STC GG Q&A: Sean T. Collins talks Gossip Girl

Over the course of this blog’s history, I’ve been fortunate to have my work read and shared by major comic book sites, pros in multiple industries and the occasional minor celeb, but to this day, I get more excited when I receive a plug from Sean T. Collins than anybody else.

Sean T. Collins is a former co-worker/current friend/forever guru to all of us here at the Cool Kid’s Table. When it comes to writing intelligently, insightfully and oft-hilariously on comics, TV, movies and just about anything, STC is my standard of excellence, whether at his own blog, on one of his various ventures or even here when we’re fortunate enough to have him.

Sean spends a lot of his energy breaking down, y’know, “good” show like Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad, which I love to get his take on, but it was of course a special pleasure to read him attempt to bring some class and critical breakdown to a true American classic like Gossip Girl. As a fellow who’s versed in both art house smarty-pants stuff and daytime soaps, STC offers a unique take.

Imagine my joy then when as the final season of GG churned its way out Sean informed me, Kiel, et al that he was writing a Gossip Girl comic telling the “secret origin” of Chuck Bass! It’s fantastically drawn by Dan White and you can find the whole thing right here.

I immediately got on Sean’s case for an interview, and around New Year’s, he gave me the holiday gift of his extensive thoughts on the show, the comic, Chuck and more.

Do enjoy.

In stark earnestness, what made Gossip Girl a show you found worth giving your time to? I'm not talking guilty pleasure territory here, I'm asking what genuinely quality factors do you feel it had?

STC: As one of those obnoxious people who says things like "there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure," I have to go with stark earnestness regardless. In that light, I think it's starkly, earnestly a fun, soapy, sexy show about attractive young quasi-sociopaths getting involved in crazy hijinks. That's either going to float your boat or it's not, but it certainly floats mine.

Thinking about it more specifically in terms of its place in my viewing trajectory, maybe Gossip Girl was the first television show I was able to watch with the new appreciation for glam decadence that had opened up the music world for me a few years prior, I don't know. Looking back, I think it was the first soap I ever really watched, opening the door for The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and The Young and the Restless years down the line. 

But GG always had that deliciously incoherent mixture of celebration and satire of the lifestyles it was depicting, giving it an is-it-or-isn't-it edge that most of those other shows, however much I enjoy them from time to time, can't really match. This was especially the case when the characters were all supposed to be 17 years old—what can I say, I've been a sucker for teenage sensation since I was one myself. But the decision to go full-on pervy with the love interests in the final season—Nate goes jailbait, Ivy goes Oedipal twice over, Serena and Lily have both been to seventh heaven with the same guy, etc.—showed that the show never really lost its knack for being dirty even as the kids grew up and the show lost its must-see-tv buzz. You never knew when GG was going to pull something as shiny and sleazy as a mid-'00s Goldfrapp single out of its sleeve.

Did I mention it was sexy? I mean, I sincerely appreciate that, I truly do. For squeezing Blake Lively into all those toothpaste-tube dresses, for playing lingerie dress-up with Leighton Meester time and time again, for crafting a dandy-of-the-underworld look for Ed Westwick, for every glimpse of Penn Badgley's chest hair, for every close-up on the inhumanly beautiful face of Chace Crawford, Gossip Girl did humanity a great service. 

Finally, Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf are terrific characters, as memorable as any on TV. It took them a while to get a handle on Chuck, obviously, but once they figured out what they had with him and Ed Westwick, a simultaneous Batman-and-Joker that would make "Batdance"-era Prince jealous...hoo boy. And Blair's manic perfectionism as expressed by Leighton Meester's chirpy caffeinated porcelain doll face—hoo boy again.

Going 90 degrees or so, what is absolutely ridiculous about the show to the point where it does become a guilty pleasure?

STC: This isn't so much a "guilty pleasure" thing as a "love to hate it" thing, but repetition, repetition, repetition. All those times someone found out something Serena was withholding from them, and she sighed with that slurry pitch-shifted voice of hers, "Look, I was gonna tell you, but..."—half-apologetic, half-irritated, all-ridiculous. All of Nate and Serena's four-episode-arc significant others. Rufus, the Human Turtleneck, disapproving Lily, Miss Congeniality, being cold. Vanessa spending however many seasons she was on the show busting everyone else's chops for, essentially, being Gossip Girl characters. It was fun to make fun of this stuff. 

Ditto all the things they picked up only to drop. Eric Van Der Woodsen, the adorable younger brother who could have been an awesome main character if this dirty and decadent show about teen sex weren't too cowardly to show a dude kissing another dude for reasons other than Chuck/Blair intrigue. The fact that all of them spent two seasons worrying about nothing but college and then all of a sudden, blam, it's never mentioned again. The need to cycle through love interests and villains preventing them from keeping most of the best of both categories around for as long as they deserved to—when they broke the mold, they had at least as many misses—I was never really sold on Ivy or the jailbait girl, though hubba hubba in both cases obvs—as hits Juliet, the Prince.

Now then, why a Gossip Girl comic? Of all the subjects out there and even all the TV shows I know you love and are intrigued by, what made this the right source material?

STC: The quick answer is that Robin McConnell of Inkstuds fame wasn't proposing to do a zine about any of those other shows, so I didn't get the idea to do something on anything else. The less quick, possibly less accurate, answer is that Gossip Girl fits squarely into some stuff I've been thinking about a lot lately in terms of comics writing: sex, success, celebrity, discontent. The comics I've done about Drake and David Bowie aren't a world apart from the world of young Charlie Bass.

