The Gossip Girls: a guilty pleasure

By Ariel Kendall

It is 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday in a University of St Thomas dorm. Kate Hallock’s eyes are wide, her attention focused on the latest CW TV teen drama- Gossip Girls.

Kate lets out a dramatic gasp, her hands covering her mouth. It’s the episode about the masquerade ball and Serena’s ex is masked hottie guy #1.

He whispers, “Serena, I still love you.” He grabs and kisses her and runs off. The girl takes off her mask, revealing that she is not Serena!

Kate’s roommate, Eva Stellrecht, rolls her eyes at the show. She blasts it as – unreal and petty. All the lavish, rich-girl lifestyle and drama of Upper East Side New York doesn’t sell her. Or does it? She’s on her laptop but sneaks peaks at the T.V.

A week later, in a room down the hall, five girls are cuddled up in lounge chairs and blankets wearing sweat pants and pink sparkly fuzzy slippers, their eyes glued to Gossip Girls- their Wednesday night ritual.

This episode reveals Serena’s secret. She slept with Blair’s boyfriend and Blair finds out. The fight is on. The audience of girls snuggle into their blankets with an “OH, this is good.”

“It is like a New York version of the O.C., and there’re hot guys!” exclaims Rachel Neumann, a freshman at St. Thomas. The drama leaves them disgusted, but somehow wanting more: more drama, more boys, and more catfights. The episodes always start off with an unidentified Gossip Girl’s voice narrating and outlining where we left off with the sordid lives of Manhattan’s Upper East Side prep schoolers. The Gossip Girl has her own blog and receives all the latest gossip via text messages from an exclusive, yet vicious, circle of gossipers, then posts it on her Web site.

Episodes are fast and saucy. When Serena, once the Upper East Side’s notorious party girl. returns from boarding school unexpectedly for the new school year, the word spread quickly and so did all the gossip.

Now settled and newly dating hottie Dan, who comes from a completely different social and economic class, Serena finds herself in more and more trouble. When Blair, Serena’s best friend, finds out that Serena has slept with her boyfriend, Nate, Blair is quick to fire up and retaliate with cruel intentions. The following episodes are filled with vicious and carefully planned schemes, extravagant parties, masquerade balls, and shocking lip-locking moments between unexpected couples.

The show is a guilty pleasure, something to do, like watching Gray’s Anatomy or The Office when they first aired. University of St Thomas freshman Priya Prashad started watching it because of her roommate. Now she can’t go a week without it, and even finds time to watch it online. Though many girls who watch Gossip Girls say they can’t necessarily relate to the characters’ outrageous and dramatic lifestyles, they often find themselves identifying with the teen issues in the show- problems with friends, dating and family.

This fall before many students moved into the dorms, a Gossip Girls poster was hung on the first floor of the Dowling dorm advertising the September 19 premiere. Josh Schwartz, the creator, produced the popular T.V. series the O.C., so Gossip Girls had a built-in audience and CW got top placement in the prime-time lineup. The show would follow Tyra Banks Top Model show at 7 p.m.

CW Network entertainment president Dawn Ostroff stated in July in Variety.com that the CW network’s identity was about youth. ”We want to be the entertainment destination for young adults,” Ostroff said. “We have to immerse ourselves in their lifestyle and their cultures, think what they think, go where they go, get involved with the things that they are involved with.” That destination is defined by CW execs as a “heightened reality,” -using sex, drugs and other teen issues to keep their audience.

Aside from the show and books, there are other advertisements and endorsements on the Web, including Gossip Girls fashion, music, photo galleries, wallpapers, and message boards. As of December 24, 601 posts filled the CW’s site.

Is the show universally popular only among girls? According to Zap2It.com, out of the 3 million viewers tuned into Gossip Girls- teen girls and young women 18 to 34 were the largest audience watching -three times greater than other adults.

“It’s a guilty pleasure; it’s not necessarily the best show out there, but I am hooked,” said Sarah Gallswyk. “It’s like The Hills; you can’t look or be like them, but you can watch them live their lives and think it’s the most interesting thing in the world.” Hallock says.

Next week’s show was already on everyone’s mind during the commercial, as girls complained about having to wait a whole week. Then the room got silent again as the preview for that show began.

Finally girls gathered and talked about how cute Gossip Girl character Dan looked and how conniving Blair could be at times, as if it was happening in real life. No one appeared to want to leave until someone said she needed to get class work done. Eventually, everyone went her separate way, back to the reality and school life until next Wednesday night.