[Carrie] In life, certain events come along so rarely,
that when they do,
special attention must be paid.
Events like Halley's comet, solar eclipses,
getting that second latte for free.
[crowd cheers]
And one night at a salsa club
in very downtown Manhattan,
four single girlfriends all found themselves
without a relationship at the exact same time.
[salsa music playing]
She's not bad.
[laughs]
Here's to us, without men.
-Wooh! -[Miranda] Here, here.
I'm not toasting to that, it's bad luck.
Ha!
If I end up old and alone, it's all your fault.
Oh, Charlotte, sweetie, we're all alone,
even when we're with men.
Yeah, you tell her, Mr. Sister.
My advice to you, is to embrace that fact,
slap on some armor and go through life like I do.
Enjoying men but not expecting them to fill you up.
Except when, well, you know...
We know, we know, we know.
Excuse me, I was wondering if you'd like to dance.
Oh, well, thanks, but tonight it's just us girls.
I'm William,
one of the club owners.
Samantha.
If you ever feel like a dance, we could have some fun.
[Miranda] I'm impressed, not dumping us for a guy.
Is that the kind of girl you think I am?
-Well... -Oh, you guys, I gotta go, I'm getting my picture taken
for that magazine article in the morning.
What magazine article?
All press needs to be cleared through me.
It's New York Magazine ,
they're doing a profile of 20 Manhattan singles,
and it's called "Single and Fabulous".
Why wasn't I picked?
I'm single and I'm definitely fabulous.
Well, I was picked because Stanford's new boyfriend, Nevin...
-Nevin? -...is the assistant photo editor.
No, Carrie, you cannot leave, we never go dancing.
-Come on, one more drink. -All right, one drink.
One. One drink.
To hot men.
[Carrie] One drink turned into many,
and before I knew it,
I was dragging my tired,
yet single and fabulous ass home at dawn.
Ho!
[Carrie] I decided my best bet
to avoid looking like I'd been up all night
was to stay up all morning.
[telephone rings]
[ringing continues]
[answering machine beeps]
[Stanford] It's Stanford, you're 40 minutes late.
I'm at the photo shoot and everyone's freaking out!
I'm there, 20 minutes.
-20 minutes? -I said 20 minutes!
Oh, God, I could not get a cab.
So what did you do,
grab on to a bumper and let one drag you here?
Oh, stop, I was up all night.
And I need a coffee the size of my head.
Um, Carrie, this is Nevin.
Oh, gosh, hi.
Stanford has told me so much about you.
It's really nice to finally meet you.
Hello, you're about a fucking month late!
Follow me.
-Jesus! -Don't look at me,
you're the one who's about a fucking month late.
My poncho!
-Hi, I am so, so sorry. -It's fine.
-Could you sit? -Sure.
[sighs]
[camera shutter clicks]
Oh, we're gonna-- There's gonna be time for makeup, right?
-Yeah. -Thank God!
I just wanna do a few test shots
before I check the lighting.
Hey, coffee, please.
Oh, do you mind if I smoke?
I don't care if you shoot up.
[camera shutter clicks]
Listen, I never keep people waiting.
I just-- I got to bed really late last night.
And it's my personal belief, I lapsed into a coma. Mmm.
-Oh, thank you. -They only had decaf.
What?
[Carrie] Being single and fabulous
also frees up one's weekends.
Saturdays usually spent browsing with him in SoHo
are left to more practical things like power walking
with your single and fabulous girlfriends.
[Charlotte] We're walking way too slow.
We're not burning off anything.
Let's gossip to get our heart rates up.
Hey, Miranda.
Josh, hey, hi, how are you?
Good, great, training for the marathon.
Right, right, I forgot you do that.
Five years in a row.
Well, you got my number, so, give me a call.
Cute, who's that?
An ophthalmologist I once faked orgasms with.
Okay, we're officially stopping...
[Carrie] The idea that Miranda would fake anything
stopped me cold.
I only slept with him twice.
The first time I faked it
because it was never gonna happen.
And the second time I had to fake it because I faked it the first time.
Oh, naturally.
And I didn't wanna fake it again,
so I forgot to return his last call.
You broke up with an ophthalmologist over that?
Orgasm, major thing in a relationship?
Yeah, but not the only thing.
Orgasms don't send you Valentine's day cards,
and they don't hold your hand in a sad movie.
Mine do.
You're seriously advocating faking?
No, but if you really like the guy,
what's one little moment of "ooh, ooh",
versus spending the whole night in bed alone?
These are my options?
And who's to say that one moment
is any more important than when he gets up
and pours you a cup of coffee in the morning?
Let's go!
I'll take an orgasm
over a cup of French drip Colombian any day.
See, for me, it's a toss-up.
Hey, the usual, please.
[Carrie] Having smoked all my cigarettes
during our workout,
I stopped for fresh supplies when...
