42 Times Carrie Bradshaw “Couldn’t Help But Wonder”

Do I have too much time on my hands or is SATC worthy of binge-a-thon every now and then? My response? Los dos. The former is true since I quit my job back in January, but I also because I’ve been reliving the old episodes in anticipation of the long-awaited reboot, And Just Like That.

Thanks to my HBO Max subscription (and some extra time on my hands), I spent the weekend doing some research for this little blog of mine. Whenever I’m down or feeling uninspired, it does me well to put on some old episodes of Sex and the City and get…Carried away. I started binging from the very first episode, back when Carrie’s hair was reminiscent of little orphan Annie, rather than the lustrous locks we’ve come to know and love.

It’s no secret that in addition to her namesake, I also love incorporating Carrie’s catchphrases into my writings. My faking orgasms blog, for example, was inspired from Season two, episode four. And it got me thinking about how fun it would be to make a list of all the times Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t help but wonder…

Here’s what I came up with.

Season One

“I wondered if there wasn’t some kind of physics for beauty. Maybe two models repelled; maybe models could only be attracted to ordinary humans.” [Ep 2., “Models and Mortals”]

“As I sifted through the rubble of my marriage skirmish, I had a thought, maybe the fight between marrieds and singles is like the war in Northern Ireland, we’re all basically the same but somehow we wound up on different sides.” [Ep 3., “Bay of Married Pigs”]

“Are men in their twenties the new designer drug? Yes, Samantha, Miranda, and I were all recreational users but were we getting into something we couldn’t handle? Okay, we were attracted to younger men for various reasons. But I couldn’t help but wonder: What do they see in us?” [Ep 4., “Valley of the Twenty-Something Guys”]

“Is it that men have an innate aversion to monogamy, or is it more than that? I wondered, in a city like New York, with its infinite possibilities, has monogamy become too much to expect?” [Ep 7., “The Monogamists”]

“Samantha left with the Turtle, Brooke left with a better gift … and I left wondering if everyone in Manhattan was settling.” [Ep 9., “The Turtle and the Hare”]

“As I watched Laney tear open a terry cloth baby bib, with the same enthusiasm she once reserved, for tearing off rock stars’ pants, I couldn’t help but wonder, was I next?” [Ep 10., “The Baby Shower”]

“But I wondered, what was still buried deep inside the mommies downstairs?” [Ep 10., “The Baby Shower”]

Season Two

“As Miranda went on and on about the new Yankees’ stats … I couldn’t help wondering about my own. Ten years playing in New York. Countless dates. Five real relationships. One serious. All ending in breakups. If I were a ballplayer, I’d be batting…whatever really bad is.” [Ep 1., “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”]

“Do you know what the odds of catching a fly ball are? I didn’t. But I couldn’t help wondering if they were any higher than finding a relationship that would last.” [Ep 1., “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”]

“I wondered …could Susan Sharon’s marriage be that bad or was their fighting just a form of foreplay?” [Ep 2., “The Awful Truth]

“While women are certainly no strangers to faking it … we’ve 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?” [Ep 4., “They Shoot Single People, Don’t They?”]

“As I walked home, I couldn’t help but wonder … When did being alone become the modern-day equivalent of being a leper?” [Ep 4., “They Shoot Single People, Don’t They?”]

“The fact is, the act of cheating is defined by the act of getting caught. One doesn’t exist without the other. I wondered, was Samantha right? Is cheating like the proverbial tree in the forest? That it doesn’t exist if there’s no one around to catch you? In a gravity-free world of ‘anything goes’, what constitutes cheating?” [Ep 6., “The Cheating Curve”]

“I started to wonder, In a city as cynical as New York, is it still possible to believe in love at first sight?” [Ep 7., “The Chicken Dance”]

“I wondered, was New York really any different from New Delhi? Had our class system been replaced by a caste system? And if so, can we date outside our caste?” [Ep 10., “The Caste System”]

“I wondered, were we all just victims of conditioned responses doomed to repeat the same unconscious relationship patterns? Were we all in fact just dating the same person over and over again?” [Ep 14, The Fuck Buddy]

“Three weeks later I got a letter from Patrick saying he was back in the program and wanted to make amends. I never saw him again but I always wondered two things: Was he able to stay sober? Am I really that good in bed?” [Ep 16., “Was It Good For You?”]

