The Gossip Girl books are ludicrous preteen-girl fantasies marketed by Alloy, a tween clothing catalog. But who are we to judge quality? We are CW viewers. The TV show spin-off of Gossip Girl is The O.C. creator/executive producer Josh Schwartz’s newest foray into the world of teen melodrama. With the onset of The O.C. and Laguna Beach, television has entered a world where money is no concern and high school girls have sex and drink while strutting around in Marc Jacobs heels. Unlike the previous two series, less class-conscious shows, Gossip Girl is set in the front lines of the class struggle between the rich and the super-rich. Bwog trash correspondents Lucy Tang and Dan D’Addario present a round-up of what you’ve missed so far in the first two episodes.
Most Likely to Receive Financial Aid
The Humprey Family (“I’m not trash. I’m from Brooklyn!”). The Humprey father owns a “crappy” art gallery and the family lives in a loft in Williamsburg, but they’re really poor.
Best Personality
Chuck, who, in the first two episodes, has tried to rape two of the show’s female leads, engaged in a threesome with two of his father’s employees, tried to beat the crap out of Dan “Williamsburg P.O.V.” Humphrey, all while wearing a disgusting patchwork scarf.
Least Realistic Aspect of the show
The Humprey’s humble abode. First of all, the aerial shots are of DUMBO, not Williamsburg (get your facts right, Josh Schwartz). Second of all, poor people live in Williamsburg lofts now?
Least Realistic Scene
Dan jumping into a cab and telling the driver, “Williamsburg!” It’s near to impossible to get a cab to Williamsburg in Manhattan; maybe the scene where Dan is furiously haggling with the cab driver was cut out.
Most Williamsburg-y
The Humphrey family – have you heard they live in Williamsburg?!? Is this the Gossip Girl equivalent of Chino [California]?
Best accessory
The obvious answer would be Chuck’s signature look– that scarf. But the right answer is Blair’s two lackeys, otherwise known as the ethnic diversity of Gossip Girl. The Asian and black girl, standing always in the background, being ethnic. Fun factoid: the Asian actress is a pre-med at Johns Hopkins.
Most Likely to be a Virgin
Blair Waldorf. The queen bitch of the U.E.S. is the only character that Chuck has not tried to rape yet, and she can’t get her plasticine boyfriend Nate, still hung up on Serena, to close the deal. We’d do you, B!
Best Shot Sequence
The reformed bad girl Serena waits in the lobby of the Waldorf apartment for her friends to meet her. Nate comes out of a door in the far background, looking both “contemplative” and “horny.” Then the show racks focus to the foreground, as Blair cuts him the fuck off to give Serena a fakey-fake hug. Scorsese, take notes.
Biggest Sad Sacks
The Humphreys (again). Dan dumps Serena after one date because of all her baggage, as though that weren’t the point of dating an Upper East Side girl to begin with. Two weeks in, Jenny is becoming a creepy, Rasputin-like acolyte of Blair. Why are they on this show again?
Carrie Bradshaw Memorial Award for Worst Costume Moment
Tie: Blair’s shiny red lips and intense beatnik black turtleneck at the Palace Hotel bar (Episode 1); Serena’s Daisy Dukes (Episode 2)
Sarah Jessica Parker Memorial Award for Cast Member Most In Need of a Root Job and a Burger
Serena’s gay-esque younger brother, who is being set up to date pathetic Jenny Humphrey, like, STOP, show.
Cast Member Name That Most Sounds Like a Character Name From This Show
“Blake Lively,” “Leighton Meester,” “Penn Badgley,” and “Taylor Momsen” all made strong showings, but it was the alliteration of “Chace Crawford” that won it this coveted title. Also, these people’s parents all need to be slapped in the face.
“Best,” and Most Prophetic Parent:
Eleanor Waldorf, who tells Blair, “You’ll never be as beautiful or as happy or as thin as you are right now” right before Serena returns and Blair’s life turns to shit. Then she tells Blair to fix her split ends, and to stop being a rip-off of Rachel Bilson’s character on The O.C. (she just thought the last one). Eleanor, you are what the pretenders on this show — and we! — aspire to be.
You know you love us!
-LT & DPD
30 Comments
@Fancastgal I can’t til the new season of Gossip Girls starts! I’m a huge Gossip Girl junkie…I love the girls’ clothes and Dan is the hottest boy ever! Have you seen the new “OMFG” marketing campaigns? It’s straight-up scandalous!
http://dish.fancast.com/2008/04/news_gossip_girl_poster_shocks.html#more
@yes Josh it was me. the howdeedoodats ate it up!
