(Possible spoilers alert!)

I don’t think I was the only fan of Gilmore Girls who upon its ending and the onset of Gossip Girl in the same time slot, on the same day of the week, was shocked by the extreme change in tone, the seeming immorality of this new set of teens.  (Not to say that Rory Gilmore’s hypocritical and judgmental attitude didn’t piss me off.)  I watched one episode, and then another, enjoying the glossy look but put off by the lack of a moral center.  I’d read a few of the books, hadn’t been overly impressed.  But then the show started to take shape, and out of the dark, glossy, drunken lushness of this pseudo Upper East Side, lines were drawn in the figurative sand.  Perhaps the choices these children and their parents make aren’t the ones we are used to seeing portrayed as good, but each character has their limits, their loyalties, their well-drawn motivations.  And as season after season passes, the show elegantly and brilliantly depicts how both the blackest character (Chuck Bass) can be the most noble, and how the most upright (your choice for Dan Humphrey, Vanessa Abrams, or Eric Van der Woodsen) can be the most hypocritical and hurtful.

And when the show moved to college, I was worried, almost distraught, at the idea of Blair Waldorf, my favorite, becoming lost.  Yet in using that story line, they showed a very real experience that so many young people go through.  Luckily for Blair, she has Chuck to see her through it, to know her better than she knows herself, to force her to grow and be a better person in order to help him.

Nothing happens in Gossip Girl without consequences.  The infamous threesome that occurred in Monday night’s episode threatens to cause lasting problems in certain relationships, proving that a threesome isn’t to be taken lightly because sex and emotions are often extremely intertwined.

So why did I decide to blog today about Gossip Girl?  For me, this show, similar to HBO’s Deadwood, is the best of fictional television.  It has all the elements I love about romance books, all the fantasy and the fashion.  It’s escapist and yet real at the same time.  It’s accessible and romantic.  It’s all the contradictions of good, evil, and the great greyscale in between, which we truly do have in life.  And best of all, it’s fun.

(For all those days in between my posts, visit me at SabrinaDarby.com)