Carrie.

Today, in my teenage angst, I finished off The Carrie Diaries.

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Janelle and I had just finished Don't Trust the B*** in Apartment 23, and life without The Bitch was not working for us. We started looking for a new show, and by looking I mean scanning the recommended shows on Netflix, and landed on The Carrie Diaries. If you're not aware, the show is a Prequel to Sex and The City, and follows Carrie Bradshaw - Sarah Jessica Parker's character - 's last two years in high school, before she moved to 'The City.'

I. Love. This. Show. I love everything about it. Twice this week in moments of fatigue and frustration, I've turned to this Carrie Bradshaw and let her innocence and excitment for life wash over me like a wave of . . . well something wave like. Sometimes the metaphors just will not come.

Annnyyyyway, I now present to you The Five Best Things About The Carrie Diaries!

1) AnnaSophia Robb
Stupid stupid AnnaSophia Robb. If you know me, you know that I regularly call the things I love very deeply, stupid, because of the emotional demand they require of me. AnnaSophia Robb is so amazing. She perfectly projects the optimism and naivete of Carrie Bradshaw. She navigates social situations at an enviable pace. She is protective and supportive of her friends, and despite her professional skills, is still a total eighteen year old idiot. It's so perfect. Everything is so perfect, and AnnaSophia is what makes it that way.
2) Candace Bushnell
For lovers of the book series, or those that are overly attached to the original series, that might be critical of a prequel type spin off, you'll be pleased to know that Candace was as invovled as ever. Writing credits on every episode, and an executive producer on eighteen episodes, Candace was. around. to keep her original vision of the characters and their adolescent existences alive. Even moments like Carrie's first iconic Cosmo, are lovingly included.
3) It's such a wonderful snapshot of the time.
So many social, political, and identity issues are discussed in this show; drugs, consent, LGBT rights, teen pregnancy and abortion, AIDS, and diffcult parent relationships. What's so amazing is that nothing is approached with any sort of PSA attitude. Ideas are approached, intelligently discussed, and the characters, therein, come to a more open appreciation of the issues. Their worldview is broadened. That's what you want, people. What. You. Want.
4) Dorrit.
Carrie's younger sister Dorrit has to be a highlight by anyone's standards. The Bradshaw family lost their wife and mother just previous to the show's narrative. Dorrit carries the anxiety of this loss, more than anyone else. She and her mother were more alike than Carrie and their dad, and thus becomes the black sheep. She shows this through her resistance to Carrie's optimism and efforts at big sisterhood. This resistance though, enables her to develop crazy agency, which makes her fiercely independnet and sets her up for a well developed adulthood. Which is like, all I could wish for her.
5) The varying presentation of family systems.
With Maggie from a working class family, Mouse as the daughter of immigrants, Carrie from a single parent home, and Walt the heir to a professional fortune, the show presents an appropriate varyance of family systems; especially considering the Connecticut setting. This makes the show economically diverse, which exposes the complications of the family unit's relationship to economic diversity. As a viewer, that's a total, and totally necessary win.

Check it out. It's on American Netflix, which I know a lot of you have. If you don't but
would like me to teach you how to stream TV and movies, I have a Google Doc just waiting to be sent.