Sex and the City - Season 3, Episode 8

"Whaddya say we rehash our shitty, dysfunctional hookup?"

"The Big Time"
Original airdate: 7/30/2000

Episode summary: Carrie runs into Big, who hints that his marriage is starting to suck. Samantha is bummed when she thinks she's entering menopause. Miranda dumps Steve after he adopts a cute puppy.

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Recap: Carrie voice-overs that Manhattan is the kind of place where you can get anything you want any time...and then we see Miranda hailing a cab at 2:00am, and Samantha receiving a delivery of Chinese food at 3:00am with a naked man standing behind her. Carrie, however, doesn't enjoy this level of availability when it comes to her dry cleaning, and she's irked when she gets there after closing time. Charlotte, meanwhile, is spending all of her free time with her - fingers crossed! - soulmate, Trey: a doctor with a lot of family money and who appears to have it all. He and Charlotte play a lot of kissy-face - but like the good Rules girl she is, she refuses to go past first base and is careful to not invite him into her apartment after their dates. 

At the nail salon, Charlotte gushes to Carrie about how thoughtful Trey is. She says that the other day she told him she wasn't feeling very well, so he brought her some soup...and as a reward, she permitted him to temporary slide into second base. She tells Carrie she wants to take things slow 'cause of how desperate she is for him to be the one. Carrie says she can't possibly know he's the one after only two weeks - but Charlotte is nervously clinging to that hope, and says it's getting hard to not hit the sheets 'cause of how damn sexy he is [meh...he's passable at best]. And so she's limiting her services to "kissing with extras".

Carrie and Aidan spend a lot of time hanging out in her bed, where they eat Chinese food and canoodle. Ugh. 

As Samantha collects her mail in the lobby of her apartment building, an aging hippy named Len Schnieder gives her an appreciative once-over and invites her over to his place for wine spritzers. Samantha stares at him in haughty disdain while Carrie voice-overs, "She didn't think it was OK for over-the-hill losers to be asking out hot women like her." As Samantha flees the lobby, Len schmaltily coos, "I'm keeping you on neighborhood watch!" and she rolls her eyes in revulsion. As she sashays along the street and sorts through her mail, she's annoyed that the pile includes a catalogue called New Transitions, a publication that's geared toward pre-menopausal women. 

"Would you like to come over to my pad for some wine spritzers?"

"Like you even deserve to be standing in the same hallway as me, loser."

While out for drinks with the gals, Samantha throws the New Transitions catalogue onto the table and indignantly pronounces, "I'm not transitioning, I'm happening." Charlotte leafs through it and comes across an article about vagina weights and is all, "Ewww!" Miranda explains that they're for "keeping things tight down there", and Samantha overshares that she does her vagina-strengthening Kegel exercises every day, then lowers her voice all seductive-like and adds, "I'm doing them now." Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda gabble about how great life will be when they reach menopause - then realize that they're currently on the same cycle. Charlotte squeals, "I've heard of this happening!" and Samantha shifts uncomfortably and tells the gals she's expecting Aunt Flow any day now.

Carrie races to the dry cleaner's to pick up her fabulous party dress for the upcoming Gab magazine launch party...but once again she gets there too late, and the guy refuses to reopen the shop (haha!) and accommodate her seeming inability to pick up her dry cleaning during service hours. 

Miranda and Steve are having dinner at a Japanese restaurant while surrounded by screaming babies. Miranda mutters that it's inappropriate to bring babies to restaurants, but Steve says they're cute and that he likes having babies around. He then gets a brain fart and says, "We should do it. We should have a baby" and Miranda assumes he's kidding and goes, "Yeah, right." When she realizes he was being totally serious, she glares at him in horror, calls the idea insane, and barks at him about how the timing isn't right 'cause they've only been living together for two months - plus, she's about to make partner at her firm. Steve says it would be fun and that he could hang out with the baby during the day...but Miranda snarls that it would be a ton of work and that she'd probably be up with the baby all night and then have to go to work all day. Steve glumly stares into his noodle bowl and mutters, "I hope the baby inherits my positive attitude." 