Was there an aspect of doing a Gossip Girl comic that was less intimidating than doing, say, a Mad Men or Sopranos comic because there probably aren't the same expectations attached? Knowing you, I'm doubting this entered your mind, but if it were me, I'm sure part of me would certainly be thinking "Best case, it's art, worst case, it's parody I can easily get away with" or something along those lines.

STC: Hmmm...I don't think so, no. I mean, if I were to do a comic about Mad Men or The Sopranos I wouldn't write it in the style of those shows, you know? I wouldn't be competing with Matthew Weiner to see who could write Tony Soprano or Don Draper the best. So the weight of expectation wouldn't be insurmountable, for me at least. 

Why the structural choice to go with the newspaper style series of comic strips rather than one story? It's one of those things I would never have thought of and didn't realize how brilliant a choice it clearly was until I saw it laid out.

STC: Well, the whole thing clicked when I realized I could reenact the first Peanuts strip with GG characters, and that set the template for what was to come. But I'm sure on some level I was thinking about Daniel Clowes's work in this format in books like Ice Haven and The Death-Ray and Mister Wonderful and Wilson, where he uses individual strips or old-fashioned Sunday-page-length vignettes to tell an overall story. Other people have done that too—Tim Hensley and Adrian Tomine come to mind, not to mention all the actual comic strips that have told ongoing stories, Peanuts included—but I bet Clowes was what gave me the sense that you could really do this.

I know you've got a soft spot for Chuck Bass, so I wasn't surprised to see the story center on him, but what about this character intrigues and attracts you?

STC: He's just the break-out combination of actor and star on that show. As I said before, it's one of those remarkable Wolverine-type situations where they didn't quite have a handle on him at first, but they very quickly saw they had a golden goose and just kept cranking egg after egg out of him. As a result there was something of a no-prize factor in trying to figure out how the leering creep of season one and the vigilante hero of the later seasons could possibly be the same person. I was struck by the throwaway mention of Chuck losing his virginity to crazy-even-by-GG-standards Georgina Sparks when he was in the sixth grade and, because sexual hang-ups were basically the story of my own adolescence, figured that must be where the origin story would be located.

  

For anybody who has never read your thoughts on Gossip Girl, explain the Chuck-Batman thing.

STC: Like Batman, his one real super power is that he's unimaginably rich. He's a scion of privilege with a personality born out of tragedy. He walks the line between hero and monster. He dresses well. He's in love with Catwoman, basically. His catchphrase is announcing who he is. And he wears a lot of purple, which is a Joker thing not a Batman thing but it's in the ballpark.

How much time did you devote to actually setting this in –or lack of a better term—Gossip Girl continuity and thinking about where you knew the characters were before the show?

STC: Quite a bit, actually. I wanted it to work as well as it could, to the point where I asked Dan White, the artist I was extremely lucky to be able to work with on it, to try to find pictures of all the actors when they were 6th-grade aged and make it look like this really was an unseen season of the show. I tried to base all the relationships on whatever information about them we had from the show at the time. I think we did a good job, though I was bummed when the final season either revealed or reminded me that Serena and Georgina didn't meet and become evil friends until high school.

What did Dan think when you approached him with this idea? 

STC: Dan didn't have a ton of experience with GG, but several of his compatriots in the Mindless Ones group blog did, and they set him on the path of righteousness. I think that for Dan the real appeal here was the experimental appeal of collaboration, since he mostly writes and draws his own excellent stuff.

What aspects of this do you feel like were distinctly Gossip Girl and which were just a story you wanted to tell?

STC: Figuring out what Chuck Bass would be like before he became "cool"—that was unique to that character and that world. I wouldn't have thought to write someone like that but for the show. The rest...I think a lot of it was probably just me projecting about the inner lives of the popular kids in middle school who I continue to resent to this day, honestly, and that could have happened any which way.

How did you come to see young Chuck—and to a lesser extent the other characters—as he was in this story? How did you arrive at the characterization you landed on?

STC: Like I said, I had the idea of Chuck Before Chuck. A kid with that Croesus level of money and influence, that anachronistic vocabulary and sense of self, but largely pre-sexual and without the self-confidence and swagger and style; what would that look and sound like?

Who was the most fun to write besides Chuck?

STC: Georgina, for sure. She had to be true to the character on the show, she had to be the kind of person who would terrify and turn on and transform the pre-Chuck Chuck I came up with, and she had to be a young person with issues of her own driving her to behave the way she behaved, rather than just a plot device existing to service the needs of the Chuck story.

I know you think the end game for the show should be a Chuck/Nate romance, or at least you have intimated as much…

STC: The show's been pretty wimpy about same-sex relationships, as I said earlier. No way would it make two of its Big Three male leads gay at all, let alone gay and involved with one another. To be clear, I'm happy with Chuck and Blair working out, even though I can't for the life of me see why their collusion in criminally negligent homicide was necessary for their happy ever after to take place. I'm much less happy, however, about Nate winding up, in the parlance of my wife, FOREVER ALONE. He couldn't get with Jenny in her final cameo? Come on, GG.

  

All said and done, what were the parts of the comic you thought hit best?

STC: I like Blair, I like Bart, I like the longer monologues, and I think I got the sex stuff the way I wanted it to be, which was always gonna be the challenge.

Did you always know that was going to be the last panel?