[suspenseful music]
There I was.
Hanging right next to Martha Stewart Living.
Carrie Bradshaw, dying of embarrassment.
"Single and Fabulous", question mark?
There was no question mark implied.
I would never have agreed to be in an article
"Single and Fabulous", question mark.
-I was set up. -Oh, I agree.
You're single, fabulous, and fucked.
Not after that picture, I won't be.
They said "Single and Fabulous" exclamation point.
They did not say "Single and Fabulous" question mark.
That question mark is hostile.
Miranda, can't we sue them or something?
For what, mispunctuation?
It's too late to sue. I'm all over the city looking like,
like something that got caught in a drain.
Okay, you know what? I just quit smoking.
[Charlotte] "Single was fun at 20.
But you wanna ask these women,
how fun will all night club hopping be at 40?"
-Who's out all night? -Who's 40?
Do you know what I say?
Fuck them, exclamation point.
Fuck them!
Yeah, fuck them!
Charlotte said fuck.
[Miranda] Every couple of years,
an article like this surfaces as a cautionary tale
to scare young women into marriage.
Oh, I'm a cautionary tale? Shoot me.
"Filling their lives with an endless parade
of decoys and distractions to avoid the painful fact
that they're completely alone."
How is that helping?
This piece of trash has nothing,
I repeat, nothing to do with us.
Exactly, we are single and fabulous.
Absolutely.
[Carrie] But I had a sneaking suspicion
they didn't quite believe it.
Somehow, the question mark had leapt off my cover
and onto each of them,
because, within a week...
Ooh, oh!
[Carrie] Miranda met Josh for old time's sake.
Oh. Oh!
[Carrie] Samantha met William for a dance.
[salsa music]
And Charlotte met a deadline head on.
So, I'm moving to Salt Lake City.
What? Why?
The acting thing in New York is definitely not happening, you know...
I have a chance to get on a Christian soap opera
if I move out west.
Wow, a Christian soap opera?
[Tom laughs] Yeah.
"The Days of our Mormon Lives" or some shit.
Hand me the receiver cable.
The... jeez.
What are you gonna do around here without me?
[Carrie] Tom was an out of work actor friend
Charlotte had come to depend on to do the occasional male things
she needed done around her apartment.
Because he was an out of work actor,
he had a lot of time.
And because he had a lot of time,
he had a lot of tools.
[Tom] Okay, that is the VCR.
After I rewire your lamp, I'm out of here.
Unless you have something else you need done.
[Carrie] Charlotte made a decision.
She decided she wasn't gonna let her Mr. Fix-it get away.
While women are certainly no strangers to faking it,
we faked our hair color, cup-size, hell,
we've even faked fur,
I couldn't help but wonder,
has fear of being alone
suddenly raised the bar on faking?
Are we faking more than orgasms?
Are we faking entire relationships?
Is it better to fake it than be alone?
Well, you know, my boyfriend and I were really compatible.
Except for one thing.
He liked thin, blond, waspy types, so...
Now I am.
I think my wife's an idiot.
Every day with her
is like a trip to idiot island.
I don't tell her how I really feel.
I'm pretty sure she'd leave me.
I don't understand sign language.
[Carrie] A glamorous city like New York
offers a sea of single and fabulous things
for the fabulous and single to do.
As long as that magazine's on the newsstand,
I'm not going out in public
for fear of being scorned and chased with sticks.
Hey, one, one!
I'm not smoking.
Look at this, he climbs on top of her,
and the next thing you know, she's coming.
No wonder men are so lost.
They have no idea there's more work involved.
So, still faking it?
-Yep. -Is he that bad in bed?
No, he's just... he's a guy.
They can rebuild a jet engine,
but when it comes to a woman...
What's the big mystery?
It's my clitoris, not the sphinx!
I think you just found the title for your autobiography.
[Samantha] You know, it's really not their fault.
They don't come with a manual.
If I had a son, I'd teach him all about the vagina.
If you had a son, we'd call social services.
The other night, he told me
he really likes that I can come while he's fucking me.
How can he actually believe that that's all it takes?
Because you're faking it!
I'm really hating myself right now.
Could you please just tell me why?
He's a nice guy. He means well.
Oh, so it's codependent coming.
Oh, well, I have to go. I got a date.
I'm meeting William after work, and then, who knows?
But from the way he dances,
I'm fairly certain I won't have to fake anything.
This is a great club.
Wait until you see my club in the Hamptons.
Salsa East.
Do you like the Hamptons?
No, love, love the Hamptons.
I'm renting a great house in East Hampton.
We can go out on the weekends.
We can go sailing,
and cook big old lobsters.
We can walk on the beach.
[Carrie] At first Samantha listened,
fascinated, detached.
It was rare to hear a man use the "we" word
so comfortably so early on.
