The Carrie Diaries 2.02 “Express Yourself” Recap

Manhattan is in the middle of a hellish heat wave and while Carrie and Walt are trying to unwind by reading their newspapers in front of their fans, Samantha is walking around naked and putting her underwear in the refrigerator. Rather than the few days she said she would be staying, Samantha has been in the apartment for the past three weeks and gotten much too comfortable with being naked around Carrie and Walt, making the latter especially uncomfortable. In addition, she’s slobby and has zero boundaries, but Carrie, as afraid of hurting people’s feelings as ever, still hasn’t told her new friend that she needs to move out ASAP, even with her new career as a phone sex operator. Fresh from seeing Dorrit off on a trip with Audrey’s family to the beach, Tom calls and gets a brief earful of said career, which Carrie nervously shrugs off as a party line when Samantha hangs up the phone. He’ll be spending time with his girlfriend Deb this weekend and Carrie has seemingly come to terms with her father dating; the other reason he called, aside from just checking in, is to inform her that the niece of a client knows someone in charge of a program for gifted young writers and he got her an interview.

Sebastian’s father brings home a silver 1955 Porsche Spyder similar to James Dean’s Little Bastard, the car that the two always talked about owning together one day. Even though it has some terrible upkeep costs, his father bought the vehicle as something for the two of them to work on together. Meanwhile, over at Columbia, Mouse has entered an organic chemistry program meant to give her a leg up on her pre-med classmates when West calls. He attempts to initiate phone sex with her and she gets embarrassed at her roommate being in there at the same time and quickly hands up the phone. It’s Walt’s birthday this Saturday and as such, he’ll be spending time with Carrie, Mouse, Donna, and Samantha. He wants to invite Bennet along, too, except that he’s afraid of looking silly and/or being rejected, so Carrie agrees to invite him and make it sound casual enough to where a “no” wouldn’t be the end of the world. Just then, they notice the cases of Rolexes in the living room and receive a fax from Larissa indicating that she’s coming back from Kyoto earlier than she expected.

While at Interview, Carrie tries calling Samantha to no avail and after talking to Bennet about her fear of hurting people’s feelings, brings up the topic of Walt’s birthday being that weekend. Bennet will be covering the Z100 concert, specifically American Authors, and Carrie blurts out that that’s where they’ll be, too – even in the same VIP section, despite tickets being extremely difficult to get. When Mouse walks into Carrie’s apartment with the ingredients to make Walt’s favorite (Quiche Lorraine), she sees Samantha on the phone and exercising along to a Jane Fonda tape. However, Samantha is also at work, so the moans soon come and so does her client, giving the two girls a chance to talk. Samantha learns that Mouse is a phone sex virgin and compares the act to being a lawyer, where you have to lead the witness and get them to do the heavy lifting; she then gets her to practice on her 2:00 client, only for Mouse to fumble the opportunity and quickly hang up the phone. As Deb calls Tom from Disneyworld and makes him insecure about the photos of his wife hanging up around the house, Mouse gets chastised for wearing one of Larissa’s dresses as an apron and Walt complains about Samantha taking another bubble bath. When he leaves for a hair cut, Carrie has every intention of talking to Samantha about moving out, only she learns that Samantha has a connection that can help them score tickets to Z100 and save Walt’s birthday. Carrie backs off and soon finds out from her father that the interview he was going to get her? It’s at 4:00 that Saturday, the same day of the concert.

Carrie’s plan? To tell everybody she’s going up front to get closer to Bryan Adams and give herself an hour or so for the interview. The group meets up on the same picnic basket and feasts on the champagne and caviar that Samantha brought, with Bennet getting Walt to come up front with him for American Authors. While Deb assures Tom that she would never want him to feel uncomfortable with the photos of his wife, nor does she want him to forget about her to focus on their current relationship, Carrie learns more about Samantha, who informs her that she would be forced to go to school without lunch money and learned to rely on her friends much more than her family as a result. Talk turns to Carrie’s situation with Sebastian and Samantha tells her new friend that she’s going to have to demand respect in order to get it, but Carrie has to rush off to the interview if she hopes to make it into the writing program.

Back at Sebastian’s house, he sees Maggie coming up his driveway, as she’s got a babysitting job nearby. The two bond over the car, her two brothers having made her quite the auto expert, and she finds out that Sebastian’s dad was pulled away for a golfing trip to Pebble Beach and that he’s all alone in trying to fix up the vehicle. Although he can’t change the past (i.e. the kiss with Maggie), he’s learned that you can’t change people no matter how much you try/want to. After the concert, which Bennet, Walt, Samantha, and Donna enjoy up close, Bennet and Walt walk in the park and swap dating stories, though the latter has yet to date anyone while in New York. He was holding out for his 18th birthday and the chance of being with Bennet, only Bennet is shocked that he had waited so long without testing out the waters. When Bennet moved to New York, he was in a relationship and felt like he was missing out once he saw what the scene was, so he’s still not ready to be exclusive with Walt. Before Walt can respond, he gets sick at his stomach, just as Carrie, still in her interview, starts feeling the room spin due to the head and something she ate earlier in the day. She vomits on the desk, while everyone at the concert is trying to find something, anything that they can throw up into. Everglades-born Samantha, seemingly immune to whatever caused the poisoning, gathers up everyone and brings them home, where Carrie is already rushing toward after gathering herself following her interview.

