It’s funny the way television works. Shows always seem to begin their run as innocent testaments to the triumph of love. Drama is almost always centered around a central guy-girl duo, both being from opposite sides of the tracks and both finding a way to beat the odds and make it work. Dallas, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210, The OC, One Tree Hill, Dawson’s Creek, it’s all the same template. Yet, it’s hardly ever that romance that translates into big ratings. Do we really remember Dallas for the Romeo & Juliet pairing of Bobby and Pam? No, we remember it for J.R. and his scheming ways. Do we remember Melrose Place because of Allison and Billy’s goofy courtship? No, we remember it for crazy Kimberly, bitchy Amanda and scheming Michael. Viewers love the bad boys, and no matter how much studios try to shovel romance, it’s the dirt that keeps viewers interested. Happy endings are so 1940.
Case in point, Gossip Girl. Here is a show that again began as a star-crossed pairing between the pampered private school princess Serena van der Woodsen (I know, with a name like that how could you guess, right?) , played not-so-lively by Blake Lively, and east-ender with a struggling rock star for a father Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), but quickly found its footing in another vocation. Gossip Girl became a show about spoiled douchebags. Part of the initial allure of The OC was all the rich and oblivious mockery of the nouveau riche, but rather than mock it, Gossip Girl embraces it. Serena’s foil, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) is a mollycoddled little brat, and her male equal, Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) is even worse. Despite the Tiger Beat looks and harmless and generally well-to-do posturing of on-again-off-again Serena/Blair love interest Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), it’s the badass buffoonery of Chuck that seems to have all the girls and pop culture in a swoon. And this guy’s bad.
Now, there have certainly been anti-heroes in soaps before, indeed with people like J.R., Michael Mancini and One Tree Hill’s Dan Scott the genre practically thrives on it. With Chuck though, the Gossip crew push the limits of vile asshattery. You know your anti-hero is bad when his rich connections get him off rape charges during the opening episode. What a way to begin! So even if Gossip Girl tried to center on the goody good with Dan and Serena, by the first episode it was already becoming a peep hole into the lives of assholes and people you generally just love to not hate, but despise. It took Melrose Place and Dallas a good 40 episodes to reach that conclusion, but here in 2007 it only took Gossip Girl one. And once Gossip Girl found its footing in vice, it ran with it. For the season two push, The CW even went as far as to promote the well-received series with the most venomous critical pans, proudly boasting the Boston Herald’s “Every Parent’s Nightmare!” dismissal. It’s rich kids doing bad things, and by posturing it as the film adults want to hate, they’ve turned it into a faux-taboo pop culture mainstay. The douchebags are here to stay.
So what’s new in season two? Well, to start we get some amusing guest roles from Michelle TratchenIcanneverspellherlastnameberg and Brittany Snow. The Upper East Siders are still as spoiled and selfish as ever, but that doesn’t’t stop them from falling in and out of love and alliance on bi-episode basis. Most of the conflicts are of the petty omg J ruined S’s party cuz she texted the addy to gossip girl variety, but the scheming and sobbing also extends to funerals, jails and ivy league colleges. The prime mover this season is just where oh where each senior will affirm their family status by choosing a posh school in post-secondary. That is, if they ever make it there. Chuck’s back on the booze, Blair’s classing it up with community service and Serena’s flirting with a walk down the aisle. There are school plays, sweet sixteen parties and bed swapping galore, and all the while Kirsten Bell is dropping XO-XOs and hearsay as the titular gossip girl. Even her reign as the vile voice of the show is in limbo when Serena plans to out the mystery blogger for the finale.
These people are shallow, their pursuits frivolous, but all the pompous, wintry New York gloss somehow translates into addicting entertainment. Perhaps it’s because all the other breakout teen TV has been set in warm, vapid bikini weather or because we’re all just so cynical now, but watching these mindless tarts trot around in button jackets and woven scarves certainly has an appeal. Maybe it’s the fun in seeing all these spoiled brats going through the motions of trying on mommy’s makeup or daddy’s credit cards as a rite of passage. Maybe it’s because, deep down, we like to see the Gordon Gecko’s of the world succeed because, hey, ain’t that capitalism and ain’t that America?
While these snots will probably never change, I still do wait with baited, misty breath for what changes come with season three in the Big Apple. The era of the wide-eyed, do good teenager is dead. The douche bags have taken over, and until this current recession becomes a blip in the past, cynicism will rule all. And it’s all happening in the high rises and low brows of Gossip Girl.
Presentation...
