When I was a middle schooler, I had many secrets, and perhaps the most major of all of these secrets arrived in the form of a free pilot episode downloaded off of iTunes. This episode belonged to a series called Gossip Girl, a show I had heard much about. It aired on the CW, a stereotypically trashy network and the only people who admitted to watching the TV drama were the kinds of people I did not want to be like. I did not want to become addicted, but the first episode drew me in to the world of the Upper East Side and soon I was up to date, having watched almost 48 hours’ worth of show. I started out as a closet fan, convincing myself that the show was just my guilty pleasure. But no more of this hiding. I am done lying to myself and to the world. Gossip Girl is a television series of many flaws but it is also one of many strengths. Now I can confidently say that overall, I believe it is a “good show.” Hopefully weighing the pros and cons will prove that my opinion is justified.

Before I get into some analysis, I will provide a brief overview of the premise of the series for those of you who are not yet fans. The show revolves around a core group of characters. There’s Serena, a typical it-girl who is gorgeous and likable; her best friend Blair, a perfectionist queen-bee who is quite the schemer; Nate, who dates almost all of the female characters on the show but never comes off looking like a player because he is so nice; Nate’s best friend Chuck, a slimy/suave heir to a company who is quite the player; Serena’s main love interest Dan, a “poor” writer from Brooklyn; and Dan’s best friend Vanessa, a spunky, homeschooled activist. There are countless other recurring and minor characters, but this is the core group. For the purposes of my analysis, I will be focusing mostly on the earlier seasons because everyone knows that shows always become worse over time, particularly near the end of their run. In the early seasons, all of the aforementioned characters (except Vanessa) attend the same private high school and all (except Vanessa and Dan) are ridiculously wealthy. The show is narrated by the seemingly omniscient figure of Gossip Girl, a person who runs a website of the same name and posts gossip 24/7, thus insuring that the details of everyone’s lives are always made public. She monologues briefly at the beginning and end of each episode, always leaving viewers with her signature sign off, “XOXO, Gossip Girl.” The series is set in New York City and many of the characters are frequently referred to as Upper East Siders
Gossip Girl has many of the problems seen in most television shows about high schools. The actors playing the students are too old and too attractive. Where’s all the acne and braces? And why is everyone so fashionable all the time? No high school has a student body that fashionable and that attractive and that aspect of the show is definitely unrealistic. Also, schoolwork is only brought up when it can be a useful plot device. If these characters were actual teenagers, they would have homework to worry about on a daily basis, not just once or twice a season. However, Gossip Girl as an individual series can’t be held personally responsible for these violations of reality because fantastic, critically acclaimed television shows about high school, such as Friday Night Lights can be found guilty of many of the same crimes.
Also, like most network television shows, Gossip Girl has plot holes. There aren’t too many of them and they aren’t particularly large or obvious, but they exist. Most appear in the form of characters that should be an instrumental part of the plot never coming back, mostly likely because of some sort of issue with the actor. For instance, in season three, a character is introduced who turns out to be the half-brother of Dan and Serena (the son of their father and mother, respectively) but he leaves halfway through the season with promises to visit and is never seen again.
The show also has flaws that are more specific to just Gossip Girl. For instance, Dan’s family is supposedly the poor, lowly one but they are not all that poor. They may not have the copious amounts of wealth owned by the other families on the show but their beautiful, roomy Brooklyn loft does not seem all that lowly. Most importantly, the series does what most stereotypically “trashy” shows do: it overemphasizes high school relationships and the drama that they inspire. Of course relationships and social drama are a large part of teen life, but very rarely is it that large of a part and very rarely is it that dramatic. For instance, by the time the series finishes, every character has slept with practically every other but in real life, people don’t only stay friends with and repeatedly sleep with the same six people they were close with in high school.
Based off of just the qualities above, Gossip Girl comes off as just your standard CW guilty pleasure. The appeal of watching people supposedly your own age who have interesting, drama-filled, homework-free lives is very strong. But these qualities do not make for a show you can be proud of watching, hence the “guilty” in guilty pleasure. Here’s why you don’t have to be ashamed of watching this show.
