Miranda has a lovely singing voice. As Brady swings in his swingy-chair, she sings, "He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze." Then she hears Steve and a woman's voice out in the hall. She panics, leaps to her feet, and tells Magda that she isn't home. Get it? She's. Not. Home. Then she rushes into her room to hide. Magda says firmly, "She is not. Home." Debbie says that's too bad, and nice to meet you! Magda says, "She is not. Home." Steve says he has to go grab Mister Elephant, since he forgot it last time. A stricken look crosses Mir's face.

So she hides. She hides under her own bed to avoid meeting the woman that took Steve away from her. Well, that would be true if Miranda weren't too chicken to tell Steve how she really feels. This Debbie person doesn't seem totally insincere, just creepy and intrusive. It's enough reason to hate her for doing the pop-in. I hate an unexpected knock on the door. Call first; it's not so hard. There's a horrible moment when Brady drops his binky and it lands under the bed, right by Miranda, who's clutching her cat. She lobs the binky back out, and Debbie bends over to grab it without bending her knees, so Miranda remains undiscovered. Debbie has on what look like knockoff Candie's, and long fake nails. Urgh. And she sounds distinctly Queensian. Or maybe she's from Jersey. Either way, she's got some kind of regional accent going on that's not as pronounced nor as charming as Steve's. Elmer Fudd is charming, right? Anyway, the sickening couple are off to Blockbuster, though Steve chides her that he gets to pick this time. Mir crawls out from under the bed and tells a silent Magda that there are a lot of dust bunnies under there.

On to Charlotte's "casual" rehearsal dinner. People are really dressed up. Carrie's expiration date waiting to happen, Howie, is there, and Mir and Sam urge Carrie to go for it. Carrie says there's no casual sex anymore. "Nothing is casual, even when it says so on the invitation." Good point. But in the spirit of "getting in the swing of things," she goes for it. So they talk and flirt and make cute, and Carrie loosens the neck of her dress and VOs, "How bad could it be?"

Cut to the sex. The very bad sex. Pounding, super-fast, head-banging-against-the-headboard, unsexy sex. Carrie just rattles underneath him and puts up with it. She VOs that she and Howie "had sex like we were teenagers again. Meaning, he had no idea what he was doing, and I didn't say anything." Okay, I've been there, but not in the last few years. I don't understand how you can fuck someone and not be able to tell them what to do or not do. Life is too short to have bad sex. She could even have hollered "STOP" and she would have been better off than having to suffer through that frantic act. Now, of course, I can't feel sympathetic to her because she didn't speak up. Sigh.