What Happens When Sex and the City Gets the Josh Schwartz/Stephanie Savage Treatment?

With news today that CW is officially moving forward with The Carrie Diaries -- Candace Bushnell's prequel to Sex and the City -- and that The O.C. and Gossip Girl's Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage would be behind it, we decided to imagine what a young Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte would be like after receiving the Schwartz/Savage treatment. The producing pair have famously been able to direct the zeitgeist with their shows (regardless of their actual ratings) -- didn't you feel like Orange County and L.A. were the centers of the universe in the mid-aughts, particularly with the eventual proliferation of all of those reality series (Laguna Beach, The Hills, Real Housewives of Orange County)? And, in the later aughts, when the duo set their sights on New York, it seemed that just like a 21st Century version of the Sun King, we all followed their gaze and focused on The Big Apple (Real Housewives of New York and New Jersey quickly eclipsed their OC counterpart and NYC Prep and The City also came on the airwaves).

After years of closely watching Gossip Girl and The O.C., it's become apparent that Schwartz and Savage have their favorite archetypes. By now, fans of both series can recognize several parallels: Summer Roberts, the carefree, wealthy It Girl who dated a less popular boy (Seth Cohen) is a perfect match for another carefree, wealthy It Girl who dated a less popular boy, Serena van der Woodsen (despite the fact that when GG premiered, critics wanted to peg blonde Serena as the new, blonder Marissa Cooper)  With time it became obvious that Marissa's better counterpart was Blair, another rich girl with skeletons in her familial closet who also possesses a darker side behind those glossy tresses.  From that point on, the rest is more straightforward: Seth Cohen = Dan Humphrey, Sandy Cohen = Rufus Humphrey, Vanessa Abrams = Anna Stern and Julie Cooper = Lily van der Woodsen.

This time around, however, Schwartz and Savage are taking on a project associated with characters already fully formed (though depending on how closely the two follow Bushnell's text, we'll probably see a whole hell of a lot of new characters from Carrie's teenage years).  That said, we're making our predictions anyway about which Schwartz/Savage archetypes (or combinations thereof) the young SATC ladies will come to resemble.



Before you get mad that we associated the famously frumpy (until the SATC movies, that is!) Miranda with a dude, remember that both Miranda and Seth share a quick wit and a love of sarcasm. In their respective shows they could always be counted on to make a cynical barb in response to anything silly coming out of the mouths of one of their head-in-the-clouds friends (or love interests for that matter). As for the Blair-Miranda pairing, both ladies are incredibly ambitious Type As (though Miranda's non-Upper East Side roots -- earlier SATC episodes said she was from Philly -- mean she doesn't have any of Blair's stereotypical prep school spoiledness).

Bonus points: All three characters like to be in control and hide their vulnerabilities (especially with romantic partners). In some cases they do this with humor (Miranda and Seth) or iciness (Miranda and Blair).