The writers of this Sex and the City episode should be commended for getting it right!
It’s a fact that sometimes gets lost in the drama of life:
- Infidelity is ugly.
The betrayal of trust and hurt feelings that arise from indiscretions are so large and consuming, they usually can’t even be conveyed properly in the movies. I’ve seen countless storylines like this played out and while some of them are good, very few of them leave the viewer as stunned and heartsick as the person being cheated on. While you may feel for the character at the moment, chances are you’re on to your life soon after the movie or television show ends, without giving the event of said episode another thought.
That’s why I applaud the writers of Sex in the City’s 41st episode, “Running with Scissors.” I give them my kudos because this episode has haunted me for almost a week. I actually, upon seeing it, became sick to my stomach.
For those of you unfamiliar with the events that unfolded in this episode, Carrie’s affair with Big is getting more and more… well to put it lightly… gross. They meet in hotels where people won’t see them, rarely have time for quality intimacy, and have managed to reduce their passion to something sick and twisted.
That’s because affairs are sick and twisted!
At one point Carrie is approached at a hotel by a man who actually thinks she’s a prostitute because he’s seen her in there with Big signing in for only an hour. She leaves there and bumps straight into Charlotte, her human relationship reality check. Charlotte is horrified. Carrie is horrified. Big… of course, is not so horrified.
This encounter with Charlotte on the street phases him so little that the next time he and Carrie get it on they actually do it in his and his wife’s bed. Carrie claims she feels dirty and horrible about their affair, and yet when Big leaves she wanders around their apartment, looking at pictures of Big’s wife and wondering about their life together. Then she hears Big’s wife… home early… and tries in vein to get dressed and runs out of the apartment.
Yes, runs.
She runs away like a bratty schoolgirl, even after Big’s wife calls after her, telling her she’s suspected about the affair and demands that Carrie stop and speak to her. Carrie takes off down the stairs, and in following Carrie, Big’s wife falls flat on her face. Her face is bloody and she will lose a tooth – though clearly not the only loss she will suffer as a result of Carrie’s actions.
This scene is so horrifying, so graphic, and yet so very real, that it pulls the viewer back from any misguided longings we might have had to see Carrie and Big together. We are disgusted by Carrie – as she must be with herself. It leaves us with a vivid picture of damage and ruin. We can easily see how messy this situation will be for Big and his wife. We can’t imagine them moving forward. We wonder why Carrie is still there, still hanging around the periphery of a marriage in which she has no place. It is a dark and ugly image, and from this viewer’s perspective, one not so very easy to forget. As it should be.
