was keen to emphasise. “Don’t beat yourself up,” she tells Carrie, refusing to judge (“not my style” she purrs with an adorable wink). “Aidan hasn’t said ‘I love you’ yet – until he does, you’re a free agent.” Inevitably, the three little words follow a few days later … shortly after she’s fallen into bed with Big for a second time. “Apparently I had become lovable,” she reflects. “I felt awful. And so good.”

Later there’s a heart-stopping moment after she sneaks out to see Big, promptly loses Aidan’s dog then has a meltdown back at the apartment. “I don’t want be paranoid here, but I can smell something,” he says. “Are you cheating?” … but he’s referring to her smoking habit, not her infidelity. “Are you gonna quit?” he asks, and her reply – “I really want to” – feels like an answer to a different question. It’s a great performance by SJP.

At Samantha’s housewarming party I had to laugh at an incredulous Miranda’s “you can get DVDs delivered?” Sometimes I forget that our characters don’t even have mobile phones, let alone Netflix and chill. Still, a landline’s all Miranda needs for old-school phone sex with a colleague from the Chicago office. Unfortunately, the hi-tech sophistication of Call Waiting allows him to talk dirty to multiple women at once.

The theme of the episode is having it all, although not the conventional combination of job, husband and kids – more like friends, boyfriend, fabulous apartment and free-flowing cocktails. This is the one where Samantha gets the flu and loses her mind because not one man in her little black book is willing to come and help her out with her curtain pole (not a euphemism – an actual curtain pole). In her delirious state she bemoans the fact that she hasn’t got hitched – interestingly, earlier in the episode she makes a rare reference to her childhood, breezily remarking “at my age, my mother was saddled with three kids and a drunk husband”.

Charlotte is dismayed when Trey casually hands her a prenuptial agreement, and wounded to discover she’s only worth half a million dollars (and that’s assuming she sticks with him for 30 years). Contracts and bonuses threaten to ruin the romance … until she successfully negotiates with Bunny, declaring: “I’m worth a million”. Of course, we all know she won’t be cashing in three decades down the line … and the less said about the baby bonuses (for sons only, please note) the better.

Carrie’s poignant thought as Trey whisks his fiancee away from her pals caught me by surprise: “It was then that each of us realised that we didn’t have it all,” she says. “Because we no longer had Charlotte.” Sob!

Carrie’s column: Can we have it all?

Fashion: A few episodes ago Charlotte was so insecure about her thighs she wouldn’t sit in a sauna. Now she’s wearing the world’s least flattering lime green mom trousers to Samantha’s housewarming. They’re so awful I had to take a photo of my TV. Her blue dress, hair and make-up at the engagement party are lovely though. Carrie wears a fabulous kelly green bodysuit while sorting out her shoe collection, then the most ludicrous dungaree shorts for Aidan’s homecoming.

Puns: Nada.

Series 3, episode 9: Easy come, easy go

“We always used to share a cigarette together” – Big
“We did a lot of things that were bad for me together” – Carrie

The problem with Big is that he just isn’t a nice guy. He’s an arsehole, in fact, and not even a very charming one. Frankly I reckon he and Carrie deserve each other … just when I’m feeling sorry for her, whoops, she’s cheating on Aidan.

Things are going swimmingly between the pair, and they’re having coupled-up fun at a design show, when along come a miserable-looking Big and Natasha in search of new furniture. Carrie’s response, naturally, is to crouch down on the floor. Once she’s upright things are no less awkward, and just when it seems like she has no choice but to introduce Big to her beau – using his actual name – there’s an accident involving hot coffee.

Drinks of a different kind are involved soon after, as a drunk and sloppy Big returns to bemoan his “bullshit beige” married life. Addressing Carrie through a trumpet made from a rolled-up auction catalogue, he announces in a sing-song tone: “It’s not working. I’m getting out. If you know anyone who’s interested…” Carrie scathingly declares that no-one is interested in that information, and naturally we instantly cut to her promptly announcing the news to her very interested friends.

“Why’s he telling you?” asked Miranda, aghast.
“I dunno,” replies Carrie. “To save postage on his newsletter?”

She assures everyone that she is not going to doing anything, for two reasons:
“first, I have a great boyfriend, and second, I’m not insane”. So far, so sensible. But the episode is all about the conflict between going with your heart rather than your head.

Miranda and Steve might have split up but he’s still hanging around, because he has “no money, no savings, nothing”. It’s only been three weeks but obviously he can’t be expected to go all that time without a shag, so he has no choice but to give out Miranda’s landline to all and sundry. Dick. “A 34-year-old guy with no money and no place to live – because he’s single, he’s a catch. But a 34-year-old woman with a job and a great home – because she’s single, is considered tragic”. Ugh.

Here’s Bunny! I remember Trey’s mother being infuriatingly interfering – what I didn’t recall was that Charlotte quickly picked up on her sure-fire way of getting Trey to do anything she wanted … and put it into action herself. Unfortunately, a combination of great expectations and this intoxicating power leads her to blurt out her desire to get married … and Trey’s response is a crushingly unromantic “alrighty”. Fortunately, a well-timed trip to Tiffany’s puts a smile back on her face.

Samantha’s storyline, about a guy with “funky-tasting” spunk, is most notable for the glorious first 15 seconds of this clip:

But back to Carrie and Big. When he calls and leave a message asking her to call him back urgently, it seems to me the most likely explanation is that he’s horrified to have blabbed about his marital woes to his big-mouthed sex columnist ex. “He wants to get back together, right?” says Carrie. “What happened to the not-insane part of you?” replies Miranda. Of course Carrie’s gone all giddy-knickers with expectation by the time she returns his call, and you’d think it’d be something of a passion-killer when he says that he’s thought about getting out of his marriage, “but it’s gonna cost me a lot, so maybe you should forget about what I said”.

Instead of getting a grip of herself and reminding herself that Aidan is not only lovely, thoughtful and kind, but up for spending a whole day sanding her floors for free, she complains about the noise he makes while doing said DIY, complains about his dog (who apparently “deletes things” while she’s trying to write), complains about the cost of going to a hotel, and strops out. Disastrously, Big shows up and won’t take no for an answer, telling her he loves her and forcing himself on her in a lift. By the end of the episode he’s blowing cigarette smoke in her face (gross) and she’s musing “Just like that, I lost my head”.

Carrie’s column: When it comes to relationships, is it smarter to follow your heart or your head?

Fashion: It seems to glaringly apparent now that Natasha wore white in every single scene, but I don’t remember this from first time round, when I had to wait a week between episodes. No wonder she’s a fan of beige furniture too. What a bore.

Puns: Nope.