Three's a Crowd: By Jennifer Marie Stranges

This week’s episode starts with Charlotte quickly falling in love with a new man she met at a Charity Benefit. When he proposes the idea of a threesome, she discusses the matter with her friends. Miranda characteristically suggests that it’s a man’s “cheap ploy to see you naked with another girl,” while Samantha liberally warns not to “knock it ‘til you try it.”

Miranda feels left out when the rest of the girls admit they would engage in threesomes with each other but forget to include Miranda. She begins discussing her fears of being unattractive with her therapist and admits that she is feeling self-conscious because “if your friends won’t go down on you, who will?” Miranda’s self-esteem gets the best of her when she replies to an ad for a threesome with a married couple. Because they validated her attractiveness, she doesn’t feel the need to go through with it.

Samantha is having an affair with a married man. When she bumps into them on the street together, tension arises. The man decides to leave his wife and be with Samantha, who absolutely does not want to be with Ken. Ruth, the wife, asks to join Sam and her husband in a threesome in an attempt to keep him with her. Samantha is utterly disgusted by the idea and ceases to sleep with Ken.

Charlotte is overwhelmed with her sexuality when Jack, her new boyfriend, insists that a female hit on her while on their date. That evening Charlotte dreams that she and Jack participated in a threesome with the same woman from the bar. She begins indulging her fantasy and allows a woman to join them while they are beginning to have sex at a party. Unfortunately things don’t go as planned, when Jack and the other woman leave Charlotte out of what was supposed to be a THREEsome.

The episode shows Carrie flirting with the idea of threesomes in her column. She even reads the classifieds that seek a “guest” for a couple or a “guest” looking for a couple. Although Carrie isn’t closed to the idea, her bias comes from her monogamous relationship with Mr. Big. She is enjoying their progress and is excited by the traditional pattern of their “duo” sleepovers and putting on his ties. Mr. Big admits he’s not only had a threesome before, but that it was with his ex-wife – two bits of information Carrie was unaware of. Carrie begins to get insecure that Carrie and Big’s sex doesn’t measure up to the sex he and his wife had. Her friends suggest that she find more about his ex-wife.

Carrie does something that makes all of the viewers squirm – she schedules a meeting with the Ex-Mrs. Big, who’s in publishing, and makes up a fake story to pitch to her. In this desperate attempt to meet Big’s ex, Carrie embarrasses herself and the audience by being needy. Carrie is intimidated when she finds Barbara Big to be “smart, beautiful and she got me”. Although Big briefly explains the divorce to Carrie, she can’t help but feel Barbara’s lingering presence whenever she is with Big. She begins to worry even more when Barbara says the reason she and Big split up was that he had a wandering eye.

Big admits to Carrie that he cheated on Barbara, that he knows Carrie had lunch with Barbara, and he knows all of this because he and Barbara still have a friendly relationship. The episode ends with Carrie and Big sharing a kiss on the staircase to her door.


The idea of the episode was great, but there were no depictions of successful threesomes. In the case of all four women, the idea of a threesome never functioned. Samantha destroyed a marriage, Miranda felt neglected, Charlotte lost her boyfriend to the "guest" and Carrie went crazy over Big's past. The episode reaffirms a traditional sexual relationship, while acknowledging and experiencing with a wild version.