“That week, back in the city, I wondered, what was the allure of the twenties? On one hand, there’s great skin tone, the thrill of fresh experience, and a sense of a consequence-free life of seemingly endless possibilities. While on the other, there are horrible apartments, sexually inexperienced men, and embarrassing eras in fashion judgment. Should we fear these freshly-minted single women as a threat to our very survival or pity them as clueless halfwits about to get their dreams dashed and illusions shattered?” [Ep 17., “Twenty-Something Girls vs. Thirty-Something Women”]

“Later that night I got to thinking about the X factor. In mathematics, we learn that X stands for the unknown. A + B = X but what’s really unknown is, What + What = friendship with an ex? Is this an unsolvable equation? Or is it possible to transform a once passionate love into something that fits nice and easily onto the friendship shelf? I couldn’t help but wonder, can you be friends with an ex?” [Ep 18., “Ex and the City”]

Season Three

“I couldn’t help but wonder: Inside every confident, driven, single woman, is there a delicate, fragile princess just waiting to be saved? Was Charlotte right? Do women just want to be rescued?” [Ep 1., “Where There’s Smoke … “]

“I did find it interesting that a discussion about politics ultimately became a discussion about sex. And a discussion about sex ultimately became a question of politics which led me to wonder if the two weren’t, in fact, inextricably linked, and if so, can there be sex without politics?” [Ep 2., “Politically Erect”]

“I started to wonder, are there women in New York who were just there to make us feel bad about ourselves? For Miranda, that woman was a certain Ukrainian housekeeper.” [Ep 3., “Attack of the Five-Foot-Ten Woman”]

“Later that night, I couldn’t help but wonder, When the hell did dating become so dump-friendly?” [Ep 5.,”No Ifs, Ands, or Butts”]

“I couldn’t help but wonder if I really did know the way to let myself out. [Ep 11., “Running With Scissors”]

“After I left the meeting I took a wrong turn and somehow found myself right back where I had started, back in New York, back wondering about Big. I couldn’t help but wonder, no matter how far you travel or how much you run from it, can you ever really escape your past?” [Ep 13., “Escape from New York”]

“I wondered …were we all just victims of conditioned responses?” [Ep 14., “Sex and Another City”]

“I wondered, i n today’s youth-obsessed culture, are the women of my generation growing into mature, responsible adults, or are we 34 going on 13?” [Ep 15., “Hot Child In the City”]

“While I always ascribed thoughts of karma to the fortune-cookie school psychology, I wondered, does a string of bad dates really equal one good one? And will treating someone badly in one relationship ensure that you’ll be treated badly in the next? Does everything that goes around really come around? And if so, will it come around to bite you in the ass? Is there such a thing as relationship karma? ” [Ep 17., “What Goes Around Comes Around”]

Season Four

“So there you have it. We’ve got a relationship without sex and sex without a relationship. Which had a better shot at survival? I couldn’t help wonder: What comes first, the chicken or the sex?” [Ep 4., “What’s Sex Got to Do With It?”]

“I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that I wanted to talk to my ex-boyfriend again?” [Ep 6., “Baby, Talk Is Cheap”]

“In view of current circumstances, I couldn’t help but wonder, are men just women with balls?” [Ep 10., “Belles of the Balls”]

“They’re people who have recently moved in with someone. As I looked around I wondered how many of them were mid-fight like myself. When it comes to relationships, I couldn’t help but wonder, what are we fighting for?” [Ep 13., “The Good Fight”]

“Although, at what point do separate interests become separate bedrooms? I couldn’t help but wonder: To be in a couple, do you have to put your single self on a shelf?” [Ep 14., “All That Glitters“]

“So here I was, a 35 year old single woman with no financial security but many life experiences behind me. Did that mean nothing? After all, heartbreak and breakups are the hardest kind of work so shouldn’t there be some sort of credit for enduring them? And if not how do you retain a sense of value when you have nothing concrete to show for it because at the end of yet another failed relationship, when all you have are war wounds and self-doubt, you have to wonder what’s it all worth?” [Ep 15., “Ring a Ding Ding”]

“Later that night, I got to thinking about fathers or the lack of them. Some say a daughter’s relationship with her father is the model for all her subsequent relationships with men. Is that just pop psychology or is there some truth to it? And if you were given a less-than-perfect model, does it mean a life of less-than-perfect relationships? I couldn’t help but wonder, how much does a father-figure figure?” [Ep 17., “A ‘Vogue’ Idea”]

“I couldn’t help but wonder, can you make a mistake and miss your fate?” [Ep 18., “I Heart NY”]

Season Five

“Later that night, I got to thinking about days gone by. That carefree time when our schedules were as wide open as our hearts. The time before the baggage and breakups and babies began to weigh us all down. I couldn’t help but wonder: Does that sense of adventure still flicker inside of us? Or when it comes to being carefree single girls, have we missed the boat?” [Ep 1., “Anchors Away”]

“We may have traded the little black book for a little black dress and replaced the Ferrari with a Fendi, but in view of certain evidence, I had to wonder, are we the new bachelors?” [Ep 7., “The Big Journey”]

“As I walked home, I couldn’t help but wonder was it Mr. Big, was it New York, or was it me? [Ep 7., The Big Journey]

“Like that Freckle on my face that he once told me he loved I could do my best to cover it during the day but at night after I wash the city off my face there it was a tiny brown dot near the tip of my lip, and I wondered how something so small could suddenly seem so big.” [Ep 7., “The Big Journey”]