Samantha's announcement she's giving Richard another chance after his unfaithfulness, as nobody's perfect and it was 'only sex', is such a bomb-shell that even Charlotte makes an obscene gesture. Although Miranda is atheist, she can't deny Steve's entire Catholic family having the baby baptized. Just when Carrie felt down having to write about relationships without having one herself, she gets invited by a publisher to select some of her columns as a book. Eternally positive Charlotte drags Carrie along to the Fountain of Faith, but stands up to say faith didn't suffice for her.

When Carrie follows Charlotte to a performance by a woman in Chelsea who speaks nor eats, she meets famous Russian painter and sculptor Aleksandr Petrovsky, who is intrigued by Carrie's cavalier attitude. Samantha, who bravely announces she is 45 and getting glasses, tries to rejuvenate herself by an intimate hair-coloring after finding gray down there, which proves disastrous. Charlotte gets pregnant but has a miscarriage and is plunged into depression until she finds inspiration in a TV documentary on Liz Taylor. After Robert declared his love on a cookie, Miranda gives Brady's first birthday party, breaks her promise to Carrie not to have a ('scary') clown and finds herself declaring her love to daddy Steve, who reciprocates.

Miranda and Steven exchange good intentions and she proposes to him, instantly sealed with a kiss; the girls wonder what to buy her, not too domestic etcetera. Carrie admires Aleksander's piano playing and poetry reading but isn't really comfortable with such old-fashioned romancing; however a dress from his personal friend Oscar de la Renta sets her glowing. Charlotte and Harry enjoy a romantic French restaurant, but the digestion proves a waking nightmare. Samantha feels, after seeing her photos in a magazine report on Smith, she may need bigger, but still tasteful breasts; alas the plastic surgeon discovers a lump which proves to be a cancer tumor.

Carrie has lunch with Petrovsky's ex Juliette B. who tells her he always gives priority to his art above his partner- she finds that true and has a generally bad time. Charlotte prepares with Anthony to receive her promised adoption baby's birth parents, but those changed their mind; ultimately she and Harry get another baby girl from China. Steve's ma Mary suffers memory loss after a mild stroke, and Miranda offers to take her in, which their maid Magda calls love. Samantha finally admits that Smith means enough to her, unlike any other man, to be jealous. Mr. Big has finally realized that he cannot be happy without Carrie and sets out to bring her back to New York, just when she was considering breaking up with the Russian anyhow.