While Deb and Tom decide to leave the dishes in the sink so they can spend a little time together on the couch, Sebastian’s father returns from his trip with talk of selling the car now that Sebastian has it fixed up, with the help of the guy from the garage. He goes to call it “his car” and state that he was never going to have the time or patience to deal with something so unreliable, but he does allow Sebastian to get a spin out of the vehicle he worked so hard to restore. Everyone made it to Carrie’s apartment and yet still finds themselves unable to move. They also learn that what caused the sickness might have been the caviar that Samantha got from Coney Island, along with 300 fake Rolexes, one of which she gave to Walt for his birthday. Carrie, already mortified at having vomited three times during her interview, summons up the nerve to lay into Samantha for being inconsiderate and kicks out her new roommate, only to find out that it wasn’t the caviar that did everybody in. It was the eggs that Mouse used for the quiche, which expired about six weeks prior; Carrie and Walt had been ordering in every night and barely opened the fridge during their time there, so those eggs were still there when Larissa was.

As Deb reveals one of her dirty little secrets (she can’t stand having dirty dishes in the sink and interrupts a make out session with Tom to wash them), Samantha tells Carrie that she’s going to have to start being more honest and how the two are still friends. Samantha likes that Carrie’s a girl’s girl, especially after dealing with a mother who kicked her out for every new boyfriend, and makes her promise to always shoot straight with her, just as Sebastian arrives at the door. He doesn’t know why he’s there, but he knows that he wants to talk to Carrie about what happened between them. She tells him that her heart was broken and she hates herself for still loving him, followed by Walt stepping in to tell Sebastian that he needs to leave. Sebastian calls his father, who is irate at how long the car has been out since it’s going to his business associate the following day, from a nearby pay phone and walks away while the engine is still running; Deb and Tom share a laugh over what happened with the dishes and she finds out that his dirty little secret has to do with the way the dishwasher is arranged.

The following morning, Walt opens up to Bennet and says that he thought being exclusive would guarantee safety for a relationship but that Carrie’s situation with Sebastian shows him that nothing is guaranteed, no matter gay or straight, exclusive or casual. All he knows now is that he wants to be with Bennet because he wants to feel what it’s like to date someone without hiding and wants to see what exactly they have between them. The two then kiss. Meanwhile, Carrie returns home and learns from Tom that she secured a second shot at the program due to her interview being impressed with her dedication in showing up while obviously under the weather. She then shares a Sunday dinner of waffles with her father.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Wow, I have a lot of girlfriends.”
-“I know, right? Good thing I planned it so far in advance.”
-“You get paid to do butt lifts?”
-“I am too beautiful to be a Central Park horse.”
-“Carrie, shut the hell up with the food talk!”
-“Can you please not say it in your sexy nurse voice?”
-“I’m mind-blowingly fabulous, but I’m not a mind reader.”
-So, this episode definitely leaned into the comedic part of the show’s identity, but it was a nice change of pace made easier to take because of how funny it was. Initially, I groaned a little at the bodily fluid humor and how the scene at the concert was a bit over the top, but between Samantha trying to play sexy nurse, the entire phone sex plot, and Walt’s face when he sees Samantha bend over at the fridge, this was pretty delightful. Also worth of mention, literally everything that Donna said, enhanced by how great Chloe Bridges’ delivery was, particularly when she was ill.
-Mouse is taking every program, course, and extracurricular under the sun, but she doesn’t know when eggs go bad? And not just a few days, but weeks?
-Walt is apparently into 1985 Michael J. Fox. I hear that. And it’s totally somebody I see him liking like that.
-I loved the little winks to Samantha’s future on Sex and the City, from the fake jewelry (i.e. the episode in Los Angeles when she tries to get Carrie to buy a fake purse) and her mentioning how religion can be hot (i.e. her hooking up with a priest). Crossing my fingers for a reference to orange spunk.
-Nice to see an episode that furthers Carrie’s writing aspirations. We haven’t seen much of the magazine for the first two episodes, so at least her career is evolving in the background. The show has never been that interested in connecting itself to its mothership, bar some references and characters, so whenever they throw in a little character progression for Carrie, a way to see her moving toward becoming who we met in the first episode of Sex, I can’t help but be a little extra happy.
-I’m also glad that they’re allowing Tom to do stuff on his own. With the increased focus on Manhattan, I expected his only appearances to be tied to Carrie, but we’re two episodes in and he’s had one storyline with Dorrit and one with Deb. As much as I like Manhattan and Carrie being out in the wild on her own, I like Castlebury too much for it to be abandoned.
-Unappreciated comedic moment: Carrie getting tangled up in the phone cord after learning about her interview.
-Tom likes Billy Ocean. I see that.
-Lindsey Gort was very much embodying the spirit of Kim Cattrall’s performance in the scene at the concert when it was just her and Carrie, especially when she told her to demand respect. It felt like a conversation I had seen on Sex, in the best way possible.
-A little heavy-handed with giving Sebastian the James Dean car, in addition to the family problems and the white t-shirt look he had, but I still love to watch Austin Butler and appreciate anytime the writers deepen his character.
-I normally love AnnaSophia Robb’s performance, but Carrie’s argument with Sebastian was weirdly stilted and written with almost stock-sounding dialogue.
-I’m definitely not on the Bennet train after tonight. Walt is a character whose happiness I’m irrationally invested in and I don’t think Bennet feels the same way about him, so I want him to not get involved with someone who I don’t think appreciates him. The “I don’t want to miss out on anything” speech was BS and kind of insulting, even if he meant that he didn’t want Walt to miss anything on account of being with him. Who are you to make that kind of decision for somebody? And why would Walt want to be with somebody who thinks spending time with him will make him miss out on fun times?
-One of you please take Samantha’s phone sex tips and report back to me. That is all.
-Next week on The Carrie Diaries: Larissa returns home from Kyoto and meets Samantha for the first time, while Mouse helps Maggie fill out college applications and Tom receives an interesting offer from Harlan.