The most ridiculous plot line in Sex and the City is even worse 26 years on-Alicia Adejobi-Entertainment – Metro

Carrie Bradshaw’s fart-gate fiasco will forever be notorious (Picture: HBO)

When it comes to TV protagonists, Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw is undeniably the queen of overreacting and bad decisions. 

Like the time she crashed Natasha’s lunch just to make herself feel better about having an affair with her husband Big. Or when she sent her boyfriend Aidan to help her friend Miranda who was injured – only to then later show up and talk about her own problems. 

And who can forget when Carrie was facing eviction from her apartment and got mad at Charlotte for not offering money to bail her out? It’s not like she had spent every pay cheque on designer shoes instead of saving or anything… 

Sure, Carrie was a lot of fun but she was also very ridiculous. 

What was possibly her most absurd storyline really hasn’t aged well in the 26 years since it aired. 

In season 1 episode 11 titled The Drought, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) well and truly lost her mind after accidentally farting in front of her boyfriend Big (Chris Noth) while in bed together. Anyone would of course be embarrassed letting off wind in front of someone you’ve not been dating for very long but her overreaction was entirely blown out of proportion. 

The writer accidentally farted while in bed with boyfriend Big, leaving her mortified (Picture: HBO)

Big, of course, found the whole thing hysterical (Picture: HBO)

Carrie was gone like the wind… her wind (Picture: HBO)

Carrie immediately leapt out of bed, blindly running into the door before grabbing her clothes and fleeing the apartment, much to the entertainment of Big who was still cracking up laughing in bed. She then relayed the awkward moment to Miranda who had a pretty normal reaction to the incident. 

Carrie told her lawyer bestie while complaining that she and Big had not had sex on three occasions after fart-gate: ‘I farted in front of my boyfriend. And we’re no longer having sex and he thinks of me as one of the boys and I’m gonna have to move to another city where the shame of this won’t follow me.’ 

‘You farted, you’re human,’ Miranda reminded her hysterical friend, who inexplicably replied: ‘I don’t want him to know that.’ 

Voicing the thoughts of many viewers, Miranda told her: ‘You’re insane.’ 

In the next sentence, Carrie couldn’t even say the word ‘fart’ which was ridiculous in itself. She then spent the rest of the episode confessing her wind-breaking audacity to the rest of her friendship group, as though it were the biggest dating cardinal sin. 

It didn’t help that her irrationality was supported when Samantha told her the fart was a ‘mistake’, but even the sex-positive publicist eventually reasoned it wasn’t that big of a deal in the long-term and Carried needed to get over it. 

By the end of the episode, Miranda felt everyone’s frustrations by telling the spiralling writer: ‘Jesus, Carrie. I’ve heard enough about the fart, it’s not about the f*****g fart.’ 

Carrie’s best pals (middle to right) Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda all had varying reactions (Picture: HBO)

It’s not that Carrie didn’t have a right to be embarrassed about the fart or worry if she’d seem less attractive to Big after the fact, but this wasn’t high school. She was an adult woman dating an even older man so if Big was turned off after an accidental human reflex, there’d be serious concerns about his maturity levels. 

To be fair, fart-gate did lend to the wider discussion of the pressure to be perfect in relationships, but quite frankly, much of Carrie’s overreaction was very much her personality anyway, and it’s been widely debated on social media forums like Reddit over the years. 

In one subReddit, user Prestigious-Today191 stated: ‘I think carrie was ridiculous in her overreaction honestly.’ 

Another user agreed: ‘No kidding. What’s more embarrassing – Farting or talking about it for a week?’ 

Prettyxinpink said: ‘I hate this episode lol I don’t find anything humorous about farting and her over analyzing it was so annoying lol.’ 

Edemummy weighed in: ‘This whole plot was so stupid. That Carrie was so embarrassed and that Big did the whoppe cushion come on. They’re in their 30s and 40s as if they’ve never farted in front of another person.’ 

Carrie and Big got over it by getting under each other (Picture: HBO)

Echoing sentiments that Carrie behaved juvenile, Eastern_Panda8567 wrote: ‘For two 30+ year olds it isnt and shouldn’t be a big deal…but for teenagers it would be humiliating and Carrie dates like a teenager lol.’ 

On the other side of the coin, there are also many users defending Carrie’s overreaction and some have revealed that they are still embarrassed to fart or poo in front of their partners. 

However, Carrie wasn’t the only one to blow off steam over the years of the SATC franchise as Miranda memorably farted in public while heavily pregnant before brushing it off with a joke: ‘I just pulled my own finger.’ 

Charlotte also seemed to recover faster from embarrassment than Carrie after quite literally c******g her pants in the first Sex and the City movie. 

Even with a ridiculous storyline like fart-gate, many fans of the SATC franchise would still take those earlier episodes over the spin-off series And Just Like That, which has been ripped to high heavens over its writing. 

Unfortunately for Carrie, her worst fear came true as Reddit user Sarah-JessicaSnarker quipped: ‘Carrie farting in bed with Big lives rent-free in my head. I laugh about it weekly, at least.’ 

Sex and the City is available to watch on Sky and Now.

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