Sex and the City - Season 1, Episode 10

"It's just disgusting, the way some people
decide to settle down and have families."

"The Baby Shower"
Original airdate: 8/9/1998

Episode summary: The gals attend a baby shower in Connecticut for an old friend named Laney.

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Recap: The Sex and the City gals each receive a baby shower invitation as Carrie voice-overs, "Sometimes there’s nothing harder in life than being happy for someone else." The invitation comes from someone named Laney...and in the next scene, the four are lounging around Carrie's apartment, bitching about the nerve of Laney to get pregnant and host a baby shower. Samantha snarks about how sad it is, the way she's using a child "to validate her existence", and when Miranda bitchily concurs, Carrie asks them if they're bugged because it's a baby shower, or because it's Laney's baby shower. All four stare blankly into space as they silently mull this over.

We get a flashback sequence of hard-partying Laney from eight years ago. She's at a dance club, flirting and kissing everyone in her orbit - while Carrie, Samantha, and Miranda (who's sporting a grisly pageboy 'do) huddle together in a doorway. Some guy yells at Laney, "Show us your tits!" and Laney laughs and sassily retorts, "Give it a rest. You've all seen enough of my tits!" A group of men start chanting, "Tits! Tits! Tits! Tits!" so Laney indulges them and starts dancing provocatively while stripping off her clothes. Carrie makes a bitchy remark about all the men Laney's slept with (like she's one to talk), while Miranda shakes her head in dismay as Laney shakes her naughties and says, "Those things make so many public appearances, they need a booking agent." Samantha lets out a disdainful snort at Laney's slutty antics (as though she's not just as brazenly slutty herself), then clucks about how sad it is and calls her "the poster girl for low self esteem." Carrie voice-overs that Samantha (pot) and Laney (kettle) have a long-standing rivalry, 'cause they're both "wild, sexy, and incredibly insecure". But after years of bed-hopping and shameless boob-baring, Laney did something that shocked everyone to the core: she married an investment banker and moved to Connecticut. Egads!

"You wanna see my tits?!"

"Here you go! Get a good look, everyone!"

"How dare that skank try to out-skank Samantha!"

Charlotte suggests it might actually be fun to go to the baby shower, but Miranda growls, "It's a cult" and declares that all women who live in the suburbs talk and dress the same, and surrender to the same cause: babies. She wryly adds, "I've lost two sisters to the motherhood." Carrie says that attending the shower would be the right thing for them to do, and Samantha gleefully remarks that Laney must be really fat now.

Carrie consults her calendar and notices that her period is four days late. And three days after that, we're informed that she's seven days late...but she has to put a pin in that potential crisis 'cause she has a baby shower to get to. She meets up with the gals, who have rented a convertible for the drive to Connecticut, then suddenly goes, "Ack! I totally spaced on a shower gift." Samantha (who's wearing an alarmingly skimpy, belly baring red top) tells her she bought Laney a bottle of scotch, and Miranda wryly says she bought her a box of condoms. Both are bitchy, inappropriate gifts for a mother-to-be...so kudos, ladies. A few seconds later, Charlotte arrives carrying a huge Bellini Baby Basket, grinning with excitement.

The four arrive in Connecticut, and when Laney opens her front door, they all scream fake happily at each other. Samantha blurts out, "Look at you! You're huge!" and an unfazed Laney counters with, "I'm soooo happy! I can eat anything I want. Jealous?"

"Eeeee!"

"Ooooooh!"

"Can we go home now?"

Samantha hands Laney the bottle of scotch and says, "I'm going to have a big drink. Jealous?" and saunters off. Laney makes a WTF? face and asks Miranda and Carrie if Samantha still bed and bar-hops, then clucks sympathetically and says, "It's so sad, isn't it? When that's all you have." It's equally as sad when it's the entire premise of a TV show.

Laney introduces the gals to her snooty suburban friends, then starts opening her gifts...and Charlotte gushes over the cuteness of the baby clothes. Miranda discreetly grumbles to Carrie about how cult-like these women are, then says the two of them need to stick together or risk being drawn into the cult. Carrie morosely stares into space, wondering if she'll be the next woman in this room to have a baby...then flees to the bathroom and asks herself if this baby shower is a preview of a life she's not ready for. As she stares at a giant framed photo of a naked, pregnant Laney, she couldn't help but wonder "what untapped dreams were deeply buried inside all the mommies downstairs".

We then get stupid testimonials, which are supposed to serve as proof that every woman who makes the decision to get married and have kids is selling out and/or secretly regrets her decision. One woman says, "Before I got married, I slept with everyone. Now I have an Internet lover no one knows about." Another woman wistfully says, "I used to be a senior vice president. Now I yell at the gardener", while a third woman stares contemplatively into space and murmurs, "I still think about Lisa.."

