The Carrie Diaries REVIEW

In 1984, a pre-Manolos-and-Mr. Big Carrie Bradshaw ("Sex and the City") is merely a Connecticut teen dealing with the death of her mother while also dealing with a defiant young sister and a workaholic father. Carrie, who is bored with her life in the suburbs, seizes the chance to intern at a Manhattan law office because the glitz and grime of the big city make her feel alive. Carrie gets inspired and thinks there is no turning back; she was intended for New York when she meets Larissa, a style editor at Interview magazine who introduces her to a world of nightclubs and interesting people.

The issue with The Carrie Diaries (CW, Mondays, 8 p.m.) isn't that it dares to prequelize Sex and the City, or that it isn't particularly interested in maintaining continuity with the original, or that its star AnnaSophia Robb doesn't resemble Sarah Jessica Parker, or that it creates a childhood backstory for Carrie that seems more pampered than the one we inferred, or that its feeble attempt at an eighties atmosphere The issue is that The Carrie Diaries is a poor spinoff that dishonors its original work.

The series premieres in 1984. Reagan has won a second term. Fashion and music are defined by MTV. The only phones have cables, and there is no Internet. Carrie resides in Connecticut, and her bedroom is furnished with Danielle Steel books and a Rubik's Cube. As she moves through her high school, singing a taxonomy a la Clueless, she can't help but hear New Order. Her mother passed away three months prior, and the family is still in shock. This final passage appears to contradict Carrie's established past, but I've never let plot consistency be a deciding factor when evaluating sequels and prequels. The Carrie Diaries don't appear to be as concerned with consistency of vision as I am, and that is more important to me.

It doesn't even feel like a PG-rated adaptation of SATC in this pilot. It has a by-the-book eighties visual direction and the feel of a drab CW drama about a family dealing with grief. Dorrit, Carrie's sister, is a marijuana-using teen-at-risk. She and Carrie frequently argue, sometimes to the point of knocking each other down, for possession of one of their mother's purses that Dorrit had painted with nail polish. Carrie is inspired to study fashion design and create a signature appearance by her own restorative nail paint experiments. When her father offers her an internship at his Manhattan law business, she becomes fixated on the idea of being a successful single woman residing in New York. Her obsession with a hot but aloof young child named Sebastian (Austin Butler) seems to be a sign of adult Carrie's arduous journey to marry Mr. Big. Is this a creatively valid approach to a prequel series? I guess, if it were well executed, which The Carrie Diaries isn’t