Season One, Episode Eight: Three's a Crowd

The Summary:

Learning from Charlotte that her new fella wants them to try a threesome (Miranda: “Of course he does, every guy does.” Really? Even the Pope?), Carrie decides to make threesomes the focus of her latest column. She goes around New York asking complete strangers about the topic (which I would think might be awkward, but no matter!), and then decides to go a bit closer to home, asking Big if he’s ever done one. Turns out he has… with his ex-wife. Huh. Carrie didn’t so much know that he’d ever been married! (Big, keeping secrets and being shady? SHOCKING.) Instead of asking Big about said ex-wife and marriage, she elects instead to stalk the lady in question. (Sigh. And just one short episode ago, I was so proud of you for being all direct and candid with Big, C.B.) Discovering that Big’s ex works in publishing, Carrie sets up a meeting to pitch a book proposal to her (ostensibly) and to gawp at her/find out as much as possible about her (actually). (What Carrie neglected to discover, however, is that The Ex works in children’s books, so she has to invent a children’s book plot on the spur of the moment—Little Cathy and Her Magic Cigarettes. Sounds like a bestseller to me!)

The Ex is accomplished, beautiful, charming, smart—Carrie ends up liking her a lot. Bummer. At their next meeting, Carrie (still not revealing her secret identity as Big’s current inamorata) learns from The Ex that she and Big had broken up because his wandering eye had (as The Ex puts it) “wandered right over to my best friend.” (Classy, sir, very classy.) Noticing that Carrie is acting loopy, Big calls her out on said loopiness and then, poof, the floodgates open. Turns out, Big and his ex-wife still talk, so he already knew that she’d met Carrie! Turns out, (according to Big, anyway), that he and The Ex had had a threesome/he had been unfaithful “because we were both looking for something, or someone else”! Carrie is appeased by this explanation. And why not, I don’t see any red flags there except… [struggles with the prospect of listing them all. Yikes.]

Elsewhere in Threesome Land: Samantha is involved with Ken, who is married. Sleeping with a married bloke is great, Sam tells the ladies, because it’s so no fuss, no muss—his commitments, his time, his attention is all safely dedicated elsewhere. Surely, that logic couldn’t possibly backfire… until it does, and Ken decides he wants to leave his wife for Sam. Whoops. She dumps him immediately, of course… perhaps, taking away a lesson about the Perils of Adultery? I hope?

Meanwhile, Charlotte muses over whether or not she actually wants to do a threesome with her new gentleman caller, Jack. She decides that she might. When an opportunity arises at a party, Charlotte decides that she’ll go for it… only to find out that by “have a threesome,” Jack meant “sleep with another woman and forget that you exist.” (Cue Charlotte’s Disappointed and Baffled Face.)

And speaking of disappointed and baffled… Miranda’s feeling a little of both because, when the four ladies had been discussing threesomes over brunch (pity the elderly ladies sitting at the next table…), she gets left out of the “who would you do one with?” chatter. (Charlotte says she’d feel safer doing one with a friend like Carrie, Carrie says she’d prefer to do one with an experienced lady like Sam, and Sam says she’d want to do one with a newbie like Charlotte… no room for Miranda, apparently!) Miranda talks to her therapist about it. She responds to an ad for a couple seeking a third party for a threesome, hoping that they, at least, will validate her as threesome-worthy. They do, and uninterested in actually threesome-ing, Miranda promptly dumps them. Problem… solved, I guess?

The Analysis:

Adultery As A Source of Comedy Watch: Maybe I was just forced to read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina too many times in college, but the light-hearted way this episode treats adultery troubles me. (Not that I think all adultery plots should end in trains and arsenic, I want Edna Pontellier to still be with us, painting and daydreaming about grassy fields as much as the next person.) I quite intensely dislike the fact that Sam’s efforts to have a trouble-free fling with a married guy are almost exclusively played for laughs in this episode. Yes, the affair blows up in her face and gives her some uncomfortable moments, but the pain she caused her fling’s wife and the damage she did to said wife’s life/marriage—glossed over and made light of. Later in the series, the show takes issues of (in)fidelity and its human costs very, very seriously indeed, but clearly… we are not there yet. Until we get there, please, Samantha, stay away from the married gents not in open marriages/who are cheating scum? I promise, you’ll be glad you did!

