Gossip Girl

At the risk of surrendering my man license, allow me to make the following confession: My name is Jonathan Gardner and I’m addicted to Gossip Girl. Its not because of the writing, which is stilted and asinine at best. And its not because of the acting (apparently drama classes are not offered at the anonymous prep school that the characters attend). But on a much deeper level, Gossip Girl is the ultimate frenemy drama for our blog-addled times. Just like 24 captured the spirit of post 9/11 America and The Wire brilliantly used Baltimore as a stand in for an entire country ravaged by the war on drugs, Gossip Girl perfectly embodies the age of Gawker and TMZ.

For those who haven’t seen it, the show is about a pack of rich kids who, despite not being particularly intelligent or talented, are super rich and therefore form the center of a world that goes beyond just the school and extends to the entire Upper East Side of New York. Watching their every move is Gossip Girl, the unseen blogger who recounts their every exploit for her hoards of readers. Last season the ostensibly 16 and 17 year old characters had no problem ordering a martini from a hotel bar or getting into an exclusive club, a motif that seemed ridiculous until you remember the underage exploits of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lynn Spears. It seems equally silly that there would be a blogger who devotes 100% of her time to tracking the actions of what is essentially a clique of high schoolers, but in this time when someone can become wildly famous simply for going to parties, the premise is strangely plausible.

This is not to dismiss the show’s many problems. Most of the show’s main characters are incredibly boring, especially Dan and Serena, the main romantic couple, who have spent the last seven or eight episodes behaving like no one in the history of the world has ever behaved (Serena, in particular, seems to have had a lobotomy around the time of the strike and has never fully recovered). Indeed, the show has come to rely heavily upon the antics of its resident manipulators, Blair and Chuck, to bring the scandal. On the weeks where they don’t do anything particularly interesting the show is just dull. And the writing is incoherent, oscillating wildly between slyly critiquing the culture of excess and reveling in it, depending on what they need to happen from minute to minute.

This season, in particular, seems to have suffered from any truly buzz worthy moments. Nate’s fling with an older woman is pretty tired terrain and the storyline with Blair’s summer boyfriend turning out to be an English lord was more LOL than OMG. It appears that after a season of scandal and intrigue, the writers have left themselves with nowhere to go but bland. Unlike the truly great high school shows like Veronica Mars and Buffy that focused on the outsiders, Gossip Girl has aligned itself with the cool kids, a strategy that usually causes shows to run out of steam quickly.

And yet, this show is not done yet. Blair’s evilness, for the time being anyway, continues to carry it along nicely (along with Kristen Bell’s hilariously smarmy voiceovers). And even at its shallowest, Gossip Girl is too addictive to stop. Lost may be revolutionizing television storytelling and Mad Men continues to do so much with tiny moments, but there’s something very relevant about a show where people use gossip as a weapon. It may be completely unrealistic when compared to the lives of the average high schooler, but Gossip Girl perfectly reflects what we all see on our television and computer screens.

B-