Guilty Pleasures

In the form of well-written, if not slightly smutty, CW television shows. I made a snarky reference in passing to Gossip Girl in my first post because I hadn't watched it, but had definitely heard a bit of the hype. Long story short, free iTunes downloads are fun and I gave Gossip Girl a chance.

And I was not disappointed. I'm sure I'm getting some scoffs right now. I will say that this show while pretty well-written is definitely of the Dawson's Creek variety.The so-called "prep-school kids" look like they were my classmates (and in fact the majority of them could have been being born between '85-'87) and talk like some of my friends at their wittiest. I hesitate to say this since I might just be enamored of the show because it's smutty and awesome, but I venture to say that the scripts are pretty engaging. I lose interest in shows quickly if they're not well-scripted, and I watched all three episodes of the show in two days. I'd say I'm involved.

I'll admit, though, that my interest might actually be due to the cat-fighting that the female leads do. Funny enough, I admire all of it. It's underhanded and backstabbing at its best, but so far hasn't devolved into transparent manipulation. Pre-meditated? Definitely. Outright bitchy? Of course. But happily it hasn't gotten to smarmy interactions (yet) where everyone tries to logically explain how the completely despicable course their about to take actually makes them a good person in God's eyes because of blah blah blah. One order of insta-vomit coming right up.

The characters are smart-ish. Well, the female leads are. They fight dirty and they're damn good at it. But they fight dirty in social settings where all you can do is smile and do your damndest to come up with halfway decent explanation and quickly exit. I love it because it's less on the teen angst where you sit around and whine, more on the "f you I'm going to do something about it."

Let me point this out before someone else does: I'm probably reliving college. Four months out and I'm already missing it. Painful though it was during, I'd be lying if I denied that fighting (or was that socializing?) with some of the smartest, wiliest, craziest, most backstabbing women in the country weren't some of the best years of my life. So, if you want to see how bad the fighting could get (because I did see it get close to that bad a few times) take a look at Gossip Girl. I guarantee that I'm not the only halfway intelligent person who finds it an incredibly satisfying guilty pleasure.