penn badgley

"Gossip Girl," the CW's new entry in the teen soap genre, seems to have been conceived and written without any thought as to what makes a good soap opera work.



Based on the popular young adult novels, the series about a group of rich and decadent Manhattan teens has some of the ingredients--beautiful people doing horrible things in decadent locales--but utterly fails to bring them together into something entertaining. It's mechanical, cynical, and, for long stretches, lifeless.

That's too bad, as "Gossip Girl" wastes the talents of some promising young actors.



But perhaps the bigger flaw of "Girl," which premieres tonight at 9, is that the teen characters are vacant and not particularly likeable. It's particularly surprising because the series is executive-producer by Josh Schwartz, who gave us "The O.C.," perhaps the ultimate teen soap. Schwartz knows, better than most, that catfights and secret trysts are meaningless if we don't care about the characters.

The girls of "Girl" are vacuous, shrill automatons whose actions seem dictated by clunky plot outlines, as so many chess pieces moved about from above, with little imagination. Their choices--who to hook up with, who to fight with--seem random.

"Girl" plays out on the wealthy Upper East Side of New York, its characters the progeny of power brokers and fashion designers. The story begins just as Serena (Blake Lively, "Accepted") returns from a mysterious stint at a boarding school. Her arrival is met with resentment by her former best friend and current competitor for popularity queen, Blair (Leighton Meester, "Entourage").

But it's met with enthusiasm by Blair's boyfriend, Nate (Chase Crawford, "The Covenant"), who clearly has feelings for her, and by Dan (Penn Badgley, "The Bedford Diaries"), a good guy who isn't in her wealthy social circle and pines for her from afar.

We also meet Jenny (Taylor Momsen, "Paranoid Park"), Dan's little sister, who's trying to join the in-crowd, and Chuck (Ed Westwick, "Afterlife"), Nate's smarmy friend, who twice attempts date rape in the premiere. "Girl" is narrated by a mystery girl, as yet unrevealed, who goes by the name of the title.

Few of these people ever move beyond their labels. Blair is insecure and bitchy. Jenny is insecure and sweet. Chuck is sexually predatory and bitchy.

They settle into their cliché types, rarely saying or doing anything surprising or revealing. In fact, until the last few minutes of the first episode, literally nothing of dramatic consequence happens.



Their chatter is empty yet at the same time full of bile. They talk the same mocking been-there, done-that, bored-by-life way, and even the rhythm of their chatter is the same.

A few of the actors break out of type, through facial expressions and tone of voice.

Lively and Badgley fare the best, struggling mightily to develop characters beyond stick figures. But it's a lonely struggle against the extended cliché that is "Girl," and ultimately it's a losing one.

All fantasies are not for all people.
Take Gossip Girl, a praiseworthy example of one of TV's more derided genres: the teen soap. Produced by one of the masters of the game, The OC's Josh Schwartz, Girl is another glimpse into an alternate, financially and sexually profligate universe where teens are worldly and wise, adults naive or depraved. That's why these shows tend to appeal to teens, children who can't wait to be teens, and adults who wish they were teens.


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If you don't fit into that crowd, Gossip Girl isn't for you. But it knows who it's trying to please and what it takes to please them.

Based on a series of books, Gossip Girl's most novel twist is the one that provides the title: The story is told by an anonymous blogger and spread among the students of an exclusive Manhattan prep school via text messages and cellphone cameras. The plot is driven, however, by one of the oldest fantasies in the book: the rich girl who falls for the working-class guy.

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The girl is Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), former bad hottie who left town in an effort to detox and improve. A more serene Serena returns, upsetting former best friend Blair (Leighton Meester), and Blair's wandering boyfriend, Nate (Chace Crawford).

On the poorer side of the tracks, you have Dan (Penn Badgley), his sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen) and their starving artist father (Matthew Settle). Dan loves Serena from afar, until an errant cellphone brings them together.

As is common with teen soaps, the behavior is often more believable than the dialogue and the attitudes. But soap fans will likely be pleasantly surprised by how much Gossip gets right. Lively and Badgley make a likable couple, and Meester lends some surprisingly poignant depth to a role that could have been your standard bratty troublemaker. Some of the lines are witty, and while parents won't approve of all that goes on, the kids talk about much more than they actually do.

If that's a fantasy, it's one many adults will be willing to embrace.