"Before there was Sex, Before there was the City, there was me, Carrie - Carrie Bradshaw"
The Carrie Diaries is an American teen drama television series on The CW. It is an adaptation of the book series of the same name by Candace Bushnell and not a direct prequel to the HBO television series Sex and the City. The first season of the show focuses on Carrie Bradshaw (AnnaSophia Robb) during her junior year of high school in 1984, and she explores life in New York while interning at a law office. It ran for two seasons before being canceled.
Tropes present in The Carrie Diaries include:
- Allergic to Love: Samantha Jones. So much.
- Alpha Bitch: Donna.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Dorrit to Carrie.
- Asian and Nerdy: Mouse.
- The Beard: Walt with Maggie. Though, this may be unintentional, as he seems to be in denial that he's gay.
- The B Grade: Mouse breaks up with Seth over this. Because he was distracting her.
- Black and Nerdy: Thomas West; he's nerdy in that his grades are better than Mouse's. Otherwise, he's a typical jock.
- Big Sister Instinct: Carrie to Dorrit.
- The Brainless Beauty: Maggie
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Dorrit, so much. Though, she has her reasons.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Larissa
- Composite Character: Maggie, who is a combination of her own character & Carrie's frenemy Lali Kandesie from the books.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Carrie's dad is not okay with her dating Sebastian at first.
- Tom uses this tactic on Dorrit towards the end of season 2.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Tom Bradshaw when talking to Harlan
- Dorrit when talking to everyone.
- Drowning Our Romantic Sorrows: Sebastian and Maggie during the season finale.
- Dumb Blonde: Samantha Jones.
- The Dutiful Son: Sebastian's first response when his mother announces she's marrying her tennis instructor is to get advice from Tom on how to protect her. Tom suggests some family lawyers to write up a pre-nup.
- Emo Teen: Dorrit. In her defense, she did just lose her mother and her father is....less than attentive to her needs.
- The First Cut Is the Deepest: And the second. Poor Maggie; dumped twice by the same guy.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Dorrit is the foolish to Carrie's responsible.
- Foreshadowing: Carrie has already realized that she cannot cook by the end of the Thanksgiving episode and has had her first Cosmopolitan and received her first pair of Manolo’s in 'Hush Hush'.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Between Carrie and Dorrit.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Sebastian spends most of Hush Hush trying to do this for Carrie.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Carrie
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Larissa. In Fright Night she gets so high that she tries to jump off a building. She later spends the rest of the night passed out.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Carrie and Larissa, though Larissa didn't know until Hush Hush.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Maggie's main motivation for a majority of the series. Dorrit has this to a degree as well.
- It Will Never Catch On: Mr. Bradshaw says this about The Golden Girls.
- Jerkass: Donna
- She actually Took a Level in Kindness when she was understanding about Walt being gay
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Donna. She's understanding about Walt being gay. She also gave Dorrit advice about her boyfriend.
- Lampshade Hanging: When Tom talks to Walt about The Golden Girls:Tom: "Four women who sit around, talking about their lives? That's a TV show? I don't see it lasting."
- Lonely Rich Kid: Sebastian.
- Missing Mom: Carrie and Dorrit's mother is dead. Sebastian's mom isn't dead, but isn't exactly around either.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Maggie thinks Pete is cheating on her when she finds the phone number of another woman in his coat pocket. Turns out she's a jeweler and he was buying a ring from her to propose to Maggie.
- Mistaken for Racist: Tom gets mistaken as this by Larissa when he doesn't want to talk about sex in mixed company. He was referring to their genders.
- Momma's Boy: Sebastian does seem to care for his mother, despite their issues.
- Mythology Gag: Carrie says that she doesn't want to still be talking about men in her 30s.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Played with in the case of Donna. While she never makes any effort to appear unintelligent, she knowingly allows people to assume she's dumb because she is popular & good looking, even using it to her advantage whenever possible. Donna also makes sure to stay out of advanced classes & even fools Mouse, who doesn't realize her true intelligence until she learns of Donna's admission to Columbia University.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Mouse, whose real name is Roberta (in the book, Jill in the show) but is referred to by her nickname by even teachers.
- The Jens
- Papa Wolf: Maggie's dad. Maggie spends three episodes worrying about what her parents are going to think if they find out she's pregnant. In "I Heard A Rumor", her parents are more scared for her and her dad is angry at Sebastian supposedly getting her pregnant. When she finally tells her dad who it was, he is red with anger at Simon, and he embraces her in a hug.
- Parents as People: Tom eventually starts dating again, slowly, while Sebastian's mom is a needy lush who either has no time for him or is emotionally dependent upon him.
- Parental Hypocrisy: Carrie tries to use this on her dad in "Hush Hush" to avoid getting in trouble when caught at a nightclub. Averted in that it doesn't work & he rightly assert his nightlife as an adult has nothing to do with her own.
- Popular Is Dumb: Zigzagged with Donna, played straight with her sidekicks 'The Jens'.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Maggie has gotten at least two so far.
- Same Character, But Different: The Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City was raised by a single mother and had no siblings. This Carrie has a mother who passed away from cancer, a younger sibling, and is being raised by her widower father.
- Samantha Jones to a degree as well, as she is merely a bouncer & worker of odd jobs. She's still sexually liberated but she’s still figuring things out.
- Stepford Smiler: Larissa seems to be a Type A.
- The '80s : The series is set in the Eighties, including big hair, technicolour fashion, and a constant soundtrack of Eighties pop hits.
- Title Drop
- They Really Do Love Each Other: Carrie and Dorrit. Especially in the season 2 finale when Dorrit talks some sense into Tom regarding Carrie's decisions with life.
- Twofer Token Minority: Larissa; she's Black AND British!
- Took a Level in Jerkass: George in "Caught".
- Tom in "A First time for Everything".
- The Un-Favorite: A mild case as Dorrit feels this way in regards to her father. He does love her but has a bad habit of focusing more on Carrie's needs. Dorrit later mentions that her mother, in turn, had been more attentive for her and how she feels even more displaced without her.
- Wild Teen Party: In episode 2x09 "Under Pressure", Tom leaves the girls alone for a night and of course Dorrit uses the opportunity to throw a huge party.
- Younger Than They Look: In universe. Carrie likely looks older than 16 because it took Larissa 8 episodes before she found out that Carrie was a teenager, and Larissa still had to be told.
- Granted, Larissa seems to be some sort of intoxicated a majority of the time so how much she notices is a bit spotty.
