It's midday on Thursday afternoon and Charlotte is confronting Bunny MacDougal about her prenup with Trey. She wins the fight! She rushes to tearily tell her friends about the win: "I'm getting maaaaaaaried!" I am, of course, completely losing my mind at this point.
Well, here's the thing: Season 3 is the series' peak for many reasons. Like Carrie whirring up a batch of the Fanta grape soda and cough syrup and ice blender concoction Samantha's mother made for her as a child — "More cough syrup!" — by Season 3, the SATC crew had nailed the winning formula. For one thing, it's the prettiest season. Everyone's outfits, while, yes, often insane, are incredibly fun to look at. Everyone's hair is their best-case-scenario hair: Carrie's hair is roots-grown-out and curly, Miranda has finally stopped looking like a model in one of those 1001 Short Haircuts books in the suburban hair salon your Mom took you to in 1989, Samantha no longer has those tragic roots-bangs, and even "Do you think my hair is too shiny?" Charlotte has honed a signature predilection for headbands that prefigures Blair Waldorf's 'do. The characters have become the iconic versions of themselves. They're also a little bit, I guess, more real? Like, there aren't so many episodes that hinge on a "friend" character who appears out of the blue and, say, invites all the girls to her wedding ("She was a question to be answered/and his answer was, 'I do!'"). And there are actual plot arcs besides "Will he call?" Like: Cheating! Yup, things around here are finally getting watchable!
Just in time for my eyeballs to threaten to actually fall out of my freaking head, of course.
Seriously, look at my notes here:
"Is there significance to Carrie's STRAIGHT HAIR in 'The Caste System'"
"Will Arnett giving Miranda head in a cab!"
"Miranda's worst shirt. A black lady with blonde hair."
"'Was I addicted to the pain?'"
"Oh my god. My shrink has the same last name as Carrie's."
"The sex is VILE."
"She starts baring her navel a lot more. I love that they never show her going to the gym. [this of course is untrue, but she never really works out, she just like half-asses her way though some 'goddess workout.']"
"Bon Jovi"
"Why must they make Miranda wear such fug outfits? Seriously, the hat atop the hoodie?"
"They do such fake-ass yoga. 'Tantric headstands?'"
"And just like that, I was thrown back into my old pattern. Greasy Chinese, sleeping til noon, and feeling ... restless."
"I CANNOT HEAR THE WORDS 'IN NEW YORK, [BLAH]' ONE MORE TIME. NOT ONE MORE TIME."
"Oho, one of them has a family member! Charlotte has a brother? Oh, he's here to have sex with Samantha."
"'The new milennium won't be about sexual labels, it'll be about sexual expression.'"
"They are such assholes at the sex workshop"
"'I'd like to show HIM my lower Manhattan.'"
"'Luckily, Manhattan has spas where a woman can pay to feel good about herself.'"
"'And I don't do laundry sometimes for like ... two weeks, and my sponges smell, and you're gonna see all that!"
"'Get a room!' 'Get a dental dam!'"
"Sam has the fakest orgasms ever."
I'm sorry, Anna. I was going to try to write something cogent about how off-puttingly unrealistic all of the sex on Sex is, especially Samantha's aria-orgasms, and how the only sex that seems like it might be remotely good is Miranda's because she is always flushed and unafraid to look totally ugly while doing it. And how Samantha and Miranda always come from what looks like penetration alone.
But right now, the girls are in LA and Samantha is having sex with a dildo model and Charlotte is wrapping paper around Trey's ween to see whether he is impotent and Carrie is sticking her feet in the pool and when the cute guy asks "Are you sure you want to be alone" she says "Yeah" and thinks "As soon as I said it aloud, I realized that it was just what I wanted, and needed," and really, three days in? It's all I can do to watch.