STC: You bet. By the way, SHAME on the show for not giving Chuck one final "I'M CHUCK BASS." SHAME!

Could there be more Gossip Girl comics in your future or is it Vampire Diaries' turn?

STC: Haha! Neither, most likely, though with any luck I'll have some more TV-related stuff coming up.

XOXO 4 Ever: Ben & Kiel Say Goodbye to Gossip Girl Pt. 2

Previously on Cool Kids Table, Ben and Kiel revealed their roots as Gossip Girl fans, talked about the show's origins, discussed the Blair-Chuck wedding an more. We continue...

Ben: Ok, before we get to the big stuff, let’s talk Dan and Serena. As people were falling in love with the Chuck/Blair pairing season two and beyond, I was the dude sitting there screaming “The show is about Dan and Serena, people!” I stuck to my guns on this one no matter how boring Dan got (in the opinion of others—I always thought Lonely Boy was the best) or how loathsome Serena became; I firmly believed that both characters and their story would be redeemed if they ended the show together, and…I still feel that way.

Kiel: I wasn't assuming or rooting for them to end up together, really. I just wanted to see how they would logically make an ending happen after all the awful shit these people have done to one another. But again, I'll wait to put all my pieces together. Proceed.

Ben: Yes, it’s a bit creepy that Serena ended up with the guy who essentially admitted to being her long-term stalker (which actually makes total sense because she’s a narcissist). Yes, Dan forgave a shitload more than any sane person would have (I still think she got off way too easy for making that sex tape last season; when this season opened she was back to pouting about how everybody else ruined her life when she was a monster and that’s probably the biggest dangling unresolved thread I have an issue with). And yeah, it’s kind of a bummer the way that otherwise glorious flashback scene to the high school (junior high?) party complete Chuck Bass in all his scarf-adorned glory underlined how far they are from the relatively decent people they were at the beginning of the show, but whatevs. Gossip Girl was about a lot of stuff (and also nothing of substance whatsoever), but more than anything it was about the guy from outside getting the golden girl, so yay for that happy ending.

It also made the reveal of Gossip Girl’s reveal beautifully creepy and subversive.

Kiel: Yes. Well, it was creepy by an objective standard, but by the show's logic I'd argue that the reveal actually CONFIRMS its overall "message." But again, you roll with it...

Ben: First off, the identity of Gossip Girl is a sweater you really can’t pull any strand off if you don’t want it to come apart entirely. I can say with near certainty there are scenes of Dan alone reacting to Gossip Girl blasts and being shocked that blow up the whole deal—I’m sure bigger fans than me have already located said scenes and are crying foul. But I don’t care if the continuity adds up perfectly here—it’s fucking Gossip Girl—or if the creators had this planned from day one—I doubt it—as long as the emotional payoff and explanation works, and I think it did, big time.

Kiel: I've been meaning to rewatch the Season 1 DVDs that I've got around here to see if there's any way they can justify this ending and say that they "planned it from the beginning" or some such. But until then, I'm going to assume you're 100% right.

Ben: Inverting the entire power structure of the show and making Dan the one who was really in charge all along? Brilliant. It retroactively gives all those schemes particularly from the early seasons where he was left on the outside looking in a renewed punch. I also love the larger message underlining Dan’s speech at Thanksgiving dinner to Serena and really showing what this show is about (not learning a lesson): these people were all horrible to each other, but at the end of the day forgave one another literally anything, so the only way to gain not just acceptance but the sort of unquestioned moral free pass you needed to thrive on the Upper East Side was something like this.

All that aside, I do like that when all is said and done the central conceit of the show was acceptance and gaining power respect and all that, but really a guy trying to get a girl. Was the way he went about getting said girl incredibly creepy and beyond borderline sociopathic? Yes! Absolutely! Was it still kind of sweet? Am I a monster if I say yes? I’m ok with that.

I also don’t think the fact that along the way Dan had relationships with Olivia, Vanessa, Blair, etc. blows anything up, because even if he momentarily lost interest in Serena—as a teenager would—that’s no reason he’d want to give up the intoxicating power of being Gossip Girl.

It was smart of them to cover their bases with the “Jenny knew all along” thing (and made for a hilarious “confrontation” scene demonstrating once and for all how low on the totem pole of respect and relevance Rufus is), but they hammered a little too hard with how Dan shutting down Gossip Girl after Blair and Chuck’s accident made him somehow a good guy; he wasn’t a good guy, but nobody was, so just own it. 

So anyhow, I was thrilled with the Gossip Girl ID. I can’t think of anybody else among the main cast who would have been as satisfying and bringing in somebody from left field would have been fun, but a bit of a cheat.

Kiel: All right. I agree with all of your points in a logistical sense. Dan's reveal made all the right people look foolish and all the the right reasons for his re-acceptance to the crew. I don't mind one iota that his canceling the blog when the car accident happened is a magical forgiveness bullet. I'm down with the "Jenny always knew" thing just because it semi-justifies the way that the characters kept mentioning her once every six weeks for the later seasons when any other show would have just ignored her existence once she was written out. I laughed out loud at the "it's not Dorota" joke.

But what really makes the reveal work is that idea you said about Dan being a monster for hatching a years-long plan to fool this girl into loving him. In anything resembling real life, that's 1000% true. But this is not real life. This is the Upper East Side.

