Pilot Review: Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl
The CW. Wednesdays at 9.
Cast: Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Taylor Momsen, Ed Westwick, Kelly Rutherford, Matthew Settle, Nicole Fiscella, Nan Zhang, and the voice of my beloved Kristen Bell.

This review of Gossip Girl is gonna be a bit different than my other pilot reviews. Because I’m going to start this one with a rant, and then make some predictions, and then review the show.

So, the rant. This show really pisses me off. Because I went to one of the Upper East Side private prep schools, The Dalton School. And this show really tries to paint these schools as these bastions of elitist, too much money for their own good, no responsibility kids. Watching this show is like watching a New York magazine article about my school. That sentence doesn’t quite make sense? Let me explain. Every year or so, New York magazine would do a story about my high school and highlight one or two kids who go there and make it seem like no one at my school gave a damn about their futures and were just bad human beings. THIS IS SO FREAKING WRONG. And I feel like Gossip Girl is trying to portray the same message. That everyone who goes to one of these schools is a spoiled brat who does things like go to swanky hotel bars on weeknights downing martinis with their frenemies (I can’t believe I just typed that word). That is bullshit. Yes, in my class there were people who probably had more money than they ever should. And yes, there were people who partied in fancy dresses every weekend. But two things, that group was a severe minority and they didn’t do it in the way Gossip Girl says they do. They didn’t dress up in tuxes and six thousand dollar dresses and rent out clubs every Saturday night. The only time something like that happened is on special nights like homecoming or winter formal. So yeah, I’m calling bullshit on you Gossip Girl, because you’re just pretty wrong about most of this stuff. And I get that it’s fiction and is intended to be scandalous and juicy, but for the most part, we’re normal kids.

Okay, rant done. Now, on to some predictions:
1) Gossip Girl is going to be called “The New OC” and rightly so, because it will be wildly popular the first year, and then degrade with each successive year until it’s cancelled somewhere around season four.
2) More than half of teenage girls will have a major crush on Penn Badgley.
3) More than half of teenage guys will have a major thing for Blake Lively.
4) Gossip Girl (along with Reaper) will make the CW a Big 5 network.

So, time for the review. Gossip Girl, as much as it’s factually incorrect and aggravating, has some very good things working for it. But the reason those things may stand out as very good is because it also has some very bad things working for it. I figure it’s always better to start with the good, so I’m gonna start by saying that about half this cast is pitch perfect. You remember about 10 lines up where I was saying that teenager girls would fall in love with Penn Badgley? Well, that’s because he does a great Seth Cohen impersonation, and really, that’s what his role needs. He’s fun to watch and he has great chemistry with Blake Lively, who I really hope can use this to become a star. She’s great as Serena, the former party girl who mysteriously left (which, in my high school always meant rehab, but not here) and who’s return as a new found mostly good girl sets off the show’s events. She fits her role better than anyone else on the show. The other real standout here is Leighton Meester, who is great as Blair, Serena’s former best friend and current enemy. She hits every bitchy note right, but she also hits all of Blair’s vulnerable notes perfectly as well. Taylor Momsen is good too, but of the visible actors, those three are the real standouts. And I say visible actors, because I’m gonna talk about Kristen Bell’s narration as Gossip Girl, the blogger and our secret informer as to what’s going down. Now, I loved Bell in Veronica Mars, but if you read this blog, you most likely already know that I loved everything about that show. She sounds perfect relaying the slightly acidic banter of her blog, but this was expected as she proved herself more than able with Veronica’s witty and tart banter. Also, the show is a lot better shot than one would expect for a show aimed at teens. The particular moment that comes to mind is a ridiculously good tri-cut montage between three different sexually related scenes. It played each scene beautifully off one another. Plus, they succeed really well at making all the beautiful young people look, well, beautiful. Good job Gossip Girl.

But the bad is, well, pretty bad too. Remember how I was saying that about half the cast rocks? Well, the other half is pretty close to atrocious. Chace Crawford has all the screen presence of a rotting onion, and the charisma of one as well. He actually sucks the life out of the scenes he’s in. It’s kind of astonishing. Ed Westwick, well, he’s similar only that his onion isn’t rotting. He’s such a broad and bad caricature of the Oliver character from season one of The OC that I wonder why they didn’t just cast the same actor and say the character moved from sunny California to the Upper East Side. Also, remember when The OC first came on and people lauded it for making the parents just as fully realized as the kids? Well, apparently that was a fluke for Josh Schwartz, seeing as how the parents here do little more than act either controlling, bitchy, or wanna be hip. Or some combination. Their interactions with their respective kids are just so bad that I was wondering if we could move these young people to Kid Nation over on CBS. Also, well, the whole rant kind of goes here as well. Plus, the show doesn’t really get the whole notion of subtlety. I honestly think that the show originally was going to have a banner plan flying in the back of every scene saying, “The parents control their kids lives! They don’t really have a choice about their futures! Pity them!” but they thought that it might be distracting. Even without it though it feels like they are hitting the viewers over the head with the message. It’s so ridiculously blatant that I found myself wanting to just tell the kids to exercise some goddamn free will.

So yeah, I’ve got some major problems with Gossip Girl. But this show was made to become a pop culture phenomenon, so I can’t really blame it for pandering to it’s teenage audience and making itself seem so grandiose and overblown. Which is why, despite the rant, this gets

Rating: I’ll Give It Another Shot

It’s not definitely worth another viewing, but I’m willing to give it a few episodes to see if it grows on me.

PS: For US readers, the pilot is available as a free download on iTunes.