Or we could just lay around and do this.
Whatever we want.
[Samantha sighs]
[Carrie] But pretty soon she gave in.
She lay back, opened up, and let the "we" wash over her.
[Samantha moans]
[telephone rings]
-Hello. -[Samantha] Guess where I'm spending the summer?
I don't know, Gucci?
East Hampton.
William's renting a house,
and he asked me to spend the summer with him.
Isn't it a little early?
[Samantha] Honey, no.
All the great places are taken by January.
[Carrie] No, I mean early in the relationship.
You should have heard him last night.
"We" can cook, "we" can swim.
Oh, he's a "we" guy.
Oh, so he's a "we" guy, who cares?
We are going to spend the summer in East Hampton
and the "we" I'm referring to right now,
is you and me.
-[Josh moaning] -[Carrie] They say that every great actor
knows when to stop performing.
I'm getting close, come with me.
Oh, come with me.
[Carrie] For Miranda Hobbes,
it was that Saturday night at exactly 10:40.
Ooh! Come with...
Ohhh...
Oh, God.
Wow.
Hey, is everything all right?
Mm-hmm.
Are you sure?
'Cause you didn't cum.
Did you?
-No. -Oh.
Did I do something wrong tonight?
'Cause, I mean, you came every other time.
What? Hey, tell me.
Well, I didn't exactly cum all those other times.
You faked it?
Well, how many of the other times?
All of the other times?
Oh, do you have like a physical problem or something?
Me? What makes you assume it's me?
Oh, no offense, it's just...
Nobody I've ever slept with has had to, you know, fake it.
[laughs] You know, a lot of women fake it,
and up until five minutes ago,
you didn't know that I was faking it, so...
[stuttering] Well, what are you saying?
All the women I've ever slept with have been faking it?
What are you looking at?
Nothing. I was just running a list in my head.
Look, Josh, a woman's anatomy is a little more complicated--
Hey, hey, I know all about a woman's anatomy.
I'm a doctor.
You're an eye doctor.
[sighs]
Okay, give me some tips.
-Pardon me? -Tips, tips to get you off.
I am nobody's charity case.
I run the marathon for Christ's sake.
Okay, well, do you know how the clitoris works?
-Yes. -Do you know where it is?
-Yes. -Well, it's about two inches
from where you think it is.
Oh, my God.
Relax, I'll show you.
[Carrie] Later that week,
I went over to Charlotte's
to see some of Tom's handiwork.
[Charlotte] So after we finish in here with the lighting,
we're gonna start in on the kitchen,
we're gonna re-tile everything.
[Carrie] First Samantha and now Charlotte went
"we", "we", "we", all about her home.
[Carrie] Well, that's amazing!
How are you gonna get all that done before you leave?
-I'm not leaving. -Oh.
I've decided to stay.
I have to go over to my place and get a voltmeter.
-All right? -Okay.
I'll be right back, okay?
Bye, honey.
[sighs contentedly]
"Bye, honey"?
Yeah.
When he told me he was leaving,
I suddenly had all these feelings,
like, what if he was the one?
He'd been right under my nose the entire time
and I'd never even seen him.
I let the whole, "almost 40, out of work actor thing"
get in the way.
But Carrie, he is strong, and masculine,
and he can fix things around the house.
Charlotte, you can't create a relationship
with a guy just because he can caulk your tub.
Yes, you can.
[Carrie] As I walked home, I couldn't help but wonder,
when did being alone become the modern-day equivalent
of being a leper?
Will Manhattan restaurants
soon be divided up into sections?
Smoking, non-smoking, single, non-single?
Yeah, the usual, please.
And then I had a frightening thought.
Maybe I was the one who was faking it.
All these years faking to myself that I was happy being single.
Yes, it's me.
And there it was, pity.
Pity from the man who sells me my Marlboro Lights.
It was the final straw.
I decided I wasn't gonna let a magazine,
or my friends, or the surgeon general
stop me from being who I was,
single and fabulous, exclamation point.
-Tartini? -Excuse me?
Tartini, cranberry-flavored vodka.
-Tartini. -Oh, Christ.
I've been out of commission for four days, there's a new drink?
I'd invited Stanford to join me
at a fabulous party downtown
to honor the fabulous conceptual photographer,
Ellen von Unwerth.
Unfortunately, he invited his new boyfriend,
Nevin von Bitchy.
Hi, I hate you.
Join the club, I hate me, too.
I'm so sorry about the cover.
-I had nothing to do with it. -Who cares?
Next week you'll have a coke-dealing slumlord
on the cover, and I'll be history.
You are fabulous.
Excuse me.
You realize you're going to have to dump him.
I can't, we're getting a summer share in Sagaponack.
[Carrie scoffs]
Tartini!
While Stanford and I did downtown...