For me, the show has been riding this line for a while where the characters would eventually either err on the side of actual, logical ethical structures (as Blair and Serena often profess to do while making up for the 135th time) or just embrace the evilness of what they are and ride that to its soapy nadir. Is Gossip Girl a series where the pursuit of power and social status is the ultimate moral code? You bet your ass.

I started thinking about this a lot during Season 4 where Sean made the A+ observation on Juliet's reveal as a big villain. She was poor. The poor are the bad guys in this show! For the characters to triumph, they don't have to do what's right. They just have to win the game, and poor people with their petty emotions and sense of fairness never learned to play.

To put it another way, Serena was a goddamned supervillain at the end of last season, and this year they found her out not for revenge but to beg her to rejoin the crew. You follow that through Dan's slow boiling plan of screwing her over so hard that she'd have to respect him (my FAVORITE storyline of the year...and now ultimately the true story of the whole show), and what the writers are showing us is that true happiness for these characters – for this world – is wealth by any means.

And while the reveal feels out of left field in the moment, it feels so right the more you reflect it against any other relationship in the show.

Ben: Speaking of out of left field—those cameos! I love that pics of Katie Cassidy leaked out early so people assumed she’d have a major part in the finale yet Vanessa wouldn’t show up, but instead they both ended up getting the same two-line appearance as Lola and the rest. It maybe would have been nice for them also to get Elizabeth Hurley or Bucky from the Captain America movie (or any of the other male love interests, really), but I was pretty satisfied with what we got. Kristen Bell and out-of-nowhere Rachel Bilson were incredible and made that scene seem more legitimate than it had any right to be; if somebody hasn’t already made a video loop of Kristen’s wink on YouTube yet, there’s your prompt to do so. Nice sneaky touch working in Olivia via Hillary Duff on the playbill for Ivy’s life story in the flash forward as well.

So finally, let’s talk about the flash forward. As already mentioned, the Nate thing was perfect in its sublime ridiculousness. I like that Blair and Chuck had a kid—and named him after Chuck’s French alter ego—because it gave them more substance than the destiny junk. Rufus wearing hipster glasses and being with an un-credited, non-speaking Lisa Loeb is more brilliant than words can express. Eric had a better appearance than Jenny—and I like that he made no effort whatsoever to visually move himself back to that character as opposed to the one he plays on Revenge—and I thought it was pretty BS that she got the “and” in the credits when he’s probably a bigger deal at this point. Lastly, Dan and Serena getting married in Blair’s apartment was ridiculous—I loved it.

Kiel: WOW. You caught so many more of the Easter Eggs than I did! I have it on DVR, so I'll have to go back and rewatch the last ten minutes. I had heard none of the leaks beforehand, so all the cameos were surprising and fun for us. The Bell bit was killer.

But what made me really love the montage into the final ridiculous wedding scene was how every little detail drove home what I was talking about a few paragraphs back. When I saw that Lily and William were still together, I loved it. It confirms everything about the Dan reveal. Ivy Dickens was a poor Florida actress (possibly a graduate of the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks) who also had some serious mental issues in the great "obsessive lover" tradition. But she still did a few decent human things in her arc. She was the only person nice to CeCe at the end and so she won that money for being good. And even though she did awful stuff at the end, it was for a so-called "pure" reason – true love for William. And what did she get for it? William scraped her off like she was dog shit he stepped in at the polo match.

Meanwhile, he and Lily go off to live the end of their romance as ultra wealthy assholes. And even Rufus is just like, "Fuck it! I'll marry Lisa Loeb and be rich!" The ending of that crazy cameo implies is that Rufus learned Dan was right in all this.

Even looking at that last scene in a meta sense supports the triumph of the Upper East Side ethos. Why did Taylor Momsen get a special screen credit when that Eric kid has a better career? Because Taylor Momsen is a fucking name in that ridiculous way that People.com readers kind of care about who she is. All the supporting roles in ABC dramas in the world can't buy Taylor's It Girl cred.

And hey. Pour one out for Georgina Sparks. She may have been a shadow of her former self since sometime around the "I went to Christian Camp" storyline, but never forget that her blowing into town at the end of Season 1 was the thing that galvanized this show's themes. Take a bow, Harriet The Spy.

Ben: The final final scene, with Kristen Bell doing the “you may be rid of Dan Humphrey” narration and then explaining how as long as there are social outsiders there will always be a Gossip Girl felt like a freaking horror movie and was a nice “the characters you love are in their little bubble but the world they live in continues to be terrifying and awful” was the perfect way to end the show and one I never would have guessed.

This was a master class in how to do a series finale, in my opinion, be it ever so humble. Josh Schwartz did a great job on The O.C. with this too, so I’m not surprised. His formula of centering a big current event (the Chuck/Blair wedding or the Cohens moving) while also tying up all the loose ends (Gossip Girl’s identity or the relationship drama) then providing a flash forward so you don’t have to spend time wondering how all the characters ended up is a winner.

Kiel: You may find this random, but this reminded me so much Seinfeld finale. SO much. For years we've been watching these people do horrible and crazy things, and we've been perfectly entertained. Now as one last blast of people they've shit on are paraded in front of us, we realize our worst suspicions about them are totally true. But where Seinfeld reestablishes a normal moral universe at its very end, Gossip Girl revels in the triumph of its subterfuge. In this New York, awful rich people who laugh at a fat guy while he's robbed do not go to jail for a year. They go to a rooftop party where they drink for free, buy drugs from the DJ and embezzle from the host.

