Episode 3: Bay of Married Pigs

Watch Date: 2/2/2011

Carrie goes to the Hamptons to visit her friends, Patience and Peter. (Really? Patience? I think I’m going to have to start a list of ridiculous character names as well.) She says that in return for her hosts’ kindness in letting her stay, she must sing for her supper by placating the couple with sharing tidbits of her sex life so they can live vicariously through her. While I agree that I have often been in situations where my married friends ask if they can live vicariously through my stories, it has never been a form of payment for services rendered in some creepy reciprocal exchange. And, in fact, Carrie makes it seem like she really could care less about this couple and the only reason she is going to visit them is because of their prime real estate in the Hamptons. Thank you for making us single people out to be completely self-centered and opportunistic. Additionally, the shot of Patience and Peter eagerly leaning in to sop up every morsel of Carrie’s story was ludicrous. Who shares those kind of details with both wife AND husband at the same time? It felt like it was breaking some sort of couples code of conduct.

Needless to say, after hearing an earful of Carrie’s debauchery, Peter does something really ridiculous the next morning. Carrie wakes up to find Peter in the hallway outside her bedroom with only a shirt on. No pants. No underwear. He says Patience is off getting stuff for breakfast, as he sips his coffee and enjoys Carrie’s awkward attempts to not look at his apparently very large member. At breakfast, Carrie immediately tells Patience that she bumped into Peter in the hallway without his pants on. Patience is clearly affronted by this news, even though Peter claims he was just on his way to the bathroom.

The next scene is Carrie explaining all this over lunch w/ Sam, Miranda and Charlotte because Patience put her on a bus and sent her home. Aah those super sensitive married women! Sam says “maybe he just wanted to show it off. Like a monkey.” This would be my guess. After hearing about all of Carrie’s sexcapades, he decided to put it out there (literally) and see what would happen as if it’s some sort of fantasy fulfillment moment. He wouldn’t really be doing anything wrong as long as she didn’t act on it so this puts it all on Carrie to choose whether to be in the wrong. Nice. Miranda says that as soon as friends are married, single women become the enemy. Sam says single women are not to be trusted. Well…this is true for Patience now. She does not trust her husband or Carrie, despite her initial interest in Carrie’s sex tales. The reality of having that kind of behavior in her home is completely different. Carrie says of Charlotte, meanwhile, “Charlotte treats marriage as a sorority she’s desperately trying to pledge.” Wait a tick – isn’t that the point for all of them? What makes Charlotte even more desperate than the others? Sam asks how big his penis was just as a waiter with a pepper mill comes around. Carrie eyes the pepper mill and says it’s about right. HELLO.

Stanford says the feud between marrieds and singles is not a cold war – it’s an out and out battle and it’s in the gay community too. They then run into another gay friend of Carrie’s on the street who is recently married to his partner. The man asks her right there and then if she will consider being an egg donor so they can have children. Carrie calls this “single bashing for the new millennium.” I am not even touching this comment.

Miranda goes to firm softball game and gets set up on blind date. With a woman. Her coworker’s explanation is, “I’ve been with the firm 8 months I’ve never once seen you with a guy.” This rationalization kills me. Having been with a company for eleven years I can honestly say that my coworkers would be among the last to know if I was seeing anyone – particularly if the relationship was SHORT of eight months to begin with. So this automatically makes me a lesbian too I guess. Miranda tells the woman in question that she’s straight, but enjoys crushing the opposition in the game with this lesbian nonetheless. This ends up getting the both of them invited to a dinner b/c her boss thinks they are a couple. Miranda’s logic - “she’s determined to make partner even if she has to be a lesbian partner.” Geezaloo.

Carrie decides that married people don’t hate single people – they just want single people figured out. She meets a couple for lunch and they ask if she likes being single. She says she likes it except when she’s at family parties and gets sat at the kids table. Or when she watches them eat off the same fork. (Gag me. That’s exactly what I don’t want in a relationship.) Their conversation is interrupted by a friend of the couple who just happened to “stop” in to the restaurant. Riiiight. Surprise fix up. His name is Sean and by the time the meal is over (the couple has left them to dessert and coffee alone) it’s also clear that his sights ARE set on marriage. When he asks if they can have dinner sometime, Carrie has a look on her face like, “I’d rather eat lima beans” but says yes. In the course of a week they go to two movies and it’s obvious she’s bored with him. I get it – they have different interests. But then again…what does she expect will happen once she’s actually IN a relationship? Does she think every night is going to be drinks at Cheers? He takes her with him to look at new apartments. She calls Sean a DKNY suit – it’s not your style but it’s right there on the rack. Oh man that’s terrible. If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with? But she doesn’t even love this relationship, or him. So you’re out there in the dating world to figure out what you like and what you don’t like – I get that. But if you’ve just called him a DKNY suit then it’s time for the break up.

Meanwhile Miranda steps off the elevator with her fake lesbian girlfriend. Why this woman would put up with being someone’s fake date for the night is beyond me. They don’t introduce her character at all – she’s got no lines. It’s like she’s a lesbian mannequin and she’s just supposed to look good on Miranda’s arm. Miranda has decided to play her part in a painfully straight way. While her date is wearing a pretty dress, Miranda has opted for a full suit and TIE. So now not only is she a fake lesbian, but she’s a fake butch lesbian? I don’t get it.

