Gossip Girl

Well, this was interesting. Not the show, no, that was terrible. The interesting part is the fact that I watched it and now have to summarize it. There’s really not much to talk about, and not because it’s vapid. Oh it is vapid, but also character driven. And since I watched a random mid-season episode I probably missed out on a lot of important character development. I know the books were popular though terrible while I was working at a book store, but I didn't make it past the first chapter of one. It was surprisingly easy for me to follow; I thought I would be confused about which characters were which. Luckily everyone calls each other by their names, and their contrived ‘rich people’ last names are easy to remember. After a few minutes I figured out the story lines revolve around groups of three people, who are all in some sort of love triangle/power struggle. The episode I watched was number 10, from the third and latest season, and entitled ‘The Last Days of Disco Stick’.
This very special episode of Gossip Girl has two guest stars: Hilary Duff and Lady Gaga. I was pleasantly surprised that Hilary Duff was the best actress on the show. I haven’t really seen her in anything else, but I had just assumed she was no striking talent. However, put up against the other members of the cast I found her to be the most believable. Second most, I felt went to Leighton Meester, who sometimes overacted in her role as insufferable twit Blair. However, even overacting was better than the rest of the cast who seemed to be just acting like themselves. Perhaps that was to add a bit of The Hills ‘realism’ to the show. The private concert/dress rehearsal by Lady Gaga is a pivotal part of the plot. She’s not my favorite, and her horrible lip synching in the show didn’t help that. Though I suppose it couldn’t be helped. The mini performance was actually pretty fun to watch after a whole episode of nothing interesting. Especially after the groan-worthy school cabaret performance (meant to somehow get one of the characters into Tisch) of Snow White as told through the music of Lady Gaga. I’ll have to say she’s the only person that can pull off her songs.

The show itself reminded me of my idea of Sex and the City, which I haven’t seen. I’ve just seen clips of it and have a vague awareness, and from that I gather that this is like a teenage version. There’s a disembodied narrator voice, which belongs to the mysterious gossip girl (Kristen Bell), who is a blogger that somehow knows what all the characters are doing and writes about them. I’m not sure what the appeal is of this show, even after trying to approach it from the point of view of its target audience. Watching a show about a bunch of obnoxious over-privileged teens throwing their families’ and connections’ names around doesn’t seem like it’d be fun for anyone. Maybe it was because I saw a random episode with stunt casting and not much plot, but there really wasn’t much going on. Or perhaps it was due to the many things that were happening being boring and pointless. Blair is trying to get people to like her even though she’s insufferable. Jenny (Taylor Momsen) is being a bitch about how her life sucks and has to go on a date with an ambassador’s son who is also a drug dealer. Serena (Blake Lively) gets Nate (Chase Crawford) the advice guy and his eyebrows to help her stay away from the married man she loves, but then decides to ditch Nate for him anyway. And the school play is going on, with I guess the rest of the characters, which is also a battleground for Vanessa (Jessica Szohr) and Olivia (Hilary Duff) to fight over Dan (Penn Badgley). Apparently in the last episode they had a threesome. So there's sex, I suppose that could be intriguing. Do teenagers even care about that anymore? Is it still shocking and edgy? I’m sure it went over well with parents.

I suppose the story arcs resemble soap operas in that not much happens in a single episode, but after a while you get pulled into it. That is if you feel compelled to watch the next episode, which I at least definitely do not. After an hour I don’t feel like I need to know what happens next. This seems like a show I might have watched when I was 13 or 14, if teen television shows then weren’t dominated by shows like Boy Meets World and Dawson’s Creek. But not seriously, it still would have been a guilty pleasure to laugh at or nothing else is on tonight type of situation. Kind of like my current fascination with En Nombre Del Amor... perhaps if Gossip Girl was in Spanish I would find it more interesting.