CW's Gossip Girl is All Talk and Not Much Heart

I'll admit it: I just turned 30, which puts me a little outside the intended audience for the CW's newest teen drama, Gossip Girl, which launches tonight on the netlet at 9 pm ET/PT. That said, I was completely hooked on the early seasons of The OC, which is probably a good thing as Gossip Girl, based on the ever popular line of novels, comes from showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage.

Before you ask, yes, that is Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell lending her voice as the eponymous Gossip Girl, a sort of Perez Hilton for the Noxzema and Marc Jacobs crowd, who dishes out dirt on the Upper East Side denizens via her popular website. Into her withering gaze comes former "It" girl Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), who fled Manhattan following a mysterious incident, and has now returned home after time at boarding school.

Her return to the rarefied world of upper crust Manhattan causes turmoil of all kinds, especially towards her former best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester, here channeling her rich inner bitch) and her boyfriend Nate (Chace Crawford). Things have been weird between the two since Serena left and that could have something to do with the very reason why our girl S. took off in the first place...

Across town, Serena's reappearance is noted with amusement and infatuation (respectively) by siblings Jenny (Taylor Momsen) and Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), whose father Rufus (Matthew Settle) is a former rock god and was once the lover of Serena's mother Lily (Kelly Rutherford). Still with me? It's a twist that's rather unnecessary, given the already serpentine nature of interpersonal play going on here, but at least it gives the adults something to do. (Unlike The OC, the adults aren't nearly as well drawn as the teens, unfortunately.)

Dan and Serena, of course, meet over a dropped mobile phone and the two become allies together in their battle against the popular kids, embodied by Blair and Nate's best friend, the sociopath Chuck (Ed Westwick), who takes an interest in freshman Jenny. The resulting confrontation should set up enough drama to last an entire season.

I'll admit that while the pilot episode is beautifully shot and, well, filled to the brim with beautiful people doing all sorts of cruel things to one another, Gossip Girl felt rather hollow and empty to me, rather like a discarded designer handbag.

Sure, it's got a fun and bubble-gummy tone along with a king's ransom of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But I want my teen angst with just a hint more intelligence rather than superficiality... which might be why Gossip Girl made me miss Veronica Mars so acutely, despite the fact that both series' pilots were directed by Mark Piznarski and, yes, that Bell is providing the narration for the series. As Gossip Girl herself might say, jaded TV writer Jace was seen checking out the series, but will this slippery scribe stick around for seconds? Only time will tell.

Gossip Girl premieres tonight at 9 pm ET/PT on the CW.

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Jace is an LA-based television development and acquisitions exec who watches way too much television for his own good and would love a TiVo for every room in the house. (He’s halfway there.) His blog, Televisionary, can be found at televisionaryblog.com.

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