Gossip Girl

[carrier76]

I feel bad for Nate. He's cute too!!!

I actually liked Chuck in this episode. WHAT?

[yalil]

Nate's ok, but no matter what storyline they put him in or how moody-broody they make his character, he is still eye candy and nothing much else.
Chuck, on the other hand is so deliciously bad and evil. Dude is good with that role, somebody said previously that he is sort of like James Spader in some old movie and I agree. He has that vibe. I couldn't tell Chuck and Nate apart before though.
Dan is still charming.
Serena is a natural actress, she just has some annoying mannerisms sometimes but she is really sympathetic to me.
I believe that Blair is the best role and while the actress looks and dresses like the part, she's just ok. I really feel that with the right actress, that character could be a lot more. All she is, is Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls gone emo gone wrong.
The girl who plays Jenny gets it right and looks right. She looks like an innocent wannabe and acts like one and does it well.
Don't care much about Vanessa.
And Blair's Harajuku girls? I dunno, but the fact that they put a black and asian actress who are dressed almost identically each time, when all they do is follow Blair around, say yes and uh-huh to whatever Blair says is just a little too disturbing.

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I don't understand why this show is compared to the O.C., or even considered a lesser version of it?

The young actors on this show are 10 times more talented than the ones on the O.C. They're extremely charismatic, good-looking and have presence (the ones on the O.C. look like average joes walking down the street next to the ones on Gossip Girls). I think the two female leads are great. Mischa Barton and Rachel Bilson are extremely limited in their abilities (well, I guess everyone already knew that about Mischa) and seem horrificly bad in comparison to the actresses playing Serena and Blair. I actually feel sympathy for these two characters. Benjamin McKenzie just sort of looked constipated all the time. Vanessa, the character, seems a little bit weird in terms of the way she talks to Dan, but the actual actress is quite good and more natural than Samaire Armstrong (though I thought she had a certain charm - at least when you compared her to Barton and Bilson.) The only actor who I might think is sort of bland is the one playing Nate, and even he seems better than Mischa Barton even though he looks somewhat like a male model.

The fellow playing Chuck Bass seems rather talented and I could see him going far in other parts of the acting world if wasn't so ....unfortunate looking. I feel bad saying that because I am entertained by his acting and his line readings. It's just sometimes I wish he wasn't so freaking <whisper>....ugly. If he had the looks to go with his talent and charisma, he could go places. I'm both charmed by him in terms of performance (well, with the exception of the pilot in which it looked like he was he was going to be the resident psycho who goes around assaulting young, unsuspecting girls) and yet repulsed when I have to look at his face.

The only area in which the O.C. seems to one-up the Gossip Girls is probably in the characterization and casting of the parents. The parents (actors and characters) on the O.C. seemed hipper, cooler and more youthful. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that. Serena's mother and Dan's father seem both very youthful for supposedly being parents of teenagers. But the rest of them? Blah. They do seem cranky and old. However, the parent storylines on Gossip Girls do seem kind of boring and uninteresting (do I really care that Nate's dad is doing cocaine? Let's get back to the kids, folks!) I was more interested in the parents on the O.C. but maybe that's because the actors playing the parents were more interesting and talented than the ones playing the kids.

[carrier76]

Benjamin McKenzie just sort of looked constipated all the time.

Sort of OT, but I think Benjamin McKenzie got better as the show moved along. I was re-watching some season 1 eps on Soapnet, and he does some odd eye thing when he's trying to emote...or something? Anyway, it's bad acting. I remember him more from the later seasons, and he got a lot better.

But I wll agree about the parents on The O.C. v. Gossip Girl. O.C.'s parents were a hell of a lot more interesting.

That said, Gossip Girl is a scrumptious scandalous treat, every week! Love it.

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I thought that the parents' storylines on The O.C. sucked after they got rid of Caleb, Haley and Jimmy. None of them were exactly my favourite but Kirsten Cohen had nothing to do anymore after her father, her sister and her high school sweetheart were gone. And gone were the funny Sandy-Caleb fights as were the Jimmy/Julie scenes. And poor Sandy had no other adult male to interact with. Towards the end I was bored by all the storylines but especially by those of the adults. With Gossip Girl I actually like that the parents so far fade a bit into the background, there's still a lot where they can go to with them and I think we will see more of them...

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Chuck is just so Corey Feldman-ish. I want to love him or love to hate him or whatever but its seems he's alway doing a impression of Corey Feldman.

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It's just sometimes I wish [Chuck] wasn't so freaking <whisper>....ugly.

Dang - I think he's hot! Different strokes, I suppose.

I kind of really love this show. The deviation from the books (Not that I have read the books. Or anything like that.) gets to me sometimes - I really don't like how they changed the Vanessa character, and especially the Jenny character, for example - but it's good, trashy (and pretty!) television and I agree, much more entertaining than The OC.

[carrier76]

How are Jenny and Vanessa in the books?

[sugarhigh]

I can't believe I'm actually getting to like Chuck Bass. Although, are we just supposed to forget that he tried to date rape Jenny?

It was a good episode, yesterday. I'm glad Nate stood up to his parents.

[Deleted]

Carrier, in the books Jenny is described as short and curly-haired, and a little plain aside from the fact that she has huge boobs. She's not a Serena doppleganger.

And Vanessa-in-the-books is (from what I remember) a filmmaker; she actually did date Dan for a while. She's got a shaved head, is very against the priviledged trust-fund kid way of living, is kind of a "nonconformer."

God help me, but I kinda wanna reread these books. That'll be my Christmas Break Reading of Great Literature.