Carrie phones up Aidan (who's walking Pete) and invites him to join her for a boat ride to celebrate the Gab launch party, but he declines and says he'd prefer to stay on dry land.  

Boat party. Carrie brings over some champagne for Charlotte and Trey, and then Trey launches into a tedious blow-by-blow account of how he met Charlotte. Carrie nods politely while voice-overing how tired she is of hearing this re-telling for the umpteenth time - to say nothing of how unnecessary it is to recap for viewers, since we saw the whole thing at the end of the previous episode. Carrie politely excuses herself and heads over to the buffet, where she - ack! - bumps into Mr. Big. He smarmily says, "I thought I might see you here" and when Carrie asks him where Natasha is, he replies, "She missed the boat." Badoom bah. Carrie files away that tidbit and wanders off...and a few seconds later, Charlotte comes bounding over to show her the Cartier watch that Trey just gave her. She exclaims, "I think this is it!" then scampers back to her beloved. Carrie heads over to the railing to wistfully stare down at the water...and Big suddenly appears beside her and says, "Can't we have a conversation anymore?" He asks her if she's seeing anyone, and she says she is...and that he's a kind and decent man [who she, in no way, deserves to have in her life]. Big compliments the fancy blue dress she's wearing, and she jokes that he'd probably be even more dazzled by the sluttastic dress that's currently being held hostage by her dry cleaner. She breezily says, "Good to see you", and then saunters off, doing her best to look unaffected and casual.

"So...do you have a boyfriend?"

"Not if you don't want me to."

The gals are in a restaurant bathroom, primping and gabbling about their concurrent menstrual cycles...except for Samantha, whose period is now five days late. Charlotte starts nattering about how in looooove with Trey she is, and how fate put them in the same place at the same time so they could swoon over each other at first sight. Miranda argues that it's not so much fate as it was Trey's willingness to settle down that brought them together...then compares him to a taxi-cab driver who turned on his on duty sign and picked up the first passenger who flagged him down for a ride. Haha! Samantha gets cranky about her missing period, then wails about how she's all dried up and bummed that her time is up. Carrie assures her that she has years of miserable cramps ahead of her...but Samantha announces that she has a shocking confession to make, then says, "I'm a little older than you" ... and the gals look fake shocked.  

Carrie is in her apartment, tapping out her craptastic column. This week she's pondering whether life is a series of random occurrences...and that if she weren't ten minutes late for everything all the time, would her life be totally different? Would she have ever met Big? Would she finally get her dry cleaning back? Would people appreciate her punctuality instead of always being annoyed at her rude tardiness? 

Miranda is trying to get some lawyer work done in her apartment while Steve eats cereal and watches Scooby-Doo cartoons in the living room. She barks at him to turn the volume down, but he ignores her and says she's going to have to get used to a noisy house once they have a baby. Miranda leaps out of her chair and tells him they're not in a great place to even be thinking about having a baby, then storms over to the living room and bitchily orders him to tear himself away from the cartoons and pay attention to her. He impishly says he can't do that 'cause it's a really good episode, and she snarls, "You know what?! Forget it!" and says she wants to shelve 'the baby thing' for awhile. She gathers up her work stuff, snaps at him to use a coaster for his glass, then storms out of the room...and Steve stares into his cereal bowl with his sad face on. I know Steve's not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but I can't fathom why he'd want continue a relationship with a woman who's so snappishly cunty to him all the damn time.

Miranda tells Carrie that she and Steve are in a shitty place, and complains that he's using the idea of a baby as a bandaid for everything that's wrong in their relationship - like her constant bitchitude, for example. She complains that he acts like a kid, and that she nags him all the time like a mean mommy...then wryly adds, "And no one wants to fuck mean mommy." She says they haven't had sex in over a week - egads! - and wonders aloud if she might be sabotaging this relationship in order to avoid having a baby, despite the loud and increasingly urgent ticking of her biological clock.

