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Gossip Girl

By Daniel McQuade

Add Comment | Comments: 2 | Posted Nov. 12, 2008

Gossip Girl
C-

It has come to my attention that a lot of you watch Gossip Girl. That's fine; horrible television is awesome! But I've also learned many of you actually think this show is good. This is more troubling than the realization that the most attractive girl on GG (Taylor Momsen) is 15.

It might make sense if a bunch of rich high school kids had exciting adventures and did really cool things, but on Gossip Girl rich high schoolers are just as boring and pathetic as regular high schoolers. That's probably true in real life, but that's not why we watch TV.

For all the talk about how amazingly over-the-top Gossip Girl is, there's actually very little conflict on the show. A recent episode featured Blair (Leighton Meester) agreeing to hang out with a Yale donor's daughter. The "problem": The daughter wants to lose her virginity. For some reason, Blair decided this was an affront to humanity and spent all night preventing her from losing her V-card.

Blair is so absurd she could eat the head off a bat and it would be in character. She has no problem blackmailing her best friends--or, later that episode, the Yale donor herself. But this the norm for the show: Will some character we just met and don't care about get boinked by a 25-year-old? Ooh, I can't wait for this commercial break to end.

There has been one real dramatic moment in the show's one and a half seasons: the time when Serena (Blake Lively, with a growth on her face) left someone to die of a cocaine overdose. Naturally, this had a deus ex machina ending, as Serena went to the dead man's mom's house, where Mom said he was a junkie and would've died soon anyway. So really, it was okay.

Sometime this season or next, two of the male characters will hook up with each other and people will react like Serena shot J.R. even though all the males on the show are obviously gay. Me, I'll stick to freaking out over better-written shows, like that infomercial with members of Air Supply.