Carrie goes on her routine morning run for tabloids and finds that she made the pages of Page Six. Although she’s not named explicitly, Weaver alludes to her in an interview about his next play, which he says is inspired by his “diminutive suburban poseur” of an ex. Carrie’s rightfully upset at the lies that are being broadcast through Manhattan, as she broke up with him, even though she always wanted to be talked about and looked at as a Somebody vs. a nobody. Since a rumor is the only thing people will believe after a certain amount of time, she has to act fast. Back at school, rumors have been spreading that Maggie and Sebastian are together and Donna comments on how they look awfully cozy together. She then wonders aloud how Carrie would take the news of them being together and insults Maggie while complimenting Sebastian on how protective he is over his ladies; this causes Maggie to worry about the way they’re being perceived, since she knows that Carrie might be open to talking. Sebastian informs her that he knows Carrie saw her at his house and that she left the jacket he gave her on his doorstep, so if Maggie really wants to work on her friendship with Carrie, she’d have to explain that night and thus reveal her pregnancy, something she’s not ready to do.
At the diner, Mouse and West realize that they’re in a bit of a rut eight months into their relationship. However, they’re not able to be as spontaneous as they would like considering all the extra-curricular activities they’re involved in. Regardless, though, Mouse promises that they’re going to be a hot couple soon enough. The beepers that Andy outfitted the Interview staff with turn out to be a major burden on Carrie, who Larissa beeps looking for her tampons and condoms. Bennet isn’t exactly a fan of the new situation, either, since he’s beginning to feel underappreciated at the magazine and doesn’t think that he’s compensated enough, either financially or in terms of opportunities, for what they put him through. But they turn out to be a blessing when Carrie calls Larissa and learns that Page Six has been sniffing around Interview‘s office looking for the ex Weaver mentioned, something that could get her in trouble with Andy. Elsewhere, Maggie has decided to get an abortion and Sebastian volunteers to take her to her appointment.
That Saturday, Carrie and Bennet are forced to stuff envelopes while Walt and Samantha debate whether Carrie should set the record straight with Page Six reporter Tristan Cassidy and what Bennet should do about his dissatisfaction with the way his career is going. Since cold calling hasn’t worked and Bennet hasn’t been able to find another opportunity that would work for him, Samantha suggests going to a Paris party filled with elite in the artistic/media crowd; everyone chips in $50 and a name is drawn at the end of the night, with that person winning an all-expense paid trip to the city of lights. Since Samantha knows someone who can get them in, Carrie, Walt, and Bennet agree to go and network, just as Mouse and West take the first step in spicing up their relationship – eating spicy tacos at the diner. Mouse says that chili peppers are supposed to be an aphrodisiac, though it might not be the best timing since he has basketball practice, and leaves West a surprise in his backpack that she won’t let him look at in her presence. Outside the hospital, Maggie can’t find the strength to open up the door of Sebastian’s car and go in for her appointment. All she ever wanted to be was a mother and she has to crush her own dream due to poor timing, though Sebastian assures her that there’s no rush in going to her appointment and that he doesn’t want her to do something that she would regret. She starts crying over being scared of what awaits her and asks him to drive around a little, delaying her appointment for another couple of days.
In the locker room, Mouse’s surprise falls out of West’s playbook and he doesn’t notice, while the group’s entrance into the Paris party turns out to be a bit more dramatic than they expected, as they have to go in back with the caterers. The reason? Samantha’s connection is Alvaro, a bus boy she worked with for a time. After hearing Samantha say that she has to find Tristan Cassidy at this party and stop the rumor about her from becoming true, Carrie picks up a tray of drinks and almost immediately finds Weaver. The two have a very strained first post-breakup conversation, with Weaver mentioning he got Andrew McCarthy to do a play of his, and quickly go their separate ways. Elsewhere in the party, Samantha runs up to Tristan like she knows him, claiming that they met at Odeon, and Bennet introduces himself to the reporting giant, just as Larissa finds the group in the middle of the party, incredulous that Bennet actually made it in. As Walt talks Bennet’s prowess up to Larissa, Mouse finds West after the basketball game and asks about the surprise, which he thought was a chocolate bar that mysteriously showed up in his backpack. Mouse panics at the thought of the (headless and) topless photo of herself that she took for her boyfriend being out in the wild, especially since she learns that West lost it in the locker room. However, when he goes to find it, the entire team has seen it and begun speculating over whose breasts they could be – Donna’s? One of the Jens?
