After last week’s amazing episode, The Carrie Diaries fell back into its previous wavering territory except you know, for that scene that made me cry. Yep. Cried during The Carrie Diaries.
It’s Spring Break (insert relevant Spring Breakers joke here) and everyone’s figuring out their plans. Maggie’s watching General Hospital. Mouse is focusing on her team manager work. Carrie’s going to be working at Interview for the week. Sebastian’s dealing with his parents attempting to get back together.
At Interview, Carrie is too excited about working during break, so much so that Bennett asks if she’s drunk: “Are you drunk? It’s okay, Barney the ad sales guy is too.” As they are pawing through Larissa’s free things including moisturizer made from the foreskin of a baby goat (GOOP placement product? Gwyneth, girl, are you a producer on this show?) they get a call from Andy Warhol’s assistant, needing Larissa to pick up a package. This is a problem since Larissa is totally MIA and as Bennett mentions could be for awhile.
Carrie goes to the store to try to pick up the package. In the vein of apparently every ’80s/’90s saleswoman at an upscale boutique, you have to be a massive bitch. She’s pretty mean to Carrie, until she decided to pretend to be Larissa. And you guys, it’s pretty amazing. The backhanded compliments come rolling off the tongue and AnnaSophia Robb really nails it. Kinda awful that I wish she was like this all the time? Girl is hilarious.
While waiting on the package, Carrie gets to reap the benefits of being Larissa–trying on/getting free designer clothes, drinking her first cappuccino, talking to Sebastian on a ridiculously oversized phone while poor Sebastian has to listen to his parents having sex. While Carrie’s out, Walt stops by at the Interview office to have lunch with her. Since she’s not there, he rather conveniently gets to have lunch with Bennett.
When the saleswoman offers Carrie all the clothes, as a bribe to get them on the cover, she calls Bennett, who tells her to take the clothes, the Warhol package and get out of there. He mentions that there’s no way Larissa could afford her wardrobe on her salary, so this is just morally murky. JOURNALISM Y’ALL.
When the Warhol package shows up, the woman delivering the package, immediately throws a vase at Carrie because Larissa’s been sleeping with her boyfriend. She took his place delivering the package (he’s passed out from too many quaaludes) to confront Larissa. She books it out of there and back to the office.
Carrie’s terrified the package is drugs, but turns out it’s just Andy’s wig. NBD. Obviously, they have to drop it off at some sketch place–a children’s clothing store–that seems like a confusing location until Bennett realizes that it’s a “traveling underground club.” I feel like that’s some LA bullshit that I would die to go to because I’m the worst.
Carrie tries out her Larissa impression again, but fails, only because Larissa had sex with the pretty hot bouncer dude. Bennett has disappeared to the side, talking to some guy he knows. Carrie decides to go the honest route and says she has Andy’s package. and gets it to his assistant. Bennett stays to hang with that dude.
Walt and Carrie go back to the Interview offices and Walt’s pissed that Bennett abandoned them. Carrie asks Walt why it bothers him so much. And he says :”What if I’m not who I thought I was? I’m struggling with who I want to be with.” He says he thinks about Bennett a lot. Carrie asks him, if maybe he has a crush. He says, maybe, but then asks if that’s gross. Carrie’s response: “If being gay is who you are Walt, then it must be good because you are good.” And then I cried and had a lot of feelings–most of them supreme hope for this show. It was just so so good.
Everyone else’s spring break was pretty eventful, not Warhol levels of eventful but still interesting.
Mouse is, in typical Mouse fashion, completely engrossed in her new role as team manager. She’s done all her basketball research and is pretty intense about it. She even starts ranking the players–which as West tells her is terrible for their work as a team and that Mouse might be the worst thing to happen to them since Donna. Mouse finds out the scoop from Donna–who dated two players at the same time on the team and then dumped them both. She’s now into soccer players (good call). Mouse purposefully gets fired, so they have a common enemy to unite them and decides to do Habitat for Humanity instead.
West comes to talk to her, wearing the most minimal sports uniform EVER. And tells her that maybe he would miss her–and then they both give each other flirty looks! YES! Good for Mouse.
There are wayyy too many parental sex storylines happening. There are too many. WAY TOO MANY. I’m not sure there is enough booze to deal with this.
Anyways, the dad is a creep and goes to a meditation class to troll for women. The woman he ends up trolling on is Aidan’s ex-girlfriend, the booker from SNL who has the FACE from SATC. The dad ends up having an outburst in the meditation class because it’s obvious bullshit and the FACE woman is chewing her gum loudly. He retreats to the diner for a burger, runs into the FACE, they banter about how they annoy each other and end up making out in a car.
Sebastian’s also having parent sex problems. His mom is back in town, trying to make things “work” with his dad, which apparently just means having a lot of loud mid-day sex. Sebastian’s mom (last week someone pointed out that it’s the same actress who played Big’s first wife in SATC) is nuts.
She keeps confiding in Sebastian about stuff he really shouldn’t know. He finally confronts her about it, describing it as “profoundly messed up.” But crazy mom in the manner of all crazy moms doesn’t want to be alone. She ends up getting back together with the former tennis instructor which Sebastian is happy about.
Maggie and Sebastian become weirdly friendly. First because Sebastian gets Maggie a new fake ID. Second because they catch Carrie’s dad making out in the car with the FACE. They decide to not tell Carrie. When they were hanging out though, I got this horrible sense of foreboding. I really, really do not want the show to go where I think it could — having Sebastian and Maggie sleep together. Prayer circle that that doesn’t happen in the last two episodes.
Things of Note/Hilarity/WTF
- Donna’s spring wardrobe is amazing.
- “I plan to avoid work my entire life. I have to figure out how to do that.” Maggie on not working.
- Maggie and Walt’s high-five was adorable.
- “I’m impossibly, enviably young? Of course, I work at Interview, not Ladies Home Journal.” – Carrie as Larissa on youthful looks.
- “Is that coke? I want some.” Bitchy saleswoman on Warhol package contents.
- Turns out MIA Larissa was upstate “smelling things with Grace Jones.” This is also known as all of my life dreams.
Next week: Someone is having a party! Sebastian loves Carrie! She wants to have sex with him! We only have two more episodes!
About the Contributor:
Kerensa Cadenas is a writer living in Los Angeles. She grew up on binge reading Sweet Valley High and watching Saved by the Bell at a very young age. Hence, she is now unable to grow out of this life-long phase. She loves terrible teen television, young adult novels and probably listens to One Direction more than she should. She also enjoys more adult things like margaritas on patios and dance parties. A Marcus Flutie/Nate Archibald man-hybrid remains her ideal.
