After researching the 10 or so pitches that she wanted to present for Larissa, Carrie has narrowed it down to her most interesting idea – finding out the story behind rising 19-year-old playwright Adam Weaver, whose play about the death of his brother has been garnering strong reviews. While Bennet argues that he’s lying about the death in order to get attention and sympathy, fellow Interview employee Blake stops by and introduces himself to Walt. As he (aggressively) asks Walt out to the surprise of Carrie, Dorrit decides to take her makeout session with Miller to the next level by moving to Carrie’s bed.
Once Walt and Bennet are alone again, the former expresses how weird the situation with Blake was and while the latter agrees, he reiterates that he would be a hypocrite to try and stop Walt from dating somebody else, even if they wear suits and work in advertising. While Sebastian acclimates himself to another of his father’s golfing trips by smoking pot in the house and skipping school, Carrie tries to justify her proposal to Larissa, who’s not exactly keen on the idea of another article about a subject already clogging up the New York headlines. However, Carrie intends to get the notably interview shy writer to open up to her by attending his reading at the Drama Warehouse and applying the charm; once there, she finds out that Bennet plans to flirt with Adam, who he pegs as being gay, if he has the chance to secure the interview for himself.
Over in Castlebury, Walt confides in Mouse his confusion in Bennet all but daring him to go out with Blake. While she reassures Walt that anybody who would deny themselves the chance to date him is stupid and unworthy of his time, Maggie interrupts the conversation and he swings the topic toward Sebastian, absent from school for a worrying amount of time. He’s not exactly in any danger, though, as he’s busy playing Nintendo and calling up Vicky for a quickie to get his mind off of Carrie. Speaking of, she attends the play and has an uncomfortable reaction to the scene where the mother of the deceased tosses his ashes and several personal items (a Farrah Fawcett poster, a cheeseburger) over the side of a boat. Rather than being emotionally touched by the action, she can’t help but laugh and draws the attention of the audience around her, but it turns out that the way she read the scene was the way that Adam wrote it, as he explained to her outside the Warehouse. She tells him of a similar incident when her mom died where the coffin wouldn’t fit in the hole that was dug and those in charge of lowering it kept trying to make it fit and he replies that his producers were wanting him to change the scene but that he wouldn’t now that he found somebody who got it.
The two head off for drinks as McSorley’s bar and though they bond over their love for Alice, he’s still evasive when it comes to spilling anything personal. Meanwhile, it’s Friday night at 9:00 and Tom is in the office with Barbara; he informs her that he closed a deal with Credit Suisse earlier that day, a client that she thought Harlan’s flakiness had chased away, by giving them his personal phone number, a big no-no. It doesn’t necessarily violate any ethical codes; it’s just that it leads him vulnerable to having his personal life eaten alive by the company, which has shown ready, willing, and able to do such a thing to other lawyers in their stead. At the same time, Vicky and Sebastian are basking in the afterglow of their time together and talk turns to Carrie, as Vicky wants to live vicariously through his teenage angst and romantic troubles. He confesses to always hurting her and letting her go to stop that cycle from continuing and she tries to give him enough of a distraction to make the transition into single life easier.
Back at the bar, Carrie keeps asking Weaver (which he prefers to go by) about his play, this time whether the funeral scene was embellished or not. It turns out that it was written with a lot taken out, including his own laughter at the absurdity of the situation and his father punching him in the face, an act that caused the two to grow distant. Weaver and Carrie end up kissing, but she regrets it, thinking that it crossed all types of boundaries and that the conflict of interest might have ruined her article. But when she contacts Larissa the following day, she learns that it’s no big deal and that the article could still go on as planned; in fact, Larissa suggests sleeping with him if it means that she could get something especially juicy/dirty out of him.
While Maggie stops by Sebastian’s house and sees a half-naked Vicky emerge from upstairs, causing her to run out and Vicky to question whether she has a crush on Sebastian, Deb brings her son Dylan to meet Carrie and Dorrit for the first time. It doesn’t go well, though, since he can’t get his face out of his video games and he doesn’t eat the food in front of him, instead waiting for his mother to break out the tater tots that she brought in her purse. As Carrie heads upstairs to grab some issues of Interview for Deb and finds a condom wrapper on her bedroom floor, Walt meets Blake in the offices of Interview for their date, scheduled to take place at an expensive Soho restaurant. Bennet is, of course, jealous of the fact that Walt is going out with someone else and that he’s going out to somewhere nice with someone else.
Carrie learns that Dorrit and Miller had sex on her bed and only put down a towel, but there’s no time for arguing now that Dylan overhears their argument and spots the condom wrapper for himself. He rummages around in Carrie’s underwear drawer and tries to get one of them to flash him to no avail, only for the two to threaten to wedgie him so hard that his testicles pop. He ends up tattling to his mother about the threat and Carrie makes up a lie about how they told him the urban legend in order to make him laugh. While Tom seems eager to get to the sundae bar in the kitchen, Deb doesn’t believe the girls, insisting that Dylan never lies, and Harvey from Credit Suisse calls, only to get an earful of Dylan screaming about boobies and making fart noises.