As with most everything in her life, Carrie can’t leave well enough alone and goes back to Weaver looking for answers about why he went to Page Six in the first place if he didn’t have hard feelings toward her. He responds by telling her that perception is everything in Manhattan and that in order to make himself look like the victim/good guy, she had to take the hit, a move he doesn’t think was personal. He then threatens to name her to Tristan Cassidy, but as the reporter is busy talking with Bennet, she goes over to him with a “scoop” about Adam Weaver being a needy, insecure bastard with a teeny tiny manhood. Her name? Katja Morningstar. Before that story can be unraveled, Carrie gets beeped; it’s Sebastian from the hospital. Maggie collapsed.
Carrie makes it to the hospital and learns that tests are being ran on Maggie as they speak. She figures out that her friend is pregnant and Sebastian quickly assures her that it’s not his, that the two of them have never nor will ever be like that. The night Carrie saw Maggie on his couch? She needed a place to crash after finding out that she was pregnant and not knowing what to do or where to go. She says that she went to his house because she needed to see him and missed him. He says he missed her, too, and that he loves her, to which she says she loves him, too. Maggie’s parents arrive soon after and her father is furious with Sebastian, thinking that he’s the one who got Maggie pregnant and calling the boy a cowardly little punk. Sebastian doesn’t respond, though, and the doctor comes out to tell them that Maggie had an ectopic pregnancy, i.e. the embryo has implanted itself in her fallopian tube rather than her uterus. As she’s hemorrhaging blood, she’s already being prepped for what will be a life-threatening surgery. Meanwhile, at the Paris party, Walt has sprung into action as Bennet’s publicist of sorts, talking him up to some of Manhattan’s elite and getting their contact information as a result. It turns out that all the wheeling and dealing Walt did ended up helping Bennet tremendously, as Larissa informs them both that Andy heard about the possibility of Bennet leaving and is now offering him a raise and promotion to features editor.
Sebastian explains that he didn’t defend himself to Maggie’s parents because it’s not his story to tell. He can’t stop the rumors and even if he could, they’re just words and he doesn’t care about what people think, a totally opposite perspective from perpetually people conscious Carrie, who worries what effect the rumors could have on their ability to get back together. They still haven’t received any word on Maggie, but Sebastian wonders that if they do try to get back together, can Carrie handle the gossip that would spring up about the two of them? While Mouse panics upon learning that the whole team saw the photo and nobody guessed that the breasts were hers, Carrie ends up winning the Paris trip when her name was drawn. As she wasn’t there, Samantha decided to accept on her behalf, since she managed to get the group into the party in the first place, and take Alvaro on the trip with her.
Maggie ends up losing one of her fallopian tubes in the surgery, making a future pregnancy much more difficult, but she makes it out of the surgery otherwise okay. While Sebastian goes to see her, Carrie calls Larissa at the party and gets put on the phone with Tristan. Though she tries to get him not to run the story she gave him about Weaver, he didn’t get any other gossip fodder that night and wouldn’t have a story to run without it. Carrie’s solution? Giving up her own name as Weaver’s poseur ex. After all, she says, they’re just words and she didn’t want to sell anyone out. Carrie makes it to Maggie’s room and comforts her, just as Mouse flashes her breasts to West and his teammates at the diner and Walt’s mother sees a picture of her son and Bennet taken at the Paris party, a picture that made it into the paper. However, she doesn’t mention what she sees. Sebastian gets thanked for helping Maggie to the hospital by her father and warned to stay away from her from now on, leading him to go outside the hospital and sit by himself. Carrie goes out and sits beside him, clasping his hand and leaning on his shoulder in the process.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Don’t those gossip rags fact check?”
