“Unoriginal Sin”

Sex and the City season 5, episode 2
Original air date: July 28, 2002

The theme of the show is "belief."
Carrie's pondering what she believes about love and her career.
Miranda's mulling the idea of baptizing Brady, since Steve and his mother are pressuring her to do so, even though she's not Catholic, let alone religious at all.
And Samantha's deciding whether or not to believe Richard that he's reformed and only cheated on her because he was scared of how strongly he felt about her.
Charlotte's questioning how much longer she can keep believing in love, when every day she seems to be getting further from it.

Carrie's question of the week: "Is hope a drug we need to go off of, or is it the only thing keeping us alive? What's the harm in believing?"

Carrie and Charlotte go to a seminar about affirming your belief in love, where Charlotte first gets miffed that Miranda's asked Carrie to be Brady's godmother, but forgives Carrie in the end when Carrie defends Charlotte to the seminar leader who's chastised Charlotte for not really believing, not "truly putting [herself] out there."

Samantha decides to forgive Richard when his peace offering is a magnificent, enormous canary diamond for her middle finger, "so when you flip me off, I'll have something shiny to look at."

Carrie's been offered a book deal to put her columns into book format. She's interested, but the two publishing reps (one played by Molly Shannon of Saturday Night Live) harangue her about her "tone" for the book: is she an optimist or a pessimist? Does Carrie Bradshaw still have hope, or should they all just shoot themselves now? In the end, Carrie decides that she does still have hope, and dedicates her book ""to hopeful single women everywhere, and to one in particular - my good friend Charlotte, the eternal optimist, who always believes in love."