Charlotte gushes to Laney about how beautiful her home is, and Laney nods and condescendingly replies, "At some point you have to get serious and settle down." The topic of baby names comes up, and one of the shower guests announces that Laney has already chosen names for her unborn child: Todd for a boy, Shayla for a girl. Charlotte's all, "Wha-a?! That's my secret baby name!" and Laney just kind of shrugs and says she had no idea. Carrie voice-overs that Charlotte invented the name Shayla when she was eleven (even though the name had already been invented), then made her adult friends all swear they'd never use it to name their female spawn. An enraged Charlotte snarls, "You stole my baby name!" and Samantha overhears her, glares at Laney, and snaps, "You bitch! Let's go!" and the Sex and the City gals rush over to the door and beat a hasty retreat.

"Wuh? You can't name your baby Shayla."

"I invented that name when I was eleven, so I own all the rights to it."

"I'm pretty sure you don't."

The gals stop at a bar on the way home, and Charlotte bitches and moans about how the name Shayla would be her daughter's if she weren't still waiting for some guy to fall in love with her, propose, and impregnate her with a girl. Carrie assures her that she has lots of time to squeeze out a few kids, but Charlotte shakes her head miserably and says, "I don't want to be one of those forty year old moms" then looks sheepishly over at Samantha, the group's elder. Samantha protests really hard about how much she loves her life of regularly whoring her way through Manhattan, and refuses to feel inadequate by all this baby talk. Miranda wanks her by telling them she talked to one of the women at the shower who has a master's in finance, but all she wanted to talk about was her diaper genie. Carrie says you don't necessarily have to lose yourself when you have a child, then breaks the news that her period is ten days late...but she doesn't want to tell Big (or whoever else she's been sleeping with) anything until there's something to tell. Why the hell is this woman not on the pill?

Charlotte pulls out her wish box, which is filled with reminders of all the thing she hoped for in life: a pillow for Shayla, photos of a Manhattan townhouse and her dream man. She angrily rips up the photos and tosses the Shayla pillow across the room, then hugs the empty wish box. What a nitwit.

Carrie and Miranda are at the drug store, pregnancy test shopping. Carrie says she doesn't think she'd be very good at motherhood and asks Miranda if she thinks she's maternal, and Miranda half-heartedly says, "Uh...I guess." LOL.

Laney calls up Carrie to tell her it was great seeing the four of them at her shower 'cause it reminded her of how much fun they all used to have. Weird. Does she not remember Charlotte and Samantha bitchily storming out of her house? She says they should get together more often...but actually do it, not just pretend they're going to do it. Carrie breezily promises they'll get together soon (even though we never see Laney on the show again), then tells her she's off to Samantha's party. Laney perks up at that and goes, "Hmm...Samantha's having a party?" 

The theme of Samantha's party is I don't have a baby, and she's dressed in a slinky strapless dress, gleefully pouring classes of champagne for her guests. Laney suddenly bursts into the apartment and announces, "The entertainment has arrived!" and Samantha scowls at her and snaps, "What are you doing here?" so Laney replies, "What I do best! Party!" and demands a drink. Charlotte storms over and demands to know what Laney's doing here, then bitches at her again for killing her dream of naming her non-existent daughter Shayla. Laney retorts, "You're lucky, 'cause I have no idea what happened to my dream."

An investment banker friend of Carrie's asks her if Charlotte is available, and Carrie smiles and says, "Wide open" so he brings Charlotte a drink, and the two start chatting it up. Laney ambles over to the bar and grumbles, "This party sucks" and tries to pour herself a drink, but Carrie stops her and suggests she go home. Laney responds by bellowing, "Hey, you fuckers! Who wants to see my tits?!" and when everyone just sort of stares at her in bemused horror, she climbs onto an ottoman in the center of the room and begins to remove her shirt, which prompts Samantha to cluck in fake sympathy and say, "It's so sad...and the most fabulous validation I've ever gotten in my life!" That in itself is sad, Samantha. Fortunately, Laney finds it too awkward to strip off her maternity top, looks bewildered as she mutters, "This is weird", and decides that she doesn't want to show a group of strangers her hooters after all. ​

"Who here wants to see my tits?"

"Mmm...no thanks."

Carrie walks Laney to a cab and says that a hard-partying floozy just isn't who she is anymore. Laney whines, "No one warned me this was going to happen!" then turns to Carrie and says, "One day you’re going to wake up and you’re not going to recognize yourself." She climbs into the cab, and Carrie knocks on the front window and orders the driver, "Take her to Connecticut." Say what?! From Manhattan?? 

Carrie spends the next day sitting on a park bench, watching cute kids play. She stares into space and silently wonders, "Could I do this? Would I be any good? Would I manage to stay me?" [No. No. Hopefully not.] After that, she ambles in the direction of her home...and during the walk, she gets her period. TMI, Carrie.

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