The new season of the highly anticipated prequel to the infamous Sex and the City series, The Carrie Diaries, premiered on The CW network on January 15, 2013 as a mid-season pick-up. It replaced the recently wrapped famously popular Gossip Girl series in its coveted Monday night 8-pm primetime slot, which ended its final season in December after its successful six-season run. In its first season, the hour-long teenage dramedy had 13 episodes that ended with the season finale, “Kiss Yesterday Goodbye”, which recently aired on April 8, 2013.
The premise of the show featured this new Carrie as fresh, young, and innocent in the midst of making the transition from childhood to adulthood as she deals with school and work, and is introduced to the lights, fashion, and glamour of life in the city. Throughout the first season, Carrie encounters first love, first heartbreak, but ultimately by the end of the season, she is still a virgin.
There are several discrepancies between the new Carrie Bradshaw and the old that made former Sex and the City fans and viewers of the show somewhat disappointed when the show first aired, such as the death of her mother, presence of her little sister, and lack of the other three characters, her friends in Sex and the City that viewers fell in love with when the original series aired.
However, in several interviews, the writers and producers of the show, as well as actress AnnaSophia Robb, have made it very clear that the new show is not meant to in any way completely replace and replicate the old. The new Carrie may have different friends and a different family, but she still seems to portray some interesting qualities that do mirror that of the character played by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City, such as the curly hair, crazy wardrobe, and talent as a writer. Nevertheless, The Carrie Diaries struggled in the ratings during its first season, leaving everyone to question the chances of whether or not the show will get renewed for a second season.
The following graph shows the Neilson Co. ratings numbers reported in the 18-49 demographic that The Carrie Diaries experienced in its first season:
The Ratings Results for The Carrie Diaries in the 18-49 Demographic
|
Episode # |
101 |
102 |
103 |
104 |
105 |
106 |
107 |
108 |
109 |
110 |
111 |
112 |
113 |
|
Rating |
0.6 |
0.5 |
0.5 |
0.7 |
0.5 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
0.3 |
0.4 |
|
# Viewers (millions) |
1.61 |
1.27 |
1.38 |
1.51 |
1.20 |
1.08 |
1.00 |
1.10 |
1.03 |
0.99 |
0.83 |
0.87 |
1.00 |
The chart show’s that The Carrie Diaries received the highest rating and number of viewers during its first episode than it did throughout the entire season, which isn’t a good sign for the future of the show. It appears that each subsequent episode following the premiere began to dip a little more each episode as the season progressed. It took a huge dip from the 4th episode to the 5th, and then seemed to stabilize after it got down to the 1 million mark. The rest was pretty much downhill from there.
MyTVBlog: The Carrie Diaries 
I never got to watch an episode of this show, but it does sound like it could be interesting. It is hard to follow up a show like Sex and the City, which was loved and still is loved by so many. It will be interesting to see what is in store for the future of the show.