"GOSSIP GIRL"
Created by: Josh Schwartz and
Stephanie Savage
Books by Cecily von Ziegesar
First air date: Sept. 19, 2007
Airtime: 8 p.m. Mondays, The CW
Genre: Teen drama

Gossip Girl just keeps getting better and better

On a drizzly July afternoon in New York, I was wandering the Upper West Side with two friends looking for an ice cream truck when we found ourselves on the set of Gossip Girl. Our eardrums and eyes got sore from the big lights and a pack of girls screaming, "NAAATE!"

I've been a fan of Gossip Girl for some time now. I love anything Josh Schwartz writes. My favorite is The OC, but Gossip Girl has a much more personal side to me: fashion and the city! I also love the Chuck and Blair romance.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gossip Girl, the show debuted in September 2007. Gossip Girl is the uncredited voice of Kristen Bell, a blogger who follows the lives of the Upper East Side’s most notorious teenagers, particularly Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), her best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), and their love interests, Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), and Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley).

Over the seasons, the teens grew up. Dan dated a celebrity, an Upper East Side psycho, Serena, and his best friend. Serena was accepted to Brown and Yale, but refused to attend college. Instead, she modeled, dated an Archibald, worked as an agent and in politics, found her estranged father, and married a guy in Spain. She has done everything!

Blair was rejected from Yale, her dream, for hazing a teacher from the Midwest, so she enrolled in NYU but will transfer to Columbia. Her boyfriend, Chuck, filled out her application. The Columbia - NYU and Uptown - Village comparisons are a veritable anthropological study of that not so remote island, Manhattan. The natives are definitely restless!

As for Chuck, last we saw, he proposed to Blair and ended up being mugged and shot in Eastern Europe. Nate, his best friend, stayed behind in New York after breaking up with Serena, easing the pain with girls and liquor.

Oh, did I forget to mention the Humphreys? Dan might have a baby with the Upper East-side psycho. While Serena's mom and Rufus may have patched up their turbulent marriage, who knows what's going to happen the troubled little Jenny Humphrey who has been threatened by Blair herself.

The best part of the show is never knowing what to expect. The plot is based on a series of novels by Cecily von Ziegesar, who went to an Upper East Side prep school. Schwartz's scripts do not follow the books closely, but the show is pure fun - not received wisdom from on high. Chuck never actually proposes to Blair, I am sad to say. In fact, they never seem to date seriously, other than a brief stint in Oxford.

This season, nothing is certain. After a terrible break-up with Chuck, Blair fled to Paris with Serena. Pictures that have leaked so far reveal that both girls have new beaus, and Mr. Bass is alive. In fact, Chuck turns up in Paris to rekindle his romance with Blair. Their reunion is unsuccessful, but he ends up dating a French girl who he brings back to New York.

Can anyone honestly say that they are not excited for the new season of Gossip Girl, which is amusingly advertised as "Parlez-vous Gossip?", "Sacre Blair!", and "Boys du jour!" due to the latest French connection? I certainly cannot.

The show has gotten better and better. The original focus was on Serena van der Woodsen, the gorgeous blond. But honestly, she is not nearly as entertaining as the Queen B (Blair). Blair is a petite brunette, who is conniving, manipulative, and would get along perfectly with a dictator, according to Serena. Her desperate attempts to fit in as an NYU hipster, her affection toward that "mother chucker" (Chuck Bass), and multiple attempts to destroy Jenny were hilarious, making the show an amusing diversion.

Let's hear it for another season and the impending invasion of Paris!