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Produced by Josh Schwartz
Rating: 6.1 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Alex Berg
Imagine 17-year-old teen drama, the needle pegging full-bore, and set in New York's tony Upper East Side. If you aren't desperately trying to block the resultant scenario from your thoughts, this might be a show you should investigate. Season one recaps the return home of former partygirl Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) from a self-imposed retreat at a distant boarding school to the previously glamorous world of the big city prep school. The question is, has she become older and wiser having left the scene, or will she tumble back into bad habits? Blaire Waldorf (Leighton Meester), Serena’s best friend and “queen bee,” certainly does her best to make it the latter, continuing her rich-girl antics with a legion of other rich beauties, all of which is documented by the secret, unidentified blogger, Gossip Girl. At first glance, this familiar set-up sounds suspiciously similar to "The O.C." (a show also produced by GG's Josh Schwartz), however, in addition to high fashion and lip-gloss-fluff, the first season does touch upon some real-life themes, like suicide and divorce and lots of over sexuality. "The O.C." fell apart when things began getting too ludicrously over-the-top, a precipice that "Gossip Girl" comfortably looks over without quite jumping, at least so far. Its saving grace is the successful, polished production and clever characters. Without commercials, the camera work and production are especially seamless; the foreshadowing of certain scenes of emotional significance beckons you to keep watching even if you might not be so interested in which party the girls are going to next. Unfortunately, at the beginning of each episode, there is a long-winded recap of the prior episode, which feels especially drawn out when watching more than one or two episodes in a row, and the Gossip Girl’s constant intermittent narrations become all too frequent and, much like Carrie's endless bon mots in "Sex and the City," distracting to the point of irritation. It would be all too easy to regulate "GG" as post-adolescent pabulum, fodder between commercials for eye-liner and zit cream, but that would be missing out -- at least a bit -- on some of the show's darker subtext. It might not be lioness, but this kitty still has a few claws.
The DVD features are worthy of viewing, as they put a more intellectual spin on the material and the thought that went into the show's casting and writing.
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