Samantha was uptown, waiting for William
at her favorite romantic restaurant.
Alone?
No, I'm waiting for someone.
[Carrie] At first she thought she had the wrong time.
But when he still wasn't there 20 minutes later,
she called her machine.
No message.
I don't know what's keeping him.
Could you ask the waiter to bring me a red wine?
[Carrie] She hadn't expected to be caught out in public alone
without a book, or a project,
or any of her dining-out-alone armor.
She had nothing to do but sit and wait for him.
By now, she knew that "we" William
wasn't ever going to show up.
He was one of those men who faked a future
to get what he wanted in the present.
[busboy] More water?
No, no more water.
[Carrie] She felt exposed, vulnerable, like a fool.
[gasps] Oh!
My God, people are looking.
-I'm so embarrassed. -[busboy] It's okay, it's okay.
Where's the ladies'...
[busboy] This way.
Show me the ladies' room.
You okay?
Thank you. You're very sweet.
I'm not usually like this.
I can't believe I fell for some guy's line.
But, sometimes you just need to hear "we".
You know?
[Carrie] Samantha let the Pakistani busboy kiss her.
After all, he'd been so sweet and attentive with the bread.
You take me home, you're not alone.
[Carrie] As Samantha looked into his sweet and hopeful eyes,
she realized something.
No matter how much it hurts,
sometimes it's better to be alone than fake it.
Meanwhile, downtown...
I just heard the funniest thing I'd ever heard
from a man I just met.
[laughs] Oh, my God. I'm sorry, oh, your pants...
I'm sorry.
-[man] It's fine. -God, I'm sorry.
Well, fuck you!
Exclamation point.
Okay, you little tartini, time to go home.
-What? -You've had enough.
Oh, c'mon, it's early.
It's 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.
[Carrie] Oh, Stanford, just go.
Go, go, go home,
take your tired, fabulous ass home.
I want to meet cute guys.
Everyone here is gay, gay, gay.
I don't think so.
[Stanford chuckles]
You need a light?
[Carrie] His name was Jake.
He was everything I was looking for that night.
Single, straight, and a smoker.
There wasn't quite as much smoke uptown.
How's that? Ooh! Is that better now?
Oh, how about now, how about now?
[Carrie] Miranda's two-day tutorial with her ophthalmologist
had turned lovemaking into a kind of naked eye exam.
Maybe we should just
try and let it happen for a second.
-I wanna do it right. -Yeah.
Oh, oh, how's that, how's that?
[Carrie] Even with all Josh's good intentions,
Miranda found herself no closer.
She realized she was not a jet engine.
She was a lot more complicated.
It would never work between them.
I'm close, I'm close. Are you close? I'm close.
[Carrie] She wanted to give him something
for learning so much and trying so hard.
So, Miranda came.
[Miranda screams]
She came out of retirement for one final performance.
-[Miranda screams] -Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
I'm the man.
[both laugh]
Oh!
-Hey! -Hey!
You wanna go for a ride in my Porsche?
Fabulous.
[tires screech]
I need some smokes.
Do you want anything?
I'll be right back.
Hey, how you doing?
I want a pack of Marlboro Lights.
[Carrie] I looked at myself in the mirror.
What had I been so afraid of all week?
I was still young, still desirable.
I would never wind up alone.
[Jake] Is this you?
[Carrie] And there it was.
My question mark staring me right in the face.
Was that me?
And then I realized, if I went home with him,
it would be the only time I'd ever slept with a man
to validate my life.
The question mark would no longer be a question,
it would be a fact.
You know what, I gotta go home.
No way, I'm not letting you out.
Fine.
Charlotte... [sighs]
I think I should go to Salt Lake City.
Give it a try.
Oh, no, really?
[Carrie] Charlotte was faking it.
She'd realized two days ago
that while she had no problem
with the idea of faking orgasms,
she could never fake intimacy.
My heart's still in acting.
I'm not ready to let it go.
[Carrie] Tom was faking, too.
He was mostly just sick of New York
and needed an excuse to leave.
I'll miss you.
I'll miss you, too.
[Carrie] It was a perfectly timed double fake.
Under any other circumstances, they could have shared a very long life together.
Over the next week, things pretty much returned to normal.
[telephone rings]
[answering machine beeps]
[Josh] Miranda, babe, it's Josh.
I'm home, give me a call.
[Carrie] Miranda forgot to return Josh's last call.
Samantha made peace with her feelings
about "we" William,
and Charlotte learned you don't have to rely
on men's affections
to get things fixed around the house.
You can pay them.
And as for me, after I was recycled,
I decided instead of running away
from the idea of a life alone,
I'd better sit down and take that fear to lunch.
Waiting for someone?
Oh, no, it's just me.
Thanks.
So, I sat there
and had a glass of wine,
alone.
No books, no man, no friends, no armor,
no faking.