Ladies Pursuing Their Own Inclinations, How Charming, Watch: Remember all that stuff I said a few posts ago about how any “alternative” sexual practice is almost always reacted to with distaste by our “normal” ladies but warmly embraced by Samantha? Well, when I said “almost,” I meant it—because darned if Charlotte doesn’t consider doing a threesome in this episode. The show makes it clear that she initially considers it just to make her new gent happy (thumbs down) but eventually considers it because she genuinely wants to do it, for herself (thumbs up.) And her friends are very charmingly supportive, urging her to do it if and only if she actually wants to, and not to do it if she actually doesn't. Good, good, good.

Threesomes=Sign of Immaturity? Watch: Of course, Charlotte never actually engages in any threesome-like activity, because it turns out that when her fella said that he wanted to have one, he more meant… that he wanted to cheat on her/have sex with any other lady who offered. (Delightful.) I’d take this as an isolated incident of “well, that guy’s a schmuck,” were it not for Carrie’s final words in the episode—that the appeal of a threesome is that it’s easy—that it’s being in a relationship like hers, with only one other person, which is “the bitch.” Now, I get the point here—that actually seeking to have an intimate relationship (rather than just a casual, numerically complicated encounter) with someone is hard. Point taken, duly noted. But if I was going to be picky (and you know that I am going to be picky), I think this could also be read as “My monogamous self is more interested in doing the hard emotional work of having an exclusive relationship, unlike those shallow folks who distract themselves with silly things like threesomes.”

My antennae always perk up (or whatever it is that antennae do) when I hear an “us vs. them” tone creeping into Carrie’s pronouncements—when her musings seem to lean in a “clearly, my choice to be in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship signals my emotional maturity, unlike those other people, who take the easy/shallow way out” direction. Because equating only monogamous, heterosexual relationships with validity/emotional maturity/legitimacy… doesn’t have the nicest history. Fly the Heterosexual Monogamy Flag high, by all means, I knock it not—it’s a fine flag. But… don’t be insulting other people’s flags, in the process. [Wonders to self if flag metaphor works, or is too suggestive of the Olympics/United Nations/games of Capture the Flag. Cannot decide, so leaves it in. Also, wonders what the Heterosexual Monogamy Flag might look like… hopes it has a dragon on it. All the best flags have dragons.]

Notable Quotables: Carrie, musing on how hard it is to not have Other People loom large in a relationship, as she tries (and fails) to sleep in Big’s bed one night: “Because even if you’re the only person in the bed, someone has always been there before you.”

Miranda, trying to explain to her therapist why being left out of the Threesome Discussion bothers her so much: “If your friends won’t go down on you, who will?”

Next Up…?: “The Turtle and the Hare”—otherwise known as “The Ladies Go to a Wedding.” Ooooh, I always love those episodes! (Excluding the wedding in the second movie, which prominently features both Liza Minelli and an interminable rendition of “Single Ladies.” HORROR.)

Season One, Episode Four: Valley of the Twenty-Something Guys

... or Did They Seriously Just Imply that Smith Gals Are Sexually Repressed?

The Summary: As the title of this episode would suggest, much of said episode focuses on the implications of dating a twenty-something bloke as a woman in one's thirties. (Oh, the age gap, oh, the horror! Except... Big has quite a few years on Carrie, and this is not an issue...? Ah, but he is a man, I had forgotten! Five year age difference for an "older" lady? Problem. Ten to fifteen year age difference for an "older" gentleman? Who cares?)

Anywhoozle, Carrie has her first date (or rather, not her first date, since he insists on calling it a "thing") with Big. He quasi-stands her up. Miscommunications and ambiguities abound. Does he like her, or does he not? Does he want to go out with her, or does he not? Who knows? Big = Tricky. Baffled by said trickiness, Carrie falls into a flirtation with twenty-something Sam (notably played by Timothy Olyphant, who has gone on to play an impressive parade of sociopaths since then.) Sam is sweet. Sam is uncomplicated. Carrie sleeps with him. (A + B = C.) All is well until she awakes in his twenty-something flat and is appalled by its squalor, and the attendant immaturity which said squalor implies. She ditches Sam and bumps into Big, who promises to call her for an unambiguous, real, actual date. Hmmmm. We'll see about that.