Ben: My hat’s off to the folks who created this for an exciting and satisfying finale to a show that wasn’t always good, but never took itself too seriously that I couldn’t at least laugh at it and ultimately taught me nothing.

Kiel: You know you love it.

Ben: XOXO!

But wait! There's more! Coming soon to the Cool Kids Table, the one and only Sean T. Collins joins Ben for an extensive interview on his original Gossip Girl comic, The Secret Origin of Chuck Bass!

XOXO 4 Ever: Ben & Kiel Say Goodbye to Gossip Girl Pt. 1

Gossip Girl was a television series that ran on The CW for six years, finishing up last month. It was primarily aimed at the female demographic, specifically young women.

Ben Morse and Kiel Phegley are grown men.

Here, they discuss the show, the finale and more.

Ben: Before we get into the finale itself, let’s do a brief history lesson. I have watched Gossip Girl from the beginning, and I believe my co-writer here did as well. I got hooked by borrowing the pilot episode from Mel Caylo when we were back at Wizard and watching it with Megan; we both liked it a lot. It was funny how Mel got sent such a random assortment of pilots given that we were ostensibly a comic book magazine; we got stuff like the failed Aquaman show Mercy Reef and the failed Ultra show…Ultra (based on the Luna Brothers book) but then we’d also get stuff like Dirty Sexy Money, Big Shots and Gossip Girl. The super hero stuff or the really schlocky stuff we’d all watch together in the conference room, but if you wanted to watch a teen soap opera, you were bringing that shit home with you.

Kiel: Ha! I recall the Mercy Reef/Ultra double feature at lunch. Mercy Reef was so awkward! I can't believe that Justin Hartley was in it as I look back now fully believing he was one of the best things about late period Smallville. But beyond the repeated hilarity that was repeating Ving Rhames' pronunciation of the name "Ooooo-rin" over and over, it was awful. I don't even think I made it through the Ultra pilot. But back on topic, I too watched Gossip Girl from episode one, though I'm not sure exactly why. It may have had something to do with the fact that we were living in New York at a time with only an antenna for entertainment in the apartment, and The CW was one of the few channels that came in with crystal clarity.

Ben: I don’t know if you already knew about the YA novels before the show?

Kiel: I did in that I knew they existed in a general sense, but beyond a vague understanding of the concept of what my idol M.T. Anderson has called "the modern tween bitch lit series," I knew nothing about the particulars of Cicily Von Zeigler's story.

But oddly, the books did cross paths with my watching of the show in two very distinctive moments that I recall even years later. First is that in advance of the premier, I read the New York Times review of the pilot which heavily referenced the books. As I remember it, they reviewer made the case that the appeal of the books was how the teens drank and screwed and schemed with reckless abandon and that the addition of parents with Rufus and Lily dragged the proceedings down and ruined the show's ability to match the outlandish fantasy nature of the book. We all know how untrue that turned out to be, but it was a cute theory, I guess. You hear a lot in the YA/tween media marketplace about how parents kill the marketability of stories because kids hate reading about adult authority figures in their preferred pop fiction, but I think that's a load of bunk. Parents are a HUGE parts of kids lives and therefore great antagonists in YA.

The second memory I have is of a newscast that ran just after the pilot or one of the first episodes. I don't know if you're aware of this phenomenon, but The CW is rife with that particular brand of corporate synergy where the local newscast is always doing stories about how rad the network's shows are. For example, when Veronica Mars was on, they did a story one night about fans sending Mars Bars to the network heads to stave off its cancelation. With GG, the New York local news did a piece I saw about actual teenagers from the Upper East Side who loved the books and were excited for the show. I remember this mostly because the girls they interviewed raved about how much the books were like their real lives – how the characters went to the same places as they did and acted just like them. And to be blunt, these were kind of nerdy-looking, bookish 14-year-olds. Blair Waldorf they were not.

I guess what I'm saying overall here is that YA books have a tendency to feel VERY real and in the moment to the kids that read them yet very artificial and ridiculous to most adults that encounter them, which is I think what a soap like this goes for in spades.

Ben: I’ve always liked prime time soap operas and I had always been a fan of teen protagonists in other mediums—mainly comics—so Gossip Girl hit for me. I had also gotten into The O.C. late, so I gravitated pretty naturally from one Josh Schwartz show to the other. I remember having lively “debates” with the likes of Rickey and TJ over whether or not Gossip Girl had any intrinsic social value, but I can see now my argument was pretty silly. I would contend that whereas shows like The Real World or Jersey Shore glamorized real people behaving badly and getting paid to do so were hurting society, a show like Gossip Girl that was more of a send up of how ridiculous the idle rich was helped it, but…wow, that sounds even more idiotic when I write it out. The Real World, Jersey Shore and Gossip Girl all have pretty much no redeeming social value, but I found the last one entertaining.

I also watched Melrose Place when I was a good decade younger than the leads and Gossip Girl when I was a good decade older than the leads; I’m sure that says something about me and my fascination with whatever stage in life I’m not at.

Kiel: No, I get what you're saying. There's a definite ironic distancing the show has from reality (or in the case of those other shows, "reality") that sets it apart. That's a huge part of the appeal. I'm not sure that fact always tips the show into the category of art that has something big to say about human existence, but it sure does make it less of a guilty pleasure and more of a pleasure, full stop.

