Gossip Girl, Season One

 

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Rated: TV14

reviewed by: Charity Bishop
 

Based on a popular series of young adult novels, Gossip Girl follows the lives and adventures of a group of snobbish upper side New Yorkers. It is your typical teen-driven drama full of premarital sex, underage drinking, and other misbehavior. Yet somehow, it's addictive.

Where has Serena van der Woodsen been? That is the question on everyone's lips in the social circles that the teenagers of wealthy socialites run in. Someone has spotted her in the train station and sent a text message to Gossip Girl, an anonymous gossip monger whose online column always has the most recent dish about everyone who is anyone. The return of Serena (Blake Lively) interests all but her best friend Blair (Leighton Meester), who is still angry about Serena having taken off to boarding school without a word or explanation to anyone. Determined to ignore her former friend's arrival, Blair goes out of her way to avoid running into her, finding her boyfriend Nate (Chace Crawford) suspiciously fascinated with Serena. No one can seem to get the truth about her mysterious disappearance out of Serena, but it appears that she has more problems to deal with -- her younger brother Eric (Connor Paolo) is in a mental institution following an attempted suicide, and her working mother Lily (Kelly Rutherford) is struggling to prevent the news from hitting the press.

About the same time that Serena manages to patch things up with Blair, a secret comes out that further threatens their rocky relationship and might also impact her budding romance with Dan (Penn Badgley), a rather naive but sweet young man whose rocker father (Matthew Settle) can barely afford the rent. Sending his children to school with the other kids is doable, but little does he realize the impact this will have on his daughter, Jenny (Taylor Momsen). Pressured to fit in, she is willing to do anything it takes to become one of the "cool" girls, even if it means allowing the advantage-seeking Chuck (Ed Westwick) to manipulate her.

What follows through the course of the eighteen episodes is one melodramatic issue after another, a tangled web of lies, deceit, revenge, fornication, drug abuse, underage drinking, and potential murder. Essentially what the show is about is gorgeous people behaving shamelessly, then trying to cover up their mistakes through further lies and deceptions. I must admit that despite the fact that there are no characters to fully root for (the men are somewhat less than stellar, although Dan isn't too bad, but the women are mostly liars and backstabbers, malicious and catty to a fault) somehow I could not stop watching, even though it violated just about all of my ethical and moral opinions. As a Christian, I know that such behavior is incredibly disrespectful to yourself as well as destructive in the long run, so I was not fascinated or approving as much as I was intrigued to watch the repercussions come around. If there is one good thing to be said about the show, it is that eventually Serena is forced to come to terms with the dark secret that has kept her wracked with guilt for the last year, and her friends rally around her not only to defend but also protect her.

Serena's former lifestyle of excessive partying included taking drugs (shown in flashbacks), drinking in excess, and one night stands. She got so wiped at a wedding banquet that she slept with Nate (probably the show's most graphic encounter, but brief and clothed). Blair wants to lose her virginity to Nate, but winds up giving it to Chuck instead, who then uses the information to blackmail her. Nate wants to be with Serena but returns to Blair only to wind up with someone else by the end of the season. Serena and Dan don't go long before progressing beyond flirting to a sexual relationship (unseen, but implied).

Chuck tries to take advantage of Serena once while drunk, and also is too aggressive with Jenny. (Both instances were attempted rape, but he suffered no consequences other than a punch in the nose.) His hotel room (and the bed) is often filled with scantily clad women. In fact, his first foray into business is the opening up of a seedy musical joint that seems to be part bordello. We learn that Serena's mom and Dan's father used to be lovers in the seventies; they have an on and off relationship through the series, and finally wind up in bed together in the finale -- hours before her wedding. One of the characters comes out as gay. Add to that flashbacks of taking drugs, an astounding amount of drinking (considering no one is older than seventeen), and some bad language, and you have a show that is marketed to young adults but consists of aggressively negative behavior on all fronts.

However, the acting is quite good and the cast is formidable. It's a joy to see so much young talent in one program. There were good things about it, and bad. Overlooking everyone's messed up morals, Serena is actually a likable girl despite her faults who tries her hardest to make up for her mistakes, and truly change. She does have a momentary relapse but her friends pull her through it. Jenny also realizes that having to buy your friends, or impress them through owning "things," is not as important as keeping her father's trust. (One episode features her stealing a dress and facing the devastating, humiliating consequences.)

The weakest link for me was the romance between Lily and Rufus. I just didn't care and actually on occasion while viewing the series was inclined to push the skip forward button on my DVR just to avoid their numerous angst scenes together. It felt as if the show was trying to appeal to slightly older audiences through the parents' romantic entanglements, but the fact is that this is a teen-driven program. Its best shot of success is with the 18-25 demographic and that is where it remains the most popular. Presumably, anyone older would know a shiny soap opera when they see it, which is exactly what it is -- a very pretty bunch of actors involved in behavior that no self respecting young person would do well to emulate. Let's hope teenage audiences take it as a warning against the lifestyle rather than a suggestion.