Sex and the City - Season 2, Episode 14

"Louder, neighbors! Louder!"

"The Fuck Buddy"
Original airdate: 9/5/1999

Episode summary: Carrie tries to turn her fuck buddy into a boyfriend. Samantha is turned on by her neighbors' loud sex romps. Miranda dates a perpetually angry lawyer named Kevin.

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Recap: Carrie runs into - ugh - Skipper, who bitches and moans to her about how women are always breaking up with him. We then get a needless series of flashbacks of his various breakups, including when Miranda told him she wanted to spend more time on her career. Skipper laments to Carrie about his horrible pattern of hooking up with women who are attracted to jerks, and speaking of horrible patterns...

Miranda is dating Kevin, a perpetually angry lawyer who bitches and moans about everything all the time. As they stroll down the street together, he bitches about how much he hated the movie they just saw...then irritably hails a cab, and impatiently smacks Miranda's ass as she climbs into the back seat. When they get to Miranda's place and things take an implausibly romantic turn, he barks orders at her: put your hands above your head! Spread your legs! When he kisses her neck, she's somehow so turned on that she can't help herself from going wild...'cause while she generally hates being ordered around, she finds it hot when Kevin does it during sex.

"You will obey me and like it, wench."

"Yes sir."

​The next day, the gals get together for a picnic lunch in the park. Miranda tells them about how Kevin ordering her around is annoying except when they're in the sack, and exclaims, "It's totally hot!" Samantha suggests she limit her contact with him to just sex, and Miranda jokes, "Well there's a healthy relationship" as though she's ever actually embraced the notion of being in a healthy relationship. She explains that Kevin's going through a particularly stressful time 'cause he's trying to make partner at his firm - but Carrie insists she's just attracted to angry guys. Miranda counters by accusing Carrie of having an annoying pattern of expecting perfection from guys and having enormous expectations, and Samantha concurs and tells Carrie she wasted far too much time on Mr. Big, and that the most efficient way to find Mr. Right is to date a bunch of guys all at once. Carrie wryly says she'll know what to expect the next time she meets a forty-three year old emotionally unavailable man, and Miranda snaps, "Will you? Or will you just make the same mistake over again?"

Carrie's in her apartment, contemplating whether or not they're all just victims of conditioned responses, doomed to repeat the same unconscious relationship dating patterns. She stares hopelessly into space for a few seconds, then types on her computer: Were we all, in fact, just dating the same person over and over again?

Samantha hears her next door neighbors getting it on and is all, "Wha-a?" 'cause the idea that someone other than her having great sex and flaunting it was more than she could bear. She manages to get over it pretty quick, though, and decides, "If you can't join 'em, grin like an idiot, and start masturbating." 'Cause that's not weird at all.

"How dare my neighbors pleasure each other without inviting me over for a three-way."

"I just remembered: I have ten digits of my own!"

Carrie realizes that after her Big breakup, she was falling into some old patterns of her own: staying out until 3am, sleeping until noon, ordering greasy Chinese takeout...and calling a guy named John McFadden, aka her fuck buddy. She invites him out for "a drink", and he goes, "Great!" He arrives that evening, and they each down a glass of red wine before quickly hitting the sack.

Post coitus, Carrie and John share small talk, which is awkward since they don't actually know a whole lot about each other. It suddenly dawns on Carrie that she has a "between relationships" pattern, meaning she always indulges in doinkfests with John after a breakup. She wonders why she never considered having a relationship with an easygoing guy like John, so she asks him out for dinner on Friday night, and he shrugs indifferently and goes, "Yeah, sure."

"Would you like to have dinner with me on Friday night?"

"If by dinner you mean another romp, I'm in."

An indignant Samantha tells Carrie it would be proposterous for her to turn her fuck buddy into a human being and go on dates with him. Charlotte scrunches her face in confusion and goes, "What's a fuck buddy?" and Samantha scrunches her face in disgust and goes, "Oh come on." Carrie explains that a fuck buddy is a guy with whom dating didn't go anywhere...but with whom sex is so great that you keep him on call. Turns out all the Sex and the City gals have one but Charlotte.

Charlotte decides to buck her usual patterns and, for the first time in her life, asks a man she met in yoga class out to dinner.

