OMFG. Did you miss the tinted-window Town Car that was the first season of “Gossip Girl,” the CW’s attempt at filling the void created when “The O.C.” went off the air?
Well New York’s most devious blogger – and her utterly entitled Upper East Side friends – dish it all on the series’ DVD, out Tuesday, just in time for the sure-to-be salacious second- season premiere on Sept. 1.
According to creator Josh Schwartz, he had no intention of remaking “The O.C.,” also his baby, when he decided to adapt Cecily von Ziegesar’s popular book series.
“I wasn’t necessarily thinking how to do another teen drama, but there was something about the books that just struck me,” says Schwartz in one of the few DVD extras. The DVD also includes a free audio-book download of the novel narrated by Christina Ricci.
But while the new series is certainly no re-creation of “The O.C.” – for one, it’s set in Manhattan, not Newport Beach – the similarities are obvious.
In its first, strike-interrupted season, plot lines included date rape, murder, drug overdoses, cheating, gambling and a whole lot of kissing and dissing, the last of which stemmed from Serena van der Woodsen’s return from an unexpected jaunt to boarding school.
Her sudden reappearance has frenemy Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) torn between feeling deceived and jealous. Case in point: Blair’s pretty-boy-on-the-outside, torn-and-troubled-inside boyfriend Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford). He has (and had) a somewhat steamy thing for Serena. When their one-night affair is let out of the Balenciaga bag, things go from bad to worse and back to bad again.
In fact, much of the first season will try your patience – but in a captivating way.
You’ll see Blair sabotage Serena, then befriend her and then oust her from the social circle again. Her relationship with Nate continues to be rocky – not only because of his cheating ways, but because of hers, too, which are displayed after a limousine lip-lock with the show’s outrageously amoral (yet totally likeable) Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick). Serena dabbles in some emotion-toying scenarios as well, mostly with her Seth Cohen-esque Brooklyn boyfriend Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley).
Overall, with lines like “save some trees, have a blog,” music from Feist, MGMT and Mika, and fashions from up-and-coming designers, the show’s on the cusp of more than just the “scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.”
And to have Manhattan as its backdrop? Oh, come on – you know you love it. XOXO.