All 25-episodes of the second season come in high quality 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, progressively encoded, and a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround mix. I didn’t notice a ton of directional effects – it’s mostly dialogue up front and a bit of fill in the back, but the mix effectively levels the dialogue and “It” band music in harmony. The video looks really crisp and it’s quite amazing how far television has come in the last decade, since my Melrose, Dawson’s Creek and 90210 still look like utter crap. Colors are intentionally muted because you can’t really be sly and detached without hues of grey, but it still looks ice cold appealing.
The series is presented in one big alpha case with most of the DVDs located in a middle snap in holster series. There’s a cardboard slipcase overtop of it all to make it more fitting with box sets previously released for TV product. There’s also a nice little booklet that provides a listing, summary and bullets of included extras for each episode. The menus are a little tacky, with the highlight in the form of a mouse pointer like the equally tacky episode intros, but they are organized well enough to make navigating the discs pretty intuitive. My one gripe is that right off the bat it features descriptions of the episodes on the right side of the screen, making it tough to start things up without some sense of what’s going to unfold in the episode. A plus is the toggle switch between watching the episodes with or without the recap. I remember some of my classic TV shows with the recaps and when they’re nowhere on the discs it’s always a bit of a throw-off.
As for extras, here’s the gossip:
“5th Avenue Meets Gossip Girl” features an interactive map of New York with short little 2:00 video documents of each location used in the series. It features interviews with the cast, crew and building owners, and gives a nice description not only of how each is used in the show but how each location functions in real life, too. Gossip Girl fans heading to NY, take note!
“lol” which translates to “Gag reel” for those not text message inclined. It’s actually quite humorous and really shows the way all these actors are when they’re not putting up a front for the show or for the press kit. It runs a substantial length of 10:39 and features all the principals and even a bit of the jovial crew. From the looks of it, Leighton Meester flubs her shit by far the most.
There are six “Chasing Dorota” webisodes that run roughly 3:00 a piece. Basically the proletariat spin on Gossip Girl, this features the trials and tribulations of Blair’s maid. The concept is probably funnier than the execution, it nevertheless features the maids getting together and talking shop, and Dorota trying to choose between the security guard downstairs or an old Polish ex. Each episode has the requisite narration, replacing “XOXO” with “Ta Ta”. Cute, but insubstantial.
“Gossip Girl: Faces Behind the Design” talks about the posh designs on display in the show, from the clothing to the actual art pieces within the locales. Jenny’s fashion line in the series is featured, with interviews with the ghost designer on how he came up with the styles by relating with the characters from the show. More interesting is how the show worked in a street photographer into the episodes and how the real photographer had to come in after cut to get the shots the actors were faking during the roll. The show did a few other interesting things with art throughout, and it’s on display here in this well edited 17:02 supplement.
And winning the award for the longest supplement I’ve ever seen (this side of The Frightners' 4.5 hour doc) is the 2:27:50 audiobook reading of the second entry in the Gossip Girl book series, “You Know You Love Me”. The series predated the show and set the groundwork for all that was to follow, and it’s nice to have that bit of history here, read for this release by Christina Ricci. It’s kind of funny to hear the usually wry actress reading everything with such earnest enunciation, but a paycheck is a paycheck, right? There are a ton of chapter stops, although regrettably no index for all those not hardcore enough to do it all in one sitting. It can also be downloaded onto a computer via DVD-ROM for those who want to throw it on their iPod. A novel (heh) extra that’s been continued on from the Ricci reading of the first novel on season one, here’s hoping it continues.
All those extras are located on the final disc, but there are unaired scenes scattered throughout the other discs, appended to whatever episode they originate from. There are often several on a single episode, showing just how easy it can be to trim or exclude subplots to hit that forty-three minutes.
While I’d like to see more on the cast opening up about their characters, or even the writers talking about how to adapt the book material, the extras here are still well done and a cut above the usual TV on DVD treatment.
Wrapping it up…
It may have abandoned the conceit that love conquers all after the first episode, but Gossip Girl still entertains free of irony as a window into the vapidity of bourgeois life. These people are douchebags and they revel in the fact, living out their shallow lives like it’s the only thing that matters. After this bunch, I don’t know how teen TV can ever go back to earnest romances and After School Special-esque lessons. The episodes look great in 16x9 and sound equally as good in 5.1. The packaging and presentation are solid, and the extras provide a decent window into the series plus a cool Christina Ricci spoken audio book of the novel that started it all. If you like your soaps steamy and in a tub filled with San Pellegrino, Gossip Girl won’t clean you up, but it’ll at least heat things up. Looking forward to next season, XOXO, Rhett Miller.
 | Overall... Content: B Video: A- Audio: B+ Extras: B Final Grade: B |
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