The rest of the girls go to house warming party for Sean and as they walk in they realize it’s all couples. In the first scene where Samantha is trying to talk to a guy that she does not want to sleep with, the man’s wife thinks she’s trying to get in his pants anyway. Perhaps it’s the dress with the neckline that plunges down to her waistband that gave the wrong impression? Sam then realizes that two of the married men there are men she’s slept with in the past. She begins mainlining tequila.

Sean’s giving a house tour and shows them the office where he wants to one day have a baby room. He’s already picked up a mobile that he bought in Aspen. Charlotte and Carrie cringe like he’s just showed them a placenta. Charlotte thinks he’ll ask Carrie to marry him b/c he bought real estate. All his friends start selling Sean to Carrie HARD. Two even claim they’ve slept with him before and talk up his abilities in bed. This is getting pretty serious for a couple of weeks in a DKNY suit

Horror of all horrors, Carrie then runs into Patience and Peter at the party. Patience is muy relieved that Carrie is dating Sean b/c she obviously can’t be a threat to her relationship if she’s dating someone. Drunk Samantha comes upon the couple and lets it slip that she’s heard about Phillip and calls him “Pepper mill dick.” Ouch. I guess Carrie will not be seeing these people again.

Miranda finishes dinner and tells her boss she’s not a lesbian and that she took advantage of the situation to further her career. The boss says his wife will be disappointed because she wanted to add a lesbian couple to their group. While I find this completely ridiculous, I am pretty sure there are people out there who act like this. In the elevator on the way out Miranda awkwardly forces a kiss on the girl. She then says “Definitely straight.” Her date agrees. So does this mean she is that desperate for a relationship, or does it mean she’s that desperate for her career? Either way – desperation is a stinky cologne.
Drunk Samantha goes home with Charlotte but makes her way back downstairs after Charlotte’s asleep and throws herself on the doorman, only wearing her lingerie under her coat. She asks him to kiss her right there on the street and then takes him up to Charlottes place and sleeps with him.

Back at the party, Carrie is going to leave but Sean tells her he was hoping she’d stay. She tells Sean she was trying him on to see if he fit. This is one of the worst break up comments I’ve ever heard. It might be true but do you TELL HIM THAT? He says she could probably smell his desperation and he doesn’t understand what’s wrong – he thought all women wanted to get married. Carrie has a light bulb moment and tells him she knows someone who is perfect for him – Charlotte. They do seem to hit it off UNTIL he takes her to look at china and she calls it off. “Charlotte realized it would never work. He’s American classic –she’s French Contemporary.” WHAT? THAT’S the blow off? I don’t believe this. Perhaps Charlotte has a keener sense of “art” as a dealer and so this sentence is supposed to mean more than it does here but we’re talking about china patterns, not art, so what the hell. A relationship isn’t going to work because you have different taste in china patterns? You’re boiling it all down to THAT? Are we as viewers supposed to know the lifestyles that accompany both of those categories and understand where she’s coming from, or are we supposed to be flummoxed by her? Is this the china pattern equivalent of me saying, “I knew it would never work because he was into NASCAR?”

Here’s my favorite part of the episode. Carrie compares the war between the marrieds and the singles to the war in NORTHERN IRELAND – maybe we’re all on the same side but we just got split up somehow? Words can’t express how ridiculous this statement is. Yes – you’re absolutely right Carrie. Married and single people not understanding each other is exactly the same as decades of etho-political and religious feuding, riots and violence. Perhaps the writers thought this comparison was made acceptable when they made Charlotte’s doorman Irish?

The episode ends with the girls taking in a movie together. Miranda shows to the movie in a matrix style leather trench coat and LEATHER PANTS. She looks like an idiot.

Roll credits.

As a single person with tons of married friends, this episode was particularly painful to watch. The pressure these characters are putting on themselves by claiming all the marrieds are constantly judging them because of their status tells me that these people are not their friends to begin with. It reminds me of the scene in Bridget Jones when Bridget shows to a dinner party as the only single person and the couples eat her alive. This isn’t what real life is like with people who are truly your friends. Or at least, not with my friends. My friends support and appreciate my status despite their own desires to see me coupled up. Hanging out with them is not some sort of test of their relationship and they don’t treat me as if I am constantly trying to break them up. And I agree that every relationship is about figuring out yourself – determining what you like in the relationship, what your needs are, what you can’t possibly tolerate, etc. But the execution for these characters is just painful. One minute they complain they can’t find guys who want to commit but then the next they are complaining because the men in their lives want too much commitment. They aren’t even true to their sense of their own needs and they change their mind about what those needs are frequently. And I guess I’d buy that more if these characters were supposed to be in their early twenties, but these are supposed to be established women in their mid-thirties. And they are still flailing about the world without a clue of who they are and what they want. It’s dispiriting and disheartening to think that women were watching this show and using it as some sort of goal post for their own lives instead of charging ahead and living their own.