Spontaneous Musings

So I watched Gossip Girl last night, more or less commericial free courtesy of the DVR.

Gossip Girl is based on a series of YA serial pulp novels by Cecily von Ziegesar. They remind me a little bit of Sweet Valley High in concept. The title of the books is taken from a fictional "web blog" written by the anynomous "gossip girl" sort of similar to Gibson's concept of blogs and fanboards in Pattern Recognition - about how people flock to share jig saw pieces they've discovered on a shared obsession hoping to see the big picture. Except here - it's rumors (gossip) about the lives of the privileged and popular kids at an upper East Side NYC private school. The series is pretty much the same deal - except according to the magazines updated. (The books were written some time ago apparently.) The gossip angle intrigued me - but they don't do that much with it.

The series is basically a teen soap opera, not unlike Dawson's Creek, The O.C., and Beverly Hills 90210, which proceeded it. In fact it shares the same creator as The O.C. - Josh Schwartz. Unfortunately it does not have the same charismatic cast that was in The O.C - either on the young adult or the adult end of the spectrum, with the possible exception of three people - Kelly Rutherford (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell), Blake Lively (who resembles Mischa Barton - to such a degree that if you squint you can't tell them apart), and Ed Westwick (who plays bad boy Chuck Bass). If you ever watched Pretty in Pink (if you haven't? Go rent it!) and some of James Spader's early teen films - Westwick's turn as Chuck Bass will strike you as an odd imitation of Spader. He has Spader's bored preppy rich boy glare or is it gaze down. The other actors barely register.

This is a problem. For a serial to work - particularly one that is about the inter-relationships amongst the characters, with little to no real action or mysteries outside of it? You need charismatic actors - actors who the audience will fall for and schedule time to be with. Witty writing. And interesting characters. Say what you will about The O.C., Dawson's Creek, or Bevelry Hills 90210 (which sort of started the whole trend) - they had all three. The actors had chemistry, sparkled, and you cared about the characters they portrayed in the first episode. They had you at day one. Can't say the same thing here.

Blake Lively plays Serena Van der Woodsen - who is a former bad little rich girl turned into a poor misunderstood little rich girl with a serious alcohol problem, a snotty self-absorbed mother, and a suicidal kid brother. (Remind you anyone? If you followed the OC at all - it should remind you of the lead gal on that show.) She is the centerpiece of the story -which is told to us by an anynomous blogger named "Gossip Girl" - the voice over narration is done by the now hotly sought after Kristen Bell, late of Veronica Mars. (As predicted both Bell and Dohring quickly landed new gigs after Mars' cancellation.) Everyone else in the tale floats around Serena's orbit - if only Serena had more character. The O.C had the right idea - it put the story around the family that adopts the bad/poor boy, focusing on the fish out of water tale. This one has a less wealthy (upper middle class) boy admist the filthy rich, but he's clearly not the focal point - she is. And she's a bit a of a cliche - suicidal brother, divorced Waspy but well-meaning if absent mother, and has, get this, slept with her best friend's boyfriend. Yep, that's why she left town and that's the backstory we get in sultry flashbacks - a drunk Serena and Nate (her best friend's boyfriend) having sex.

Watching it, all I could think, was damn, I miss Peter Gallagher or someone with a little wit. The male adult lead - is a pretty ex-rock star with not much presence. I can't remember his name or his son's which is saying something. The O.C was at least funny at times. Gossip Girl takes itself almost too seriously and the gossip girl tatic feels a tad forced and half-way through grating. Never much a fan of voice-over's, to be honest, but I liked Veronica Mars and even though it has the same actress doing it? It doesn't quite work.

[I think Schwartz, who has two series premiering this season - the geek superhero series Chuck and the upper east side teen soap Gossip Girl, put all his energy in the former. Can't say that I blame him - if I had to choose between writing about a bunch of spoiled pretty rich kids and a guy who accidentally ended up with a government microchip stuck in his brain - so now helps save the world while working undercover at Home Depot, I picked the latter one. Much more fun. It's after all pitched as The Office meet Alias. Not sure why tv head-writers/creators insist on running more than one series on tv at a time - it always seems to go badly for them, you'd think they'd have learned not to do it by now.]

Gossip Girl airs on The CW on Wedensday night's at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central. It's opposite Bionic Woman (NBC), Criminal Minds (CBS) and Private Practice (ABC). I don't think the big three networks have much to worry about. Gossip Girl doesn't have the flair either One Tree Hill or The OC have to be much of a threat. I see it fading into the woodwork fairly quickly.

Trust me - if you don't have time to catch it? You aren't missing anything. Go rent The OC, far more entertaining. Or better yet, go rent the tv series that was based on SMG's old movie Cruel Intentions. This reminds me a lot of that series, except Cruel Intentions was a tad more out-there and made fun of the whole thing.