Samantha is so despondent about her period pulling a no-show that she lowers her already low bar and accepts a date with Len Schnieder. She gets drunk during dinner, looks visibly depressed as he natters on and on about his artificial hip...and while they're boning in his apartment afterward, she lays underneath him, audibly sighing. After a few quick thrusts, Len happens to glance under the sheets - then gasps and says, "Either you're a virgin or Flow just came to town." Samantha suddenly perks up and laughingly apologizes for the bloody mess, then gets dressed and flees the apartment, buoyed with confidence that she's still hot enough to get banged by guys far better looking than this dullard.

Steve calls Miranda at work and asks her to meet him at a specific address. He promises it'll help their deteriorating relationship, and she unenthusiastically tells him she'll be there.

The address is a pet store, and Steve holds up an adorable fluffy little black and white puppy and proposes that they adopt him...kind of as a pre-baby test run to see if Miranda can handle caring for another living thing without going too squirrelly-bitchy in the process. He promises to do most of the work caring for the pooch, then contorts his voice as if he's the puppy and begs the nice (!) lady to take him home. Miranda calls Steve insane, but then goes, "Yeah, OK, whatever." I already fear for this poor puppy.

"Please take me home, nice lady."

"As long as you promise to never shit, pee, or whine in my presence."

Charlotte and Trey are kissing goodnight in front of her apartment, and he's rehashing the tedious story of how they first met (fuuuuuuuuuuuck). He tries to invite himself in, but she primly tells him she has an early meeting, then says goodnight and closes the door. He softly knocks on her door, and she opens it and smilingly says, "You're very persistent." He replies with, "I love you, Charlotte" and she beams from ear to ear and goes, "You do..?" then returns his I love you and pulls him inside the apartment for an impromptu hand job, Rules be damned.

As anyone could predict, Miranda gets annoyed when the puppy starts whimpering in his little box during the night. She orders him to shut up and go to sleep...but when he keeps crying, she smacks Steve awake and growls, "Are you happy?!" and says she knew from the get-go that this would be a YUGE mistake. Steve picks up the puppy and comforts him while Miranda storms out of the bed and says she's sick of him being the kid in the relationship. A hurt looking Steve asks her if she's going to give up on them just like that, and she's like, "Well, d'yuh" and says that her rage over his childishness has been brewing pretty much since the day they got back together. She flatly states, "This isn't going to work, Steve" ... and when he argues, "There's good stuff here!" she says it's not enough, and that a baby would only be a quick fix. Not to mention an unmitigated disaster for the poor child. Steve wearily says he doesn't want to fight with her anymore, and Miranda weakly insists that she really did try. Sort of. Though not very hard. The next day, Miranda makes partner at her law firm - but after seeing what a heartless bitch she was to the sweet puppy on his first night in a new home, I really couldn't give a shit about her professional milestone.

Carrie and Aidan return to her apartment for the night...and when she asks him if he'd like to sleep over, he's like, "Yep." As he mills around the kitchen, Carrie plays her answering machine - and is so startled by the sound of Big's voice that she hastily shuts it off. An oblivious Aidan tells her she's out of coffee filters and offers to go to the nearby store to pick some up...and on his way out, he looks into her eyes and says, "You make me really happy." Poor, dumb sap. A few seconds later, there's a knock at the door, and Carrie is shocked to find Mr. Big standing on her doorstep. He looks all tortured and mumbles about how he doesn't know what he wants, blah blah.. Carrie firmly says, "No. Go home to your wife" and he whines, "I'm so fucked up." Well duh. Carrie closes the door on him, then plays his answering machine message, which says: "I miss you. I can't stop fucking thinking about you." &^%$#@!! Several minutes later, Carrie moodily stares out the window as she voice-overs that the message Big just left for her came a year too late...and that ten minutes later, she was still waiting for Aidan to return from the store with coffee filters.

​Maybe there was a long line, Carrie.

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