-“We are going to be hot. Hot, hot, hot. Just not now.”
-“Maybe she can’t find her douche.”
-“Who would want more than hot butts?”
-“She said my boobs were perky?”
-Although it was nice to see some personal development for Bennet beyond his helping Walt come out and accept himself, I’m much more intrigued by how the show is going to handle Walt being out to his family. Considering their standing in the community, they’re not exactly going to be joining PFLAG anytime soon, but his mother’s reaction to seeing the picture was interesting – she didn’t seem angry, she wasn’t depressed, she didn’t immediately say something to him about what she saw. Obviously, this being 1985, it’ll be a while before Walt finds acceptance from his family, especially since his parents had a certain path in mind for him, but could the show end up giving him a somewhat supportive family member? Or will this be their excuse to get him out of his childhood home and, say, move in with Bennet?
-Interesting theory: Is his mother seeing him be cozy with Bennet going to make Walt try and retreat back into the closet? He’s become fairly comfortable with himself this season, but he’s only been comfortable when he’s in Manhattan, so in order to please his parents and make it through the remainder of high school, should we expect him to play either the experimentation card or the “photo got taken at an awkward time” card?
-Cute audience wink: Carrie dying to go to Paris and Larissa telling her that she’ll make it there someday. Indeed.
-I like how Donna can be in the basketball team’s locker room like it’s nothing. And that she was just as interested in looking at the photo as they were.
-I have to admit, part of me was kind of interested in seeing how a show like The Carrie Diaries would handle something like teen pregnancy. I know that type of plot is usually a drag, but the circumstances around the pregnancy and how it would impact not only Maggie but the rest of the characters would have differentiated it from other shows that have used that plot point before. I’m also not sure how I feel about Maggie losing a fallopian tube being used as a plot device to bring Carrie and Sebastian back together. While I get the trauma of experience being enough to cause one to reevaluate their priorities and how the two had been avoiding one another long enough to where being in the same space for a period of time could cause them to make up, it was borderline icky for this to be when they got back together.
-I was also minorly disappointed that the character didn’t have an abortion, but that’s less to do with Maggie herself than my feelings on the issue as a whole. Television always walks up to the edge of addressing abortion and never really does anything about it, particularly something as daring as having a character actually go through with it. I know it’s happened before, but this is the second Sex and the City-universe almost-abortion and this one felt like a cheaper cop-out, which is a shame because I thought the scene of Maggie with Sebastian in the car outside the hospital was one of the best the series has had.
-Has Samantha felt a little sidelined the last few weeks? She had a very big introduction and it’s felt like they haven’t done a whole lot with her since then. Granted, I always enjoy when she pops up on screen, but given how the marketing before the season focused solely on her addition, I assumed she would have a bigger part this season than what she’s been given.
-I like how Mouse’s idea of spicing things up in her relationship is eating tacos. My kind of lady.
-Nice to see that Weaver is the bitterest Betty in the history of bitter Bettys. The fact that he was willing to ruin the reputation of a kid tells you everything you need to know about the type of man he is. Here’s hoping that he doesn’t pop up for the rest of the season, as much as I like Chris Wood’s performance.
-So, let’s talk about ratings. The show hit a series low last night with a 0.2 in the 18-49 demo and about 700,000 viewers. In short, not good, as it nearly crept to a 0.4 and a million viewers last week. As such, if you’re behind on the show and reading these as you catch up, first off, thank you and I love you for doing so. But secondly, be sure that you’re watching either on Hulu or The CW’s website. The show was brought back likely solely due to the strength of its online numbers and if you’re watching through other sources, you’re not helping the show survive. We have another six episodes to nudge it toward a third season renewal, so let’s do that, okay? Okay.
-Next week on The Carrie Diaries: Carrie interviews the CEO of a jeans company in what could be her big break, while some news puts distance between Mouse and West, Tom gives guidance to Walt, and Maggie struggles with telling her dad the truth about recent events.
