Season #: 2, 1
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Critic Reviews
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Diaries is lukewarm and earnest. [21 Jan 2013]
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The problem is that The Carrie Diaries is an inept spinoff that dishonors its source.
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AnnaSophia Robb is appealing enough in the title role, but Monday's first episode starts to sag from all the CW-ian title character narration and overall pop tune heaviness.
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Through its first three episodes, The Carrie Diaries works quite well as a coming-of-age story, thanks in no small part to Robb's winning performance and a pretty solid cast of young actors around her.
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The CW's attempt to capture the magic of "Sex and the City" in a prequel, set in 1984, could have gone very wrong. But The Carrie Diaries is surprisingly right.
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It's a sweet, somewhat bland portrait of an Everygirl coming of age in suburban Connecticut in the 1980s, dealing with the class Heathers--here, they're Donna LaDonna and the two Jens--and crushing on the cutie transfer student with long blond hair.
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The new series succeeds on its own nostalgic terms.
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The situations are stock--John Hughes wrote this playbook pretty thoroughly--and the dialogue does not exactly crackle. But it is all well-staged and believably played and at times it becomes quite lyrical and, even, moving.
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Carrie's antics in New York are a kind of chick version of Matthew Broderick's madcap adventures in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But Schwartz can't cut the umbilical cord--perhaps fallopian tube is a more apt metaphor--to his original source material, and that's where The Carrie Diaries goes off the rails.
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The CW series that takes "Sex and the City" fashionista and sexual anthropologist Carrie Bradshaw all the way back to 1984 Connecticut, and high school, the fit's a little off.
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The rest of the show goes on to prize sweetness over superficiality.
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Unlike the teenagers on the show it replaces on the CW schedule, "Gossip Girl," the characters on The Carrie Diaries are neither disturbingly precocious nor voracious, instead working a welcome John Hughes vibe.
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They are real people with plausible emotions. And in the hands of Josh Schwartz (Gossip Girl, The O.C.), Amy Harris (Gossip Girl), Bushnell and two other executive producers from the CW's Hart of Dixie, the storytelling has a chance to be handled maturely.
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The memory of how that touchstone HBO show, at its best, wrapped heartbreak and satire in high comic style makes the ordinariness of The Carrie Diaries a little more disappointing than it would be otherwise.
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It's a step above the typical CW soap, and worth penciling in an appointment in your own TV diary.
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The '80s setting does allow the show to be more frank in tackling issues like sex and drugs, but other than that, the premiere deals in typical teenage girl stuff, the sort one can find in any number of ABC Family shows.
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Mostly boilerplate teen soap that lacks the (umm) zest of "Sex and the City"--a good thing, in case you're wondering.
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Writer Amy B. Harris has crafted a clever, credible script, carefully adding a few veiled life lessons within the witty dialogue: One of the girls will learn that hooking up with a boy you think you love may not always end in happily ever after.
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[AnnaSophia Robb is] compelling, and the show has a sweetly corny charm. [18 Jan 2013, p.71]
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This is a different series, one whose good start has to do with its capacity to be affecting, which it is in its picture of loss and longing--a sense this young Carrie projects persuasively.
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We've seen all the parts of this story before, and frankly, we've seen them told better.
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While it's not surprising that The Carrie Diaries is unlikely to appeal to fans of the HBO franchise, it's still disappointing that much of what made that series work has given way to cliché and oversimplification.
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Pleasant surprise, The Carrie Diaries's premiere episode is a nimble and entertaining trip back to Carrie Bradshaw's high school years.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 52 out of 70
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Mixed: 9 out of 70
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Negative: 9 out of 70
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Jan 17, 2013
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Jan 30, 2013
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Jan 20, 2013