Also, while you mention it, I did want to put in one word about The O.C. Like you, I didn't watch that show from square one. Actually, it started when I was in college, and aside from being a Phantom Planet fan, my only exposure to its start was when I'd mention my comics stuff at a party and have some drunk girl go, "Ooooooh! You're just like Seth from The O.C.!" Eventually, I started watching it after hearing that so much, but by the time I picked it up in Season 3, the show had apparently taken a dive in quality. I get the feeling that show was like other notable nerd flame out Heroes. But I think that experience was a positive for Schwartz and company in that they were (mostly) able to avoid either letting GG get stale or blowing up what worked about it in an attempt to stay relevant like they had with The O.C.

Ben: Ok, enough jibber jabber, we’ve got a finale to take on.

Kiel: Yeah!

Ben: Actually, a little more jibber jabber.

Kiel: Okay!

Ben: Did you catch the one hour recap/farewell special prior to the episode itself? I highly recommend it if you did not. For one thing, it’s fantastic to get a look back at young Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley and Chace Crawford—and by the way Sean T. Collins hit the nail on the head when he immortally noted that every young actor on this show has a more pretentious real name than just about any of their characters—but most of all Ed Westwick as Chuck Bass. Because Chuck has more or less been in a suit for the back half of the show, I forgot all about his ridiculous scarves, red tracksuits and ascots from the early years. Westwick waxes poetic about how much he used to love ascots out of character and it’s hilarious.

Kiel: Jami and I ate that up. We were also shocked to recall what the cast's hair was like in the first season. That they flashed back to short-haired Freshman Dan in the episode was slightly mind-blowing.

Ben: Per Megan, the flashback was the final scene they shot of the entire series because Penn Badgley had to shave his head more or less. Apparently he has super human hair growing abilities, because I saw him from afar when I was going to Subway a couple weeks back and his hair was longer than ever. I also did not approach him because I was starving. In retrospect, I can't imagine he would have wanted to chat for more than 20 seconds, so that was probably a mistake on my part.

All the out of character interviews with the actors are pretty great. Crawford and Badgley both come off as guys you’d want to party with while just hearing Westwick’s heavy as hell British accent is a trip. Blake Lively seems overly excited in a “I am so happy I can finally leave this show” way, but that’s fun too. Kaylee Defer is also pretty unintentionally funny trying to make it seem like she was ever more than a bit player. The only interviews I was let down by were Meester’s, because Blair is probably my favorite character—tied with Dan maybe—and she was just kind of blah.

Kiel: My only real complaint was that they didn't directly address the kind of pro-sleeze stance Gossip Girl has always had. They briefly showed the BRILLIANT poster from Season 2 that was just Serena making an orgasmic face with the quote "Every parent's worst nightmare" on it, but mostly the special was just the producers patting themselves on the back for being culturally relevant by CW standards.

Ben: I was also able to confirm that all those people who showed up for cameos and they made a point to say their full names on camera were indeed fashion, art and New York society people I had never heard of.

Kiel And Sonic Youth one time!

Ben: Ok! The show! I guess it makes sense to start with Chuck and Blair, since as the show went on it really seemed to become about them, and the finale was no exception. I like both characters and their early hook-ups were a lot of fun, but once they became the “destiny couple” of the show, I got a bit bored with the whole thing, because the two chief troublemakers became so defanged every time they were cooing or emoting over how they were meant to be together. That said, as much as I was momentarily fascinated by the Dan/Blair diversion last season, even if I got sick of the destiny stuff, it was hard to ignore, and it was nice they got their happy ending here. I do feel like it didn’t really allow either Leighton Meester or Ed Westwick to truly shine in this final episode because both are more enjoyable to watch when they’re being mean and snarky as opposed to lovey dovey, but oh well.

Kiel: I remember desperately wanting the Blair/Dan hookup to happen and being very pleased when it did. That was the only move in the show that could really shake things up, and in retrospect, Dan's fizzled relationship with Blair was the best catalyst to put him totally on the outs with the gang. It added emotional heft that writing tell-alls didn't.

But you're 100% on that Chuck and Blair were never quite the same, in a bad way, after their relationship was in full swing. The worst arc of this final season was the absurd idea that they made "a pact" to only get together once they'd won their respective society battles. Even by the standards of the wacky rich person fantasy land this show exists in, that was mega contrived.

Ben: I did enjoy the simplicity of “if you two get married, you can’t get convicted for murder” rationale since plans that eschew logic and sense for the sake of providing a splashy event are the backbone of Gossip Girl. I also enjoyed Jack Bass immensely as he’s one of my favorite characters and I’m glad he got such a meaty role in the finale, getting to deliver all the obnoxious lines everybody else was too busy worrying to get in there. His “room service” entrance with “I’ve got some bad news…Bart is dead” was great, although he was holding that tray really oddly. I also enjoyed “I had cameras installed back when I still hated you.”

Kiel: Jack Bass 4 Lyfe! The series best pseudo-villain by far.

Ben: Was it ultimately a bit unsatisfying that Chuck didn’t really best his father after spending the whole season trying and instead just let him fall to his death? Eh. Lily getting the line about just reusing the stuff from the first funeral made Bart’s brief resurrection all worth it (actually, he was a pretty good villain in general, it’s just too bad they killed him rather than defeating him).

The wedding itself was nice. Wallace Shawn rushing through the vows was a delight. I don’t really know if Blair’s dress was ugly or not.

Kiel: Neither Jami nor I have any real barometer for whether the fashion on the show is good looking or not. This gets especially confusing when they're telling us the fashion is supposed to be horrendous and/or brilliant as they did all over with Blair's designs this season. But otherwise, yes, I agree with everything you're laying down.

