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 is shown the all too naked cover her publishers planned for her columns book, she's shocked, it just screams hooker, so she turns to Samantha who accepts to do her PR for peanuts. Charlotte swallows her pride to seek hope in another advice book. Miranda goes to Weight Watchers where she hooks up with a dieting man, but sugar and fat are aphrodisiacs, sex works up more appetite... Carrie walks in just when Sam is given her hunky courier a blow job, and is judged implicitly too judgmental about it. Stanford present her his hunky new lover Marcus Adante, a dancer, and both men accept to act as critical guy target audience at her new photo-shoot.

Since Samantha is bored with the city enough to rename it "Same York", Carrie invites her along to her book-signing, a long train journey to San Francisco- alas it's less of the Oriental Express than the New York Sub: tiny 'de luxe' quarters and men who are faithful to their wives. Charlotte and her lawyer who dropped off the last divorce papers at her hard-kept place, which she now considers selling, end up having sex in his apartment. In Frisco, Carrie is mortified to be the opening act for a canine TV puppet, but finally finds a sex partner: Mr. Big, who came to hear about his 'character' in her book.