“Sex is something special that’s supposed to happen between two people who loved each other” – Charlotte

POOR Charlotte. As if her situation with Trey wasn’t hard enough (by which I mean insufficiently hard when it matters), she also has to have her brunch ruined by listening to how much great sex Samantha’s having.

The only way writer Jenny Bicks can make this scene into anything resembling a fair fight is with a side order of implied slut-shaming – but I’m still 100% Team Charlotte and thoroughly unimpressed by Carrie and Miranda hiding behind their menus and refusing to get involved.

Worse still, Carrie promptly does get involved by telling Charlotte “not to be so hard” on the woman who thinks it’s appropriate to tell her friend with the impotent husband that her latest lover made her come six times. “She doesn’t mean to be hurtful,” Carrie tells Charlotte. But surely that’s not the point?

Of course, that line is partly a set-up for Charlotte to reply that she doesn’t need any lectures – because Carrie is inexplicably lecturing at the local learning annex. Despite brushing off Miranda earlier in the week due to “working” on these talks, she only seems to have managed to write about five sentences. It quickly becomes clear the blind is attempting to lead the blind – although to be fair those who signed up should possibly have figured that out for themselves in advance.

Miranda was needing company because her date night was spoiled by the inconvenient death of the man in question. Naturally she and Carrie rock up to the wake, where they meet a man – but the problem is that he’s Carrie’s ex. He was an asshole back then, and it turns out he’s just as much of an asshole now. Miranda should probably have read a bit more into their initial exchange, when she said “I’m a lawyer” and he replied “I’m not drunk enough”. Rude!

The frenemies of the title include a “spunky broad” Samantha meets while out shopping who proves to be even more inappropriate than she is, and Charlotte’s old sorority sisters, who quite reasonably are aghast when she start shouting about getting “fucked hard” over lunch. The rather dispiriting message is that your friends might be brash, insensitive, cowardly and/or utterly self-centred, but they’re probably still the best you can do. Oh dear.

Carrie’s column: “Are we getting wiser, or just older?”

Puns: None detected