Emily in Paris is a better version of The Carrie Diaries than the actual series. The Carrie Diaries, which ran for two seasons on The CW, is based on Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City prequel novel of the same name, which sees Carrie Bradshaw coming of age in the 1980s. It has her wearing updated versions of the decade’s outdated fashions and dreaming of becoming a writer in New York City, where she interns at a law firm before landing, and then losing, a job at Interview magazine.
The prequel series is set over a decade before HBO's Sex and the City, in which Bradshaw is a thirty-something sex and dating columnist who can inexplicably afford to live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and wear Manolo Blahniks. Emily in Paris, meanwhile, released on Netflix in October 2020 and is tied to Sex and the City by its shared creator, Darren Star, who was not involved in The Carrie Diaries. Emily in Paris’ twenty-something protagonist Emily Cooper is a new, and more lucrative, kind of storyteller: a social media marketer. The job did not exist in Carrie Bradshaw’s twenties, but if it had, it may have offered an explanation for her ability to afford designer clothes while being a (kind of) writer.
Although set in the present day, Emily in Paris unofficially bridges the gap between the Carrie Bradshaws of The Carrie Diaries and Sex and the City. The series’ plot offers a contemporary echo of the final two episodes of Sex and the City season 6, “An American in Paris” (Parts Une and Deux), in which Carrie flies to Paris with a rose-tinted idealism about la vie en rose, only to find an outsider sense of loneliness and romantic complications. As Emily struts, and sometimes stumbles, through the city’s streets wearing colorful outfits that emphasize her status as an American outsider, she faces her own challenges with love in la ville de l’amour.
Neither The Carrie Diaries nor Emily in Paris carries Sex and the City’s sexual frankness. The plot of The Carrie Diaries was rooted in Carrie’s innocence and her singular on-off relationship with pseudo-bad boy Sebastian Kidd. Most of Emily in Paris’ sexually explicit scenes, such as a failed attempt at FaceTime cyber sex, exist purely for comic effect. Still, like Sex and the City, Emily in Paris focuses on its protagonist’s complicated dating life, which informs her writing work and deepens her understanding of - and secondary love affair with - the city she lives in.
The Carrie Diaries did not focus solely on Carrie’s love life: It also explored somber topics including the AIDS epidemic and Carrie’s grief following the death of her mother. The show’s serious tone and lack of explicit sexuality suited a CW teen drama, but it disconnected the series from the cheeky charms the original Carrie Bradshaw was celebrated for. While Emily in Paris has been criticized for its fluffiness and lack of depth, the series embodies what The Carrie Diaries was supposed to be: a fresh, young version of Sex and the City for a millennial audience.
Emily in Paris allowed Sex and the City creator Darren Star to offer his own take on the narrative of a fashionable young woman stumbling her way through a big city with a creative dream job and a complicated dating life. Unlike The Carrie Diaries, Emily in Paris’ playful tone and focus on its protagonist’s romantic escapades capture the essence of what enchanted original Sex and the City viewers.