The writing for this show is surprisingly good. Not necessarily in every episode, but in the majority of them. I enjoy the writing so much because it is funny and clever. There is typically at least one witty line or random brief subplot per show. For instance, in the second season there’s an episode where the characters go to the opera and a lot of dramatic plot points are explored while there. But there is a small, funny subplot involving Nate and Vanessa, who are dating at the time. Vanessa saved up all her money to buy them tickets to this opera but the seats are not very good ones. However, Nate’s family has a box which has a much better view and is more private, but Vanessa, who worked hard for her tickets, refuses to go. So Nate hires a few old ladies to sit next to them and cough loudly until Vanessa agrees to go to the box. This scene gets only a few minutes of screen time and has nothing to do with the other big events going on (Dan and Serena questioning their relationship, Chuck getting his company back, Lily getting assaulted and Blair committing an act that will result in her getting rejected from Yale) but it is random and hilarious, and for some reason makes the whole episode seem more realistic. Probably because life is usually random and hilarious.
There are also many individual lines that are funny. Most of them are spoken by Gossip Girl during one of her frequent voiceovers and are in the form of bad puns. For example, over the course of all six seasons everyone possible pun you can think of involving the name “Chuck Bass” has been made (mother Chuck-er, Bass-terd, his assets being called Bass-ets, etc.) There are also lines such as Dan stating, “I'm telling you, I learned everything I know about women from Judy Blume's Forever” or Blair telling her boss, “I’ve never owned a scrunchie.” And her boss responding, “I think I read that in your resume.” There are countless other witty one-liners, but finding the rest of them would mean rewatching the series for the billionth time, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the writing is in fact both punny and funny.
But this pro is in danger of becoming a con, as the witty tone is not specific to just one character; they all have it. The writers may have been good with puns, but they were not very good at creating unique voices that varied from character to character, as everyone’s speechisms eerily similar. But the fact that everyone’s actual dialogue is essentially the same does not matter very much in the grand scheme of things because the actors do such a good job giving their characters different tones, voices and mannerisms. Because the only downside to the writing was the fact that it did not differentiate between characters and that was made a non-issue by the skill of the actors, the writing is definitely a pro.
The characters on the show are also one of its strengths. They may be unrealistically attractive, but they are incredibly realistic otherwise. They are constantly balancing their good traits and their bad ones and the amounts of each are constantly changing. This makes them realistic because people are constantly changing and have plenty of flaws and good qualities. Not only do people change frequently, opinions about people change frequently. For instance, one’s opinion about their classmates may change based on who they are at the time the opinion is formulated and who their classmates are at that same time. This can be applied to Gossip Girl, at least in my experience, because I find that my favorite characters not only shift as the seasons progress, but every time I go back and watch the series from the beginning. The show has created characters so similar to actual people that viewers judge them as if they were actual people.
The final big pro of this show is the subtler issues it deals with. It certainly has some obvious issues that it deals with in obvious ways (for example, the fact that Blair is bulimic) and it does those well, but the shows strongest moments are the ones when it does not really deal with the issues. For instance, Serena gets a lot of things she does not deserve just because she is rich, famous and beautiful and this issue is brought up every now and then, but it is never really addressed and solved. This is something that we as viewers have to grapple with on our own. So when Blair does something like out Serena as a drug addict (even though she’s not) at an important event, our first instinct is to condemn Blair for being cruel. But we then realize Blair only did this in retaliation. Everything comes so easily to Serena and Blair has to work incredibly hard for everything she gets. But does that justify Blair’s actions? And is it possible for Serena to be knocked off her pedestal in a gentler way? And if so, should that happen? These are all things that viewers are forced to think about and it makes our brains active, something that guilty pleasure shows aren’t necessarily supposed to do.
Gossip Girl can be easily dismissed as a trashy, guilty pleasure show, as it has many of the characteristics that those shows are supposed to have, but I don’t believe that it is. And sure, it’s no West Wing, it’s not Doctor Who, it may not radically change your life, or make you a better person, or give you huge important issues to think about, but it is quality entertainment and it does give you some interesting, relevant topics to grapple with. I can now say that I watch and love Gossip Girl and I am proud of it. Hopefully you will be able to take a closer look at your guilty pleasures and discover if your guilty is really necessary. We will all feel guilty about many things over the course of our lives, but watching a good show with a bad reputation should not be one of them.
XOXO,
Gossip Girl