Carrie gets so inspired by Charlotte that she wonders whether or not she could break her bad patterns and have a meaningful relationship with a man she barely knows and has only ever had shallow sex with...'cause, yeah, that sounds like something worth pursuing. A few seconds later, John arrives at her apartment and starts smooching her - and she stops him and tells him she made reservations at a sushi restaurant. He stares down at her crotch and goes, "Cool!", and she's like, "No, we're really going out to an actual restaurant to eat sushi." He stares at her blankly with a discombobulated look on his face...and she awkwardly walks over to her bed to retrieve her purse.

John isn't into sushi and orders chicken teriayki, then says he'll grab a burger if he gets hungry later. He and Carrie stumble through awkward banter, and then the two go back to his place for a quickie. She voice-overs that she needed a dose of good sex to erase the last two hours, then puzzles over how someone so stimulating in bed could be so tedious in life.

Samantha is laying in bed with a glass of wine and a joint, waiting for her neighbors to start doing the wild thing. When the moaning starts on the other side of the wall, Samantha gets all into it and moans loudly...and when she taps the wall in the throes of masturbatory passion, her neighbors suddenly fall silent.

The gals get together at a restaurant to meet Miranda's angry lawyer boyfriend and are waiting for him to arrive. Charlotte announces that she has a date with Yoga Guy later, and that she also has many other dates lined up...and Samantha nods approvingly and tells her she's starting to date like a man. A few seconds later, Kevin arrives, bitching about the incompetence of the cab driver. He barks at the waitress to bring him a beer, then excuses himself to make a phone call. Samantha says he seems tightly wound, and Miranda says she hopes he's able to unwind a bit once he makes partner, hopefully Tuesday. Kevin's beer arrives at the table, and Miranda carefully wipes it down so he won't "go off" on the waitress for daring to bring him a wet glass. Yikes.

Charlotte is on her date with Yoga Guy, having fun banter about all the children they want to have someday. She suddenly checks her watch and realizes she's running late for date #2. She coughs and pretends she suddenly has a sore throat, and a concerned looking Yoga Guy asks for the check.

Samantha gets a note from her horny neighbors, inviting her to "come over and say hello". She pokes her head in the hall and asks the custodian, Jesus, if he knows the couple who live next door...and if so, are they good looking. He nods and stammers, "Yes, very nice, very good." Sounds confidence inspiring.

Charlotte returns to her building with Date #2 and kisses him good night...but while they're kissing, Yoga Guy exits her building and sees them kiss. He's all, "Wha-a?" and tells Charlotte he was just leaving her some chicken soup for her "sore throat". He sarcastically says, "I see you've healed" and tattles to Date #2 that he was the guy she had dinner with before him. Date #2 asks Yoga Guy if he'd like to share a cab, and as the two amble off together, Charlotte vows to never take dating advice from her idiot friends again.

A scantily clad Samantha prances down the hall and knocks on her neighbors' door. When they answer, Samantha gasps at the sight of the portly, middle-aged uggos and pretends she came by to ask them if they'd mind keeping it down during their doinkfests, then rushes back to her apartment and moves her bed to the opposite wall.

"You have a purdy mouth."

"Avon, anyone..?"

Miranda and Kevin are out, celebrating Kevin making partner at his law firm. She toasts his achievement, but he gets all snarky and bitchily retorts, "I'm falling all over myself with glee." He complains that he's now going to have to work harder for essentially the same pay - and a fed up Miranda snaps, "Can't we enjoy your success for one fucking second??" Kevin accuses her of living in Never Never Land, and doesn't get the kind of pressure he's under...then complains about suckiness of the champagne they're drinking. Miranda decides she's had enough of his bitchitude, tells him to never call her again, and walks out of the restaurant. Carrie voice-overs that in a weird twist, angry Kevin turned Miranda into a cock-eyed optimist. A few seconds later, Miranda runs into Skipper, who's like, "Ack!" and wisely breaks into a run. She calls after him, offering to buy him a drink, but he continues to hoof it.

Carrie and John stroll back to her brownstone after going out to a movie. She wanted so badly to translate their passionate sex into at least a friendship, but when he leers at her and says, "Your tits look really great in that thing", it becomes painfully clear that a friendship between them is not to be.  She declines to invite him in, and he's totally OK with that...and as the two kiss goodnight, Carrie voice-overs that she knew it was the last time they'd ever see each other. After that experiment gone awry, she throws herself back into her old patterns of staying out until 3am, sleeping until noon, eating greasy takeout...and feeling restless.

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