Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl...

I didn't understand how, as a sex writer, she could be so confused about bisexuality.

How do people watch this and conclude it is homophobic? Dang. The episode simply illustrates a range of sexual relationships openly and without judgement. Carrie, our supposedly open writer, gets conflicted on her feelings which is exactly as expected from John Q. Public. Carrie behavior does seem quite out of place for a person writing sexual commentary columns in the local newspaper. Carrie behavior then is consistently out of place most episodes. Funny the Alanis cameo here. They missed an opportunity for her to throw in some clip of one of her sexual angst songs. That would have been awesome.

Filled with the usual insulting stereotypes, hard to watch

As a bisexual person, I have to disagree with the below reviewers. They kind of missed one of the main points of this episode which was to show how sexuality is a spectrum and the dialogue surrounding it (at the time). Many people and even gays didn't fully understand bisexuality - that doesn't automatically make them phobic (some definitely are though) So of course that dialogue is presented from the pov of these straight women. Carrie even talks about gender and constructs...though I agree that as a sex columnist, her character should've been the one to be less fazed by all of this. It is however established that she mostly just poses questions in her column, so it's not super realistic. And of course the creators and some of the writers of this show were part of the growing LGBTQ community. Think about that for a minute. The whole point was literally to show bisexuality.

Season 3, Episode 4, "Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl..." is one of those Sex and the City episodes that's fun, weird, and very much a product of its time. Carrie starts dating a younger bisexual guy, and the whole thing turns into her freaking out about labels and what that means. The "spin the bottle" scene with Alanis Morissette is kind of the big moment here - back then it was seen as bold, but now it feels more like a gimmick. Samantha is strutting around in suits and playing with gender roles, which is so her. Charlotte gets all uptight about nudity in art, and Miranda serves as the sarcastic commentator, dropping that line about bisexuality being a "layover on the way to Gaytown." Iconic at the time, but pretty cringey now. The episode has that classic mix of glossy Manhattan energy and cheeky sex talk. It's campy, funny, and kind of progressive in the way it even brought bisexuality into the conversation - but also dated, since it treats it more like a curiosity than something real. It's more about cocktail party banter than deep insight. It's entertaining, it has memorable moments, and it shows where the show was pushing boundaries in the 2000s - even if it doesn't quite hold up today.