Meanwhile, Miranda is still dating the twenty-something Skipper, even though she clearly doesn't like him that much/finds him extremely irritating. The fact that she calls their attachment a "fuck thing" might give you a sense of her potential motivations there. Samantha is also dating a twenty-something bloke, Jon, whom she dumps the instant he tells her she has the "cutest little wrinkles in your neck." (Reminders of age = unacceptable.) Charlotte is dating a bloke her own age, Brian (whom, Carrie notes, has Charlotte's "big three--looks, manners, money"--way to be shallow, York!), but of course, problems abound there as well. He asks her to have anal sex with him. She is appalled. She discusses it with the girls. They veer between supporting Charlotte and being amused by her bafflement. Charlotte eventually tells Brian she'd prefer not to engage in this particular act. Good for you, Charlotte, for being honest! Good for you, Brian, for being okay with said honesty! Gold stars for everyone!

The Analysis:

"Non-Normative" Sex Watch: One of the centerpieces of this episode is, of course, the discussion which the four women have about anal sex--should Charlotte partake, or not? What happens if Charlotte partakes, or does not? Interestingly, a lot of said discussion is not about pleasure, but about power. It's less "is this something you want/don't want to do, which you might/might not enjoy?" and more "whatever will he think of you if you engage in this 'deviant' act?" Miranda says that the central question at issue is "if he goes up your butt, will he respect you more or respect you less?", and describes it as a potential "shift in power" which is all about "control." Hmmm. Not so fond of that.

The idea that "alternative" sexual practices are more about perception and power than anything else comes up again when Charlotte talks about why she doesn't want to have anal sex with Brian himself. Charlotte tells him that she just can't, because "men don't marry the Up the Butt Girl, who ever heard of Mrs. Up the Butt? No, no, no, I can't--I want children, and nice bedding." Okay, so, just to make sure that I've got this straight:

1) Men don't marry women who have anal sex. Something about said practice is the antithesis of married respectability, it seems? So... this is a kind of extension of the ever-popular "girls you marry vs. girls you sleep with" dichotomy, and a lady instantly puts herself into the latter category if she engages in any such "deviant" sexual behavior?
2) Motherhood and nice sheets, too, are not compatible with anal sex. Do they make you fill out a questionnaire/application before they let you buy sheets above a certain thread count, or something? Is there a passage in What to Expect When You're Expecting which my friends who are mothers never mentioned???

I simply do not care for the "nice girls/potential wives and mothers don't" message here. Noting, of course, that there is nothing wrong with any lady not wanting to engage in this, or any other sexual practice or activity. But I'd rather that she didn't do it, you know, because she didn't want to do it, and not because she was afraid that engaging in said practice/activity would land her in the Slut/Unmarriageable/Bad Mother/Undeserving of Nice Sheets and Men's Respect category.

It's also worth noting here, I think, that Samantha is a cheerleader for anal sex, calling it "a physical expression the body was designed to experience." Two things to note here, I reckon--1) Charlotte's response to said observation, "What are you talking about, I went to Smith!" never fails to crack me up. Because as we all know, the sexual culture at Smith is renowned for its stuffiness and repression, and 2) it troubles me that this remark kicks off a trend which persists throughout the series--said trend being, that any "shocking" sexual practice is one which Samantha, and only Samantha, is seen to endorse/engage in. (Samantha is the one who has the drawer full of sex toys. Samantha is the one who is unfazed by BDSM. And so on, and so forth.) And since Samantha is always positioned as the "shocking" and "extreme" character, while the other three are the "relatable," "normal" ones, as an audience I reckon we're supposed to look to Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte for a sense of what proper, normative (hetero)sexuality is supposed to look like. And when these three react with a mix of amusement, distaste, and horror when a topic like anal sex comes up, I don't think that this helps matters, but instead pushes us back into a place in which definitions of what "normal" sex is becomes very narrow, indeed.

Person of Color Watch: One of the twenty-something men whom Carrie talks to about why they date women in their thirties, Tim, is African-American. He has, like, two lines, neither of which is particularly offensive or interesting. But still, add him to the tally of People of Color Who Are Visible, and Who Speak!

Random Things of No Particular Interest:
1) I love that Carrie sleeps in an eye mask. Eye masks are pretty. They also seem totally unnecessary in an already dim apartment, but no matter.
2) Technology, my but it does move fast. The computers on display here appear to have been constructed circa 1890.

Notable Quotables: Salesguy, to Carrie and Sam when he catches them making out in a Banana Republic changing room: "Please. This isn't the Gap." (Fascinating, is Gap known as an assignation site???)

Carrie, musing on the likeness of men to addictive substances, as she walks away from Big at the end of the episode: "Maybe all men are a drug. Sometimes they bring you down. But sometimes (like now) they get you so high."

Next Up...?: An episode entitled "The Power of Female Sex" which is, um, about female sexuality and power. Did you see that one coming? I'll bet that you did!