Gossip Girl: All up in my business

Posted by Dan September 18th, 2007 at 12:09pm In Gossip Girl The CW

Epigraph:

Girl I heard she eats one cracker a day
Oh well I heard the bitch was married to tim and started fucking with trina
I heard the bitch got hit with three zebras and a monkey
I can’t stand the bitch no way

So let’s say you’re hanging out with one of your friends and you end up going somewhere to meet up with some of said friend’s old college chums. Your friend didn’t go to the same school as you, but you figure that you’ll suck it up and try to be social and meet new people. However, once you get to the meeting place, you find that the new group is only interested in whispering about the scandalous affairs of other college people. People you’ve never met, never will meet and are way too far removed from to even consider caring about. Eventually, the social function ends up becoming something you have to endure, rather than enjoy. And, furthermore, from what you can piece together of these fabled schoolmates, they seem pretty lame.

This situation pretty much sums up the feeling you get from watching Gossip Girl, which premieres tomorrow on The CW. The show is a rather tedious fusion of the dynamics of Cruel Intentions with the melodrama of Dawson’s Creek.

The show’s protagonist is named, I swear to God, Serena van der Woodsen. Blonde and sleepy-eyed, Serena’s return to her Manhattan prep school causes massive ripples among the student body for reasons that aren’t immediately clear (or, after having seen the entire pilot, still isn’t). What do we know about Serena? She’s a booze hound. She has a thing for her best friend’s boyfriend. She is portrayed as having much more profound depth than any of the other designer-outfitted teens.

The rest of the ensemble is made up of:

• Blair – the former BFF with full-on mean girl skills.
• Nate – Blair’s whipped, prettyboy boyfriend. Object of Serena’s affection.
• Chuck – the Machiavellian (and slightly vampiric) friend of Nate’s. He attempts to rape no less than two women in the pilot. I’m not lying.
• Dan – the new kid who falls in love with Serena at first sight. In both looks and behavior, he seems to be carrying the lovable, shmoopy, “good guy” torch that Ethan Embry passed on after Can’t Hardly Wait.
• Jenny – Dan’s blonde, somewhat useless sister.
• Isabel and Katy – the black girl and the Asian girl, respectively. So far, they have no function other than to chew the scenery while the white people fight.

The entire series is framed around Gossip Girl — ambiguously portrayed as a listserv-y, blog-y, PDA-accessible gossip column focused on this bustling private school full of jailbait-y uniformed teens. The biggest draw to this show, I’m guessing, for TiFaux readers is the presence of Kristin Bell as the titular narrator. Bell’s presence is really cold comfort for those of us missing Veronica, Wallace, Keith, Mac and the gang.

In fact, the Gossip Girl’s unctuous tone is slightly off-putting. You know how every once in a while on Veronica Mars, after our heroine tossed off a particularly caustic one-liner, you’d think “Man, is Veronica just kind of a bitch?” (but then she’d do something awesome and everything would be forgiven). Well, Gossip Girl’s tone recalls those moments and Bell’s presence does little to recall the joy of Veronica Mars.

So, don’t get too excited.

As far as the rest of the show is concerned, I think you probably know what you’re getting into. It’s a CW teen drama with rich kids fighting, flirting and doing other things that start with the letter F. The writing is tart, but not as crisp and witty as it thinks it is (which I kind of see as an ongoing theme in CW shows). By the end of the pilot, I found myself not really enjoying the show, but also weirdly engaged with it.

Not recommended, but you could do worse. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.