The CW’s The Carrie Diaries borrows the names of the characters of its mega-hit predecessor, but not much else. Although HBO’s flagship series Sex and the City connected with millions of people, I was never a fan of it since it primarily focused on characters only concerned with status and fashion in a city that is defined by so much more than the superficial. The Carrie Diaries, however, takes the character of Carrie Bradshaw (ably played by AnnaSophia Robb) to her humble beginnings. Carrie is a normal suburban girl recovering from the recent death of her mother. Robb brings an immediate pathos to her role as an older sister struggling to figure out her role in the family without her mother there. She’s a wonderfully human anchor in the middle of a show that doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with her yet.
The Carrie Diaries, much of the time, plays like a very typical teen soap. The high school setting coupled with Sex and the City’s patented obnoxious voiceover does the show no favors. Carrie’s dubbed narration only serves to remind how annoying Sarah Jessica Parker’s own narration got over the years, and does nothing to advance the story–only to rehash what already should have been apparent. From there, all the high school show cliches are present: there’s the ethnic best friend, the central plot about losing Carrie’s virginity, the hunky (but ultimately characterless) love interest, the evil popular girl, and so on, and so forth. It’s not necessarily bad to include these elements in a teen soap, but none of it feels fresh.
Where the show does shine is in Carrie’s side adventures in New York City. Carrie’s father, in an attempt to keep her occupied, gets her an internship at a law firm in Manhattan. Here, we see Carrie falling in love with the city that would come to define her. She gets mixed in with the adult working world, as well as adventures into the glamorous, rebellious underbelly of New York. Here, Carrie’s obsessions with fashion, and with status are framed as the thoughts of a young woman in grief over her mother. She clings to shoes and dresses and bags and photo shoots because it makes her feel like an adventurous, independent woman. Carrie plays multiple roles like any teenager would in her situation. Seeing how her adventures in New York bleed into her typical high school life would be a good direction for the show, as it would put a twist on the low-stakes storytelling of a high school soap.
As someone who pretty much hated Sex and the City, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Carrie Diaries. It’s on the CW, so there’s no place for the more raunchy aspects that were such a major part of SATC, but in place of that HBO subject matter is an emotional core that grounds the show in a way it’s predecessor never accomplished. With some adjustment, I could easily become a fan of The Carrie Diaries.