Ben: Getting back to Lily briefly, this was a good season for her as it got her away from the toxic bore of a relationship with Rufus and back to being the bitchy socialite the show needed. Everybody on Gossip Girl is pretty good with the art of the putdown line, but as a Melrose Place vet, Kelly Rutherford is certainly the old pro. I’m fine with her ending up with William both because it allowed for the return of scene-chewing Billy Baldwin—who has become an almost eerie parody of his brother Alec at this point—one last time and him getting the great slam on Ivy about how a Lifetime movie about her would be called Nobody Gives a Damn (for the record, I thought Ivy had a lot of potential when they introduced her as Serena’s fake cousin, and I actually like Kaylee Defer, but no character got used more poorly).

Kiel: Okay, I've got a lot of opinions here. For one, Lily as a character is someone that whipsawed around all over the place for me. I'm down with her being the archetypal mega-bitch of the Upper West Side in a general sense, but the idea of her softening from that position had the potential to be a worthwhile character arc. The whole purpose of the character in the early seasons was that she had once been a grungy (i.e. poor) groupie of Rufus and that said youthful romance was the missed love of her life. Yes, predictable but also a perfectly fine storyline for the C-characters that are the parents on this show. And you're right. Her and Rufus as a married couple was flat as shit.

On the other hand, there were things I really liked about Lily's conversion from queen of her generation of gossip girls into halfway decent human being. I ADORED her relationship with Chuck over the years. The fact that we never got any dramatic closure with Chuck's real mother was fine by me because Lily filled that role in such an unexpected and believable way. All that made it only that much more bizarre when the writers would have Lily throw her own daughter under the fucking bus just to ratchet up the soapy drama.

On the gripping hand, her ending up with William was the most unexpected and hilarious scene of the entire finale, so I was all good with it. You're right that Ivy was maybe most intriguing in that first season when she went ape shit psycho on Nate and Serena at the eleventh hour, but I enjoyed her role throughout the show from the poor little rich girl we'd normally sympathize with but had to hate on through to her slutting it up with Rufus to make his arc worthwhile this season. In the end, what happened between her, Lily and William in the last scene of the finale is probably the biggest piece of evidence to support my "Grand Theory of Gossip Girl," but I'll save that for the end. Proceed with our next topic, sir!

Ben: No character on this show won me over more over the course of six seasons than Nate Archibald. He was unbearable for the first two or so—remember his life-sucking relationship with Vanessa?—but then over the summer before season three, Chace Crawford both learned how to act and decided to say “fuck it, they’re always going to give me the most ridiculous storylines on this show, let’s rock.” The whole 22-year-old trust fund kid who didn’t stay in college more than a semester—the greatest mystery in the Gossip Girl world is, of course, not GG’s identity but rather how they all opted out of school as freshmen and it never got mentioned again—and who has never demonstrated any aptitude for anything running a successful magazine plotlines was a keeper because you could see in Crawford’s steely blue eyes that he fully recognized it’s absurdity and was going to run with it. Similarly, Sage was an awful character, but because she was with Nate, it made everything ok. To once again quote Sean T. Collins: “You’re too beautiful for this world, Nate Archibald.”

Kiel Jami fucking HATED Sage. There was not one episode this season where I didn't hear her complain about that girl at least twice. And justifiably so! She was the latest in a string of characters nowhere near good enough for Nate. It's ironic in the grandest sense how at the start of the series, Nate was the hot rich boy all the girls wanted to bone and/or marry, but as soon as he became cool enough to earn that status, all the main characters stopped trying to get with him. Bizarre to the max.

Ben: And not to skip ahead, but 27-year old Nate Archibald is the leading candidate in New York’s mayoral race? And presumably still hasn’t earned a college degree?! There are five years of fantastic Nate stumbling upward storylines awaiting a spinoff, people!

Kiel I would watch his spinoff series AND vote for him.

To be continued later this week, as Ben and Kiel continue to throw their self-respect to the wind, gushing over Dan and Serena, gasping at the reveal of Gossip Girl and much more!

Who I Want Archie to Meet Next

While I’ve expanded my comic book consciousness significantly over the past decade or so, I’ll always be first and foremost a super hero guy. That said Archie Comics has always been near and dear to my heart.

When I was a kid, while I was only picking up the occasional spare issue of Spider-Man or Avengers, I’d regularly grab all the Archie I could get my hands on, from Archie & Friends to Laugh to Jughead to Betty & Veronica (if nobody was looking). I totally went in for Jughead’s Time Police, Archie 3000 and whatever that weird sci fi book with Dilton was.

I vividly remember that I would take baths when I was a kid (not showers? I don’t know) and while I didn’t want to “damage” my super hero books, I’d always bring an Archie double digest in the tub and end up with my toes and fingers wrinkled because I wanted to finish the whole thing.

Something about the clearly defined characters, classic art, and easy-to-follow storylines appealed to me; it was like comfort food comics. At the same time, even at that age with my writing muscles barely flexed, I had a lot of respect for the guys who wrote Archie because they had to take a pretty firmly and inflexibly established set of guidelines and then create within those, but for the most part, they cranked out a ton of new ideas and stories each month (with the occasional unintentional repeat).

