Fall TV Review: Gossip Girl

Josh Schwartz has been doing pretty well for himself since The OC's short life was cut short by a car accident. He has Chuck debuting on NBC before Heroes, and for the teen set or whoever it is that watches the CW, there's Gossip Girl. I have now seen both show's pilots and well, Chuck is by far the better of the two. It's not that Gossip Girl is good or bad; it's just so derivative. It's got the mysterious voice-over from someone we don't see that Desperate Housewives uses. It's got lame montages set to indie rock and despite the fact that Gossip Girl is in NYC, one of the biggest cities on the planet, it has that small inclusive group that doesn't even seem to notice that other people exist in the world, a la The OC.

Here's the run down, so keep up. Blonde Serena has just returned from a mysterious and abrupt departure to "boarding school" in Connecticut. Brunette Blair is, like, totally mad at Serena because she didn't say goodbye. Blair has been dating sad Nick since kindergarten, but they are only now thinking about finally doing it, despite the fact that they are all twenty-five. Chuck is a drug-addled nihilist that uses girls and gets them onto Gossip Girl's website and he is Nick's best friend. Then there is Dan and his sister, Jenny. Jenny is younger than the rest, and trying really hard to not be so precious and fit in with the older, cooler kids. Her and Dan's mom has disappeared from their lives and that of their father, a washed up indie rocker that I am calling Sandy Cohen because he is a little bit of a Marxist. And because I miss Sandy Cohen. Oh, wait, Dan is Gossip Girl's Seth Cohen. In fact, he has had an unrequited crush on Serena since she read that mermaid poem. Wait, wrong show. But really, really similar. Spoiler Alert! The reason that Serena fled to the country is because she drunkenly slept with Nick, and Blair finds all of this out while in lingerie she picked out specially in which to be deflowered. Yeah, I was hoping for more than that, too.

Gossip Girl is a blogger that I guess we are supposed to care about figuring out who it is, but because of the Desperate Housewives/Sex and the City feel to the narration, in that it is obvious narration that we are also seeing in visual form, so why are the voice-over's necessary? The show would be stronger without them. There I said it. I hate VO. I think it is lazy.

Don't get me wrong. Gossip Girl is fairly well made. Lovely production values. And the lighting was good. The dialogue is sharp at times, and Dan is the Schwartz neurotic geek voice again, but that provides some of the better moments in Gossip Girl. I even almost kinda liked four of the actors, and that is, like, half the cast.

For those of us missing The OC, not because we thought it was a good show, but because it was bad, you may want to tune into Gossip Girl if you are really jonesing for over-the-top "teen" drama with a dance or a ball or a cotillion or a casino night every week.