ALMOST CARRIE ~ Almost Serena?

Because of my job, people tend to send me a lot of links to Sex and the City-related tidbits, and recently there’s been a flurry of press regarding The Carrie Diaries, the supposed SATC prequel that may run on the CW.  I have no attachment to such a prequel; due to my utter disgust with both SATC films, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my ladies exist solely within their six-season bubble.  I am, however, riled up by one Mr. Perez Hilton’s take on the issue.  “Gossip Girl,” he writes, “is already essentially a younger version of Sex & The City, so we think bringing in a whole new creative team to re-tool the franchise for a fresh audience is a brilliant idea!”

Mr. Hilton’s enthusiasm feels about as awkward as the double adverb he employs, but what I really take issue with is his trite analysis. Age differences aside, Gossip Girl is nothing like Sex and the City.  That is a crude, misinformed interpretation and,  unfortunately, one made all too often. I’ve overheard many of my tourists discussing the two shows as if they were interchangeable.

One of the many masked balls on Gossip Girl. Here, Charlie, who's really Ivy in disguise, dons a mask and poses as Serena.

Let me be clear:  I adore Gossip Girl.  I don’t watch it every Monday; rather, I prefer to save it up and then binge on several episodes in one sitting.  It is a soap opera, a melodrama, a show with plot points as big and as riveting as Shakespeare’s (A masked ball!  A prince in disguise!  Sexual blackmail!)  It centers around the über-wealthy (think Rockefellers and Carnegies), and the monetary excess alone makes it about as fantastical as a cartoon.  It’s a little bit Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a little bit Twelfth Night, a little bit Dallas, and—by the way—it’s smart.  Listen closely and you’ll catch a plethora of cultural (even literary!) references that bring texture to the the stock plots and characters.

Sex and the City is a show about the minutia of being a woman in New York. A diaphragm gets stuck, a phone rings during sex, a man who’s great in bed is a bore during dinner—these are the moments that lay the groundwork for the show, not huge twists and turns. And though the characters on Sex and the City often have access to some of the wealth the city has to offer, the girls themselves are not wealthy.  Samantha, for instance, dates the hotel tycoon Richard Wright, but she’s not in his economic stratosphere. Carrie goes to a fancy party on Park Avenue, but feels more comfortable hanging on the balcony with the tattooed cater-waiter. Serena and friends, on the other hand, are the Park Avenue party.

More importantly, I can watch Sex and the City over and over again because the emotional reactions are so real and so layered—the way Miranda’s face crumbles when she’s disappointed or how Carrie suddenly becomes desperate to lighten the mood with a joke—these are the little human moments that feel fresh time and time again.  Gossip Girl, with all of its plot, is more of a one-off.  I don’t watch reruns of 24 for the same reason; once you know what’s what, the thrill is gone.

It occurred to me this week that, although Gossip Girl is nothing like my beloved Sex and the City, it is quite a lot like another show I’ve fallen for lately: Downton Abbey.  Both feature wealthy aristocrats who are fabulously overdressed for every occasion, manipulating their friends and sabotaging their loved ones.  And the characters are similar too—the noble outsider (Lord Crawly/Dan), the sinister pretty boy (Thomas/Chuck), and the wiser-than-her-mistress lady’s maid (Anna/Derota).

Lady Mary's Anna

Miss Blair's Derota

Emily Sproch is a writer and a “Sex and the City” tour guide. Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”