@test testing
@robyn Yes, Penn Badgley was on Bedford Diaries which shot at Barnard in 2005. And also, Alloy is a tween fashion catalogue, but Alloy Entertainment is a book packager that markets bestselling branded teen series such as A-List, Gossip Girl and It Girl. Alloy Entertainment was also behind the Kaavyagate scandal-thing of Spring 06. And in the original Gossip Girl books, Dan Humphrey wasn’t from Williamsburg…He was from the other ‘Chino’ of NYC, the Upper West Side (oh no you di’n’t, Josh Schwartz).
@howdeedoodat what I wanna know is how Josh Schwartz writes all these hit shows and still has time to get decent grades plus serve as the sagacious moderator of Philo.
@ummm I love LT and DPD but I do not love Gossip Girl. The Williamsburg subplot just killed any and all hopes.
@fun fact! penn badgley was in the short lived bedford diaries filmed at the ‘nard 2 years ago..
@brooklynite I’ve never had a problem getting a cab to take me to my house which is farther into Brooklyn than Williamsburg. Also, Bwog, can you stop pretending that you know Brooklyn & Williamsburg? It is not just some deserted place that godawful hipsters descended upon 15 years ago.
@Avi Gossip Girl is amazing because it cast a 19 year old girl as the lead high school student because she looked like she was 30.
@hiyooo check out this quote by justice thomas “About the only way I would get invited to Columbia is if I was a Middle East dictator with nuclear weapons.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/10/my_dinner_with_clarence_thomas.php
@hiyoooooo haha, he’s never coming to Columbia now!
@... what’s ironic is the law school dean was one of the campus higher-ups who was against the invitation to a-jad and that quote from thomas is specifically about getting incitation from law schools but not columbia’s…haha that’ll teach you to be a douchebag thomas
@marcel marceau is not dead. the government injected him with clay and put him in a potato sack.
@on the cab thing sometimes the cabbies just want to take short trips in manhattan on friday and saturday nights. they can make more that way because of the starting fee
@off topic Dan Savage’s podcast this week features a call from the new Spec sex columnist. He basically tells her that a good sex columnist doesn’t write about his/her own sex life. If only Miriam had sought his advice.
@you are wrong i grew up/live in williamsburg and there are cabs all over the place. no problem to/from manhattan. usually the fare is around $15 w/o traffic at night.
@Inquiring mind When is Bwog going to sotp giving us the skinny on Gossip Girl and start giving us Gossip Girl-esque gossip?
@well Gossip girl is, like, freakishly good. She’s everywhere.
@probably as soon as gawker stops doing the same. seriously, do they have some kind of cross-promotional marketing strategy going on?
though, I mean, it is a show about a gossip blog. there’s natural interest…
@cyreni xoxo!
@hmm ‘The Asian and black girl, standing always in the background, being ethnic.”
so like a wes anderson movie, but with more plot and less sentimental materialism?
@shyeah “The Humphrey family – have you heard they live in Williamsburg?!? Is this the Gossip Girl equivalent of Chino [California]?”
Yes. It really really is. Because Chino is as much in the ghetto as Williamsburg is. Stay classy, Josh Schwartz!
Also, cabbies don’t like going to the boroughs because it’s hard to get a fare coming back so they waste a lot of gas coming back into the city and end up losing money. Better to stick to Manhattan where they can almost always get a fare.
Also, alliteration refers to words all in a row that all start with the same letter, like (C)hase (C)rawford, and (S)tupid (S)EAS (S)tudent. Whadup!
@ugh part trois alliteration is the repetition of initial sounds. this usually means having the same letter, but it isn’t effective if the same letter is used to make an entirely different sound and thus the effective definition of alliteration is similar sounds. The c in Chace sounds nothing like the c in Crawford. The example with s’s in stupid seas student was correct (though arguably the alliteration is only the st- sound and so seas isn’t really included…but that’s another matter altogether), though the statement itself is a bit inaccurate, but i can’t expect too much from you folks right?
just in case you doubt me:
from wikipedia: “Alliteration is the repetition of initial sounds in neighbouring words.”
from merriam webster: “the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (as wild and woolly, threatening throngs) —called also head rhyme initial rhyme”
@shira wow! penn badgley is an incredible name!
@ugh part deux haha you actually changed the way you signed the post but you didn’t correct the alliteration bit?
@ugh and since when does chase crawford have alliteration?
im in seas and know what alliteration means…
and how does leighton not win that category? you dont know anything about judging names bwog. try harder to be superficial!
one last thing, when you sign, it should just be DPD not D.P.D., learn a thing or two from lydia
@anonymous my tears.
@bravo my tears indeed. doesn’t this show remind you of a young bee shaffer?
@huh when did it become difficult to get a cab to take you into williamsburg?
@me! yeah, I’ve never had a cabbie who hated to get 30$ fares to another wealthy and safe part of nyc