Blake and Walt make it to the restaurant where they find Bennet waiting. He tells them that he doesn’t want Walt to go on the date and when Blake excuses himself from the evening, citing the fact that he doesn’t want to deal with crazy office drama, Walt confronts Bennet about how he didn’t even want to go on this date and how he wasn’t the one who decided they should date around. Bennet explains that the thought of Walt dating another guy drove him crazy and thus, he’s ready to become exclusive. The two kiss in celebration. Meanwhile, in Castlebury, Tom and Deb have a talk in the kitchen that turns into a fight about the kids – Deb thinks that Carrie and Dorrit are immature, Tom brings up the fart noises, Deb doesn’t want Dylan to hear them fighting because it would hurt his feelings. The two end up breaking up over their difference of opinion, but Tom learns that the incident with Dylan only made the people from Credit Suisse appreciate him more, since one of their men (Jeremy) has an awful son, too. Tom agrees to bring his son to a game with Jeremy and his son, much to the confusion of Carrie and Dorrit.
Carrie fills Weaver in on her evening and how she bonded with Dorrit over having a common enemy. His relationship with his brother wasn’t like that, though, since they were extremely competitive – his brother being the Golden Boy and him being the forgotten little brother. But now the forgotten little brother finally have people paying attention to him and he doesn’t feel sad that his big brother is gone – he’s just relieved. Carrie could have used that for her interview, but she decides to forego writing the piece due to feeling uncomfortable with the idea of sharing what she learned. It knocks her back to cappuccino duty at the magazine, but she doesn’t care; she likes Weaver and she wants to see where this goes.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Darling, your sense of morals is adorable.”
-Well, I hate what they’re doing with Walt and Bennet. I mean, I think it’s realistic for both of the characters; Walt is extremely desperate to be with Bennet, so he would jump at the word exclusivity, and Bennet tries to put on the act of being the aloof sophisticate when in actuality he does care about things/people. But it came off like Bennet was being a crazy control freak who only agreed to be exclusive with Walt so that he couldn’t date other people and not because he wanted to be exclusive with him. It wasn’t romantic or heartwarming to me; it was a conclusion that was reached too quickly, thus denying us interesting build-up and the chance to see Walt out on the town, and came off as being an insincere gesture meant to keep Walt under Bennet’s thumb rather than this grand proclamation of interest that it was obviously written as being.
-Conversely, Deb and Tom ended really quickly and for seemingly arbitrary reasoning. Children, of course, play a huge role in any single parent’s love life and it makes sense that since Carrie, Dorrit, and Dylan weren’t getting along, Deb and Tom would end things, as they weren’t in an especially long relationship. But what indication were we ever given that Deb was a parent like that? Or that she would willingly come after Carrie and Dorrit and expect that Tom would be okay with it? Like with Bennet and Walt, this could have benefitted from another episode or two (at least) of set-up to fill out the story and have it come across as more organic than it did here. Because in this episode, it was too much like drama for drama’s sake, which makes how quickly Tom got over it that much more confusing.
-Sebastian gets a Game Over on Super Mario Bros. on the third world of level one. Get it together.
-I will say that everything with Carrie and Weaver was pretty excellent, as it subtly played on the episode’s themes, allowed Carrie the chance to see what the dating world is like outside of Castlebury, and served as a nice introduction to a new character. Even though it indulged in some of the character’s worst traits (e.g. her penchant for “project” men, stalling her career for a man), it felt the most authentic of any storyline we saw during the episode and that the show made an important step toward moving Carrie away from Castlebury and further toward Manhattan. Plus, it was the most Sex and the City-esque the show has felt this season.
-Dorrit’s such a nasty person, you guys. There’s the whole issue of her attitude and all (which is the pits, especially the scene where she met Dylan), but having sex on your sister’s bed and acting like it’s okay because you put a towel down? C’mon.
-I like tater tots and all, too, but damn, Dylan. Also, Deb and I eat pizza the same way.
-Maggie/Sebastian: are you for it? Against it? Wanting to see more from it before making a decision? I think they make a certain amount of sense and would be into seeing more from them, as long as it’s written for another reason aside from adding romantic drama to the show. I mean, it will bring that (and that some), but if it says something about the characters or moves the show forward in some way, I’m all for it.
-Tom referring to a cell phone as a cellular phone. Oh, the 80s.
-Next week on The Carrie Diaries: Carrie spends the day in Manhattan with Weaver, while Samantha finds work as a nude model and Sebastian learns that his mother is getting remarried.
1 Comment
It was a really good episode, eventhough we could still spot some of those superficial approaches to the plot as you have mentioned. About Carrie & Weaver: I hate how the writers actually gave us the impression that Carrie is the “men > career” kind of gal. To me, the reason why she didn’t finish the piece was not revealing off-the-record information about someone’s family falling apart after someone’s brother’s death! Writing about it would not only be not caring about him more than her career, but not caring about a person’s feelings of grief and sorrow; especially because she mentioned her mother’s death a few times… It would be too hurtful for Carrie to do something like that – it’s not like writing about some pretensious politician’s dirty secrets – so I thought it was just empathy. That until the moment when she says to her boss: “because I might like him”, without even bringing the whole ethical issue – Why do that to a character? :/