Yeah, I watched your stupid show. Despite my friends' ridicule, fear of what my father would think and the dissenting opinion in my pants, I let boyish curiosity get the best of me, and watched "Gossip Girl." And I ... liked it.
I know why girls watch "Gossip Girl." They watch it because they wouldn't dare do it but absolutely love when Blair does. Because it's a dramatized fashion magazine. Because New York's expensive, but the CW is free. Girls watch "Gossip Girl" to hear Chuck Bass purr shit like, "My outfit hasn't clashed since Anita dressed me for the first day of third grade. I fired her. In Spanish. Are you ... aroused?" Girls eat it up.
What I didn't know, what implored me squat in front of my computer for 41 minutes with my lips sealed and eyes peeled, was why I, a college guy, should watch "Gossip Girl." What did I have to gain from this glamorized rag, this latter-day "Dawson's Creek," this, to use irony to my comedic advantage, dirty teenage soap opera? As I would find out, more than I could ever imagine.
"Gossip Girl" is fantastical, sure, yet exceptionally heartbreaking. The people have too much money, the students have too much time, the girls are too beautiful and the lights too bright. But it still hurts — it strums power chords on the heartstrings — when someone sits higher than Jenny on the school steps or when Dan loses to the mirror in a smiling contest.
These people's lives are going to hell in a handbag, and no matter how many bills they burn or reputations they baste, the heat only rises. Serena will never love him. Blair will never like anyone. Chuck will never remove that piece of food from his larynx that prevents him from speaking above a whisper. Sure, these trials separate the socialites from the social lightweights but at a price that no black card can finance. And soon, we viewers feel like toddlers at an ice-cream social, wanting nothing more than a good scoop — no matter how cold.
Unfortunately, I think I caught a particularly far-fetched episode — not for the usual embellishments of wealth and status, but because they cast Lizzie McGuire as a legitimate movie star, a fiction even Gordo would have trouble wrapping his noggin around. And, in the end, I was left with a slew of questions. Why does Jenny consistently dress like a hooker? Why does Serena always forget to wear the front of her shirt? Doesn't Kristen Bell have better things to do than sketch on kids?
Maybe I'll have to watch next week. Damn ...
