Sep.18.2007 Is it wrong that I’m excited for Gossip Girl?
Long-time readers of the Blog of Hilarity and original Blog of Hilarity (that one that was on blogspot…you know) know that I had a torrid love affair with The O.C.. Well OC creator Josh Schwartz is back with a show with potentially more interest to me (potentially) since it’s about the world of NY private schools I know some well. Tomorrow night is the debut of Gossip Girl.
The creators must have had that campy 1999 rich-teens-unleashed classic, “Cruel Intentions,” on the brain when conceiving this drama. As in that movie, rich kids can show off 15 new kinds of cruelty, because their extremely busy, business-oriented parents leave them with lots of unsupervised time.
The new conceit here is that an unknown blogger who goes by the handle of “Gossip Girl” fills everyone else in on all the action, which centers around Serena van der Woodsen, her rival and best friend, Blair Waldorf, and their various hangers-on. There’s even a brother-and-sister pair who live — heavens! — solidly in the middle class and still manage to get in on all the action. (They have the advantage of having a father who was once something of a rock star. Seriously.)
Some of this is shocking. Some of this is silly. But it’s all eminently watchable mind candy that is just for fun — nothing more. CW’s entire raison d’etre is to appeal to young kids. There’s no reason they won’t hook on to this until the next gossipy teen soap-sudster comes along.
Needless to say, I don’t expect AdAge to dig this show as much as I will. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for schmaltzy teen dramas, from 90210 to Dawson’s Creek to The OC. I’m not sure whether it’s the over-the-top fantasy or the nubile young men…women. WOMEN.
Sometimes I wonder though, since this show uses the hook of a blogger blogging around all the bloggable things of the school…how would my life by any different if we had this kind of advanced Internet presence in high school? We had Internet, mind you, but no blogs or Facebook so there was really no mechanism to say audacious, trouble-causing things. In fact, the only trouble-causing thing was this column in our high school paper about intramural basketball (it makes less sense when I type this out) that routinely mocked who’s hooking up with whom, who’s fat, et cetera.
Needless to say, I’d have probably been suspended from high school. So that’s why we should all watch Gossip Girl. Yeah, something like that.
PS Josh Schwartz if you’re looking for either A) A rebel or B) A rebel without a cause for the show, my email is to the right.
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