First Impressions: Gossip Girl

I hadn't planned on watching the CW's newest teenaged soap opera, but it came on right after the season premiere of America's Next Top Model (have any of the winners ever reached "top" status? But that's another article...) and so I decided to give it a try. My own teenaged years were spent watching (and loving) Dawson'sCreek and, later, Gilmore Girls and Everwood, so I was ready for another great offering. Unfortunately, the show didn't entirely deliver.

The basic premise is this: Serena (Blake Lively), who had previously left her Upper East Side Manhattan lifestyle for unknown reasons, returns when her brother attempts suicide. She finds that her former rich and snobby friends are not so friendly, as she is competition for boyfriends and social status and refuses to indulge in the wild habits she used to be the queen of. She literally bumps into wallflower schoolmate Dan (Penn Badgley), a "normal" guy who has a long-time crush on Serena, and they end up on a fake date that gives Serena an excuse not to attend the "it" party of the week. Dan's role as an outsider in a rich world is a bit like The OC on the East Coast, even though the central character in this incarnation is female and the intruding male is secondary.

It annoyed me that Dan didn't seem to mind being just an excuse, although he did give Serena the chance to back out once her mom stopped bugging her to attend the party. Speaking of, in the background of these teenagers' lives are pushy parents who want them all to make good marriages and decisions that are based on wealth and status, and not so much love. I suppose that lent a little bit of sympathy to these otherwise unlikable characters, but it seemed a little too convenient that a past relationship between Serena's mother and Dan's father was hinted at. Come on, now! It's not that small of a world! Although, perhaps the Upper East Side is...