Cut to Carrie going through a file of her columns. "That night I started thinking about belief. Maybe it's not even advisable to be an optimist after the age of 30. Maybe pessimism is something we have to start applying daily, like moisturizer. Otherwise, how do you bounce back when reality batters your belief system and love does not, as promised, conquer all? Is hope a drug we need to go off of? Or is it keeping us alive?" Cut to her screen for the tagline: "What's the harm in believing?"
Cut to Charlotte in her bathroom, where a tape of a self-help love "expert" dispenses platitudes: "Open yourself, breathe in the possibility of love. What is not love is fear. It's time to let go of fears and embrace your dreams." Charlotte scrawls on her mirror with lipstick: "I believe in love."
But she's already agreed to go with Charlotte to a seminar led by the self-help love guru from those tapes (“Her philosophy of written affirmations has helped me let go of negative thoughts," Charlotte blathers), in part to have something to fill a column, in part to ease Charlotte's fear that her friend is becoming bitter. But in a memorable scene, Charlotte is the one who ends up voicing her doubts.
At the seminar, the guru is on auto-pilot, rattling off slogans: "Love will come to you only when you truly believe you deserve it. Love will raise you up. Fear will pull you under. Only love is real." She opens the floor to questions and receives the praise of one woman who says her belief in love, conjured by those tapes, helped her fall in love last week.
Charlotte calls for the microphone and, voice wavering, gingerly takes to her feet. "I'm just wondering how long that woman has been doing her affirmations, because I've been doing mine every day and I want to believe, but nothing's happening and I just don't think it's working, I just don't think it will work for me."
"I hear fear. I hear doubt," the guru replies. "You have to believe love to receive love. Keep repeating your affirmations and eventually your heart will catch up with your head."
For once, Charlotte won't settle for easy answers. "That's the thing though. I did find love. I believed that there was someone out there for me. And I met him, finally, and we had a beautiful wedding. And then everything just fell apart. And I'm worried, I'm afraid that he took away my ability to believe. And I hate him for that, because I always believed before, and now I just feel ... lost. I'm trying to put myself out there, but I feel hopeless."
The pathetic guru can only manage: "Maybe you're not really out there. Maybe you're not looking for love in a real way." Carrie grabs the mike and protests, "Believe me, she's out there." The guru looks forlorn for a second, then fakes a smile as the room gets quiet.
Sunday afternoon, just before the baptism, Carrie tries once more to defer her godmother duties. Miranda won't hear of it, and delivers a line of Disney-esque cheesiness. "I don't know if I believe in any of this. But I believe in you."
Carrie for once takes a different kind of babe in her arms, cradling Brady as the priest reads a truly poignant blessing. "Give him an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to love, and the gift of joy and wonder." Cut to a close-up of the baby's tender face, and Carrie watches as water—"through it, we are reborn," the priest announces—-spills over the baby's head. "I couldn't help but hope," Carrie says in a voice-over, "the water would wash away some of my original cynicism." After Charlotte's confession, it's the episode’s second moment that reaches a depth that was foreign to the series back in Season Two.
But soon Sentimental Charlotte is back. She rebukes Miranda's insult of Samantha's cheating boyfriend: "I don't know, maybe things will work out between them." Too many guru tapes? Sheer stubborn optimism? Touched by a baptism? We are left to guess.
Same goes for Carrie, who, as planned, takes the optimist route as she finishes her book preparations. "That night, I dedicated my baby, my book, to hopeful single women, And one in particular: my good friend Charlotte, the eternal optimist, who always believes in love." The piano soundtrack finishes the otherwise touching episode with a blandness that suggests it was recorded in a hotel lobby.
