Gossip Girl: Pilot
I am really not sure about this one, and I may need a few episodes to settle in to it or delete its season pass entirely from my TiVo. In Gossip Girl’s defense I am not the target demo but they don’t really throw enough bones to the people on the other side of thirty like say Veronica Mars (or Buffy) did.
The back bone to Gossip Girl is Gossip Girl; the unknown blogger of the Upper West side who keeps tabs on the movements of the inner cycle of the students at the prep school. With her network of spies she updates her blog and is able to break “news” first, like the return of Serena - who mysteriously left for boarding school a year ago only to return equally mysteriously into New York’s Grand Central. Serena’s return pushes the noses out of place of her best friend, and successor, Blair. I didn’t really take to any of the cool kids in the inner circle. There was a heavy dose of poor little rich kid with Blair’s mother (a designer) dressing her up like a living doll, Nate whose life is all planned out and whose father is forcing him to keep dating Blair because of a business deal, and then there is Senera. Her brother attempts suicide and is hidden away like the first Mrs. Rochester by their mother. Okay, that is a slight exaggeration he is only stashed at the hospital whilst she tells everyone he is staying with an aunt.
I assume that the Humphrey clan are there to keep the behavior and lifestyles of the others in perspective. Rufus (the aging rocker with a gallery in the Boroughs) only sends his children to the prep school so they get the right education. His son Dan doesn’t want to fit in, and is very likable. His confrontation on the bus was classic with his classmates. Unfortunately, Dan’s impressionable sister Jenny does and you just know that will spell trouble in the long term!
The pilot episode set up the power struggle between Serena and Blair, the politics of prep school life and how to negotiate the social quagmire of rescuing your sister from a party. Not a bad start and I’ll be interested to see where it goes from here.
CW, Gossip Girl, Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Bagdley, Taylor Mumsem
