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.