“The Awful Truth” By: Laura Daniel

Aired: June 13, 1999

Summary: 

Carrie accidentally suggests that her friend Susan Sharon leave her verbally-abusive husband. Miranda builds up the courage to talk dirty in bed. Charlotte tries to replace the perfect man with the perfect dog. Samantha gets dragged to couples' therapy with James and tries to avoid talking about her real problem with their sex-life. 

Sex and the City according to Michael Newman's Form Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative says that because of the ties between episodes SATC is a Serial Series. Each episode has a new issue to deal with but there is always an underlying plot that carries through the various episode and seasons. In this episode the friendship between the women and Carries attachment to Big are the plots that carrie from episode to episode. 

Plot A:

Carrie’s friend Susan Sharon leaves her husband and stays with Carrie.

Plot B:

1. Miranda has a problem with talking dirty and talking during sex in general.

2. Charlotte gets a dog-named Henry as a replacement for her lack of the perfect man.

3. Samantha goes to couples therapy with James to avoid telling him what she is really thinking.

Plot C:

Carrie asks Mr. Big to her birthday.

Thematic Parallelism is the similarities in the various subplots. The parallelism in this episode is a topic that all the girls struggled with and that is that there is always something that you can’t say in a relationship. Carrie asks the question “Are there certain things in a relationship that we just shouldn’t say?” Carrie couldn’t tell Mr. Big that she wasn’t over him, Miranda couldn’t talk dirty at first but once she could there is always something she couldn’t say and when she does she find out that she should have never said it. She says “You like when I slip my finger in your ass.” Samantha felt like she couldn’t open up and tell James that his penis was too small. He dragged her to couples counseling where it finally comes too much and she says it, and naturally the relationship came to a halt. Finally, Charlotte got a dog and ended up having to get rid of it because it shit all over her stuff, and she could never bring herself to tell anyone that she got rid of the puppy.