These days, I’m fortunate enough to know one of those writers: the immensely talented and congenial Alex Segura, a good friend as well as PR guru for Archie who has taken up the pen on several high profile stories as of late. Since Alex started at Archie, coincidentally or not they’ve been grabbing a lot of headlines with cool concepts like the stories set in parallel futures with Archie married to Betty and Veronica, openly gay character Kevin Keller and more.

Most recently, in a move right up there with the seminal Archie Meets the Punisher one-shot from the 90’s Alex has helped bring the legendary band KISS to Riverdale in a four-part story currently unfolding in the main Archie book. It’s been a fun read that made me realize how much I’ve missed these characters.

In that vein, with the sky seemingly the limit as far as who could show up in an Archie comic and a pipeline to the powers that be, I’ve compiled a list of crossovers I want to see. Now it would have been easy to come up with “Yeah, that makes sense” stuff from a pop culture standpoint just by surveying the stuff my wife watches on TV and suggesting Jersey Shore and Kardashian knock-off stories, but this is a purely Ben Morse fantasy list, so those ideas get benched regardless of financial appeal (but you can have them too, Segura).

MOTLEY CRUE
After KISS, this is the next logical step, right? To the best of my knowledge Archie doesn’t have plans to start a mature readers line, so I’ll likely never see them do the Motley Crue story I really want to see, but there’s still plenty of potential. Maybe it comes down to the Crue against the Archies against Josie & the Pussycats in a Battle of the Bands. Maybe Reggie becomes a roadie for Motley and has to spend a week trying to make sure Nikki and Vince don’t kill anybody in Riverdale. Maybe you can just get Tommy Lee to co-write the story with the part of his anatomy that co-authored Tommyland (look it up if you can’t guess). Regardless, Bret Michaels makes a last page cameo to set up the Poison guest shot to end the trilogy.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN
The well-known chef, food critic and crank is already doing some sort of gastro comic I believe this year and there’s few better known characters who love to eat than Jughead, so this seems a perfect fit. Bourdain could be coming to Riverdale for No Reservations and give Pop’s a savage review that prompts Jughead to challenge him to an eating contest. It’s classic “heroes fight and then team-up” stuff. Bobby Flay can be the real bad guys trying to open a chain soda shoppe down the street.

GOSSIP GIRL
Kiel will back me up on this one. I would love if there is a to-this-point-unseen Upper East Side section of Riverdale that houses analogues of the Gossip Girl cast and a school redistricting moves them into the orbit of Archie and friends. Archie and Dan switch places in their respective love triangles with Betty/Veronica and Blair/Serena. Chuck introduces Jughead to the world of true hedonism. Jenny and Cheryl Blossom have a mean girl throw down. Nobody from any of the bands has any idea who Rufus is. Nate and Reggie have a really boring storyline. Serena sleeps with Mr. Weatherbee. It writes itself!

WITCHBLADE
Because everybody in comics crosses over with Witchblade eventually. Also, Archie has two of the most iconic female comic book characters in history and I want to see how the artists handle this.

ZACK RYDER
Archie goes nuts when his favorite WWE Superstar comes to town, because you know he’s totally a Broski. Really I just want to see Archie with spiked hair and a Broski headband. I’m not quite sure what the story would be.

X-TREME
Foreign exchange student.

Gossip Girl Quickie: Sweet Juliet

This Monday on The CW, Gossip Girl hits (I believe) the final episode of its fourth season before the traditional holiday hiatus. As pointed out a few days ago on Twitter by Sean T. Collins and echoed by myself, this latest run of GG has been pretty stellar and a marked step up from last year’s on-again, off-again quality and a major reason has to be new villain Juliet, played by probably the best thing to come out of the unfortunate misstep that was Melrose Place 2.0, Katie Cassidy and unquestionably television’s finest user of that name since Lost ended.

Why has Juliet earned her notch above the likes of Poppy, that married lady Nate was with and perhaps even Georgina? A few reasons…

One chance to make a first impression
Juliet’s first appearance on Gossip Girl was innocuous enough, seemingly just a new fling for Nate, but then we had the dynamite end of episode scene where we learned she had some sort of grudge against Upper East Siders—only later on did we find out it was specifically Serena—and saw the reveal of her crazy wall o’ pictures that made her seem like Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind” if he only cared about Manhattan’s teen elite. Whether the show intended it or not, having her laptop open to Gossip Girl was a stroke of minor genius as fans speculated for weeks if she was in fact GG (she’s not).

Class warfare
We’ve had no shortage of rich kids squabbling amongst each other on Gossip Girl, but Juliet marks the first real time the threat has emerged from the middle class, and indeed her lack of wealth often comes into play, be it as a motivating factor, a secret to be concealed from Nate, or fuel for getting the likes of Vanessa and Jenny to serve as her pawns. In the weird dynamic of this show where the spoiled brats are the heroes, it just makes twisted sense that the girl who has to do her own dishes is the villain; you also get the twist of viewers who idolize Serena and Blair wondering if they should be siding with the underdog even if she is a manipulative sociopath (I figure).

Secrets, secrets
Typically Gossip Girl is the ultimate ADD show, where no plot lasts longer than three episodes and no mystery stays unsolved much longer, but exactly why Juliet hates Serena and the other shadowy elements of her character have been handled with laudable restraint by the writers this season. We’ve gotten tantalizing teases pretty consistently—the middle class thing, her brother is in jail because of something Serena did, her cousin is rich and supported her—but not the big whammy, which they’ve saved presumably for this week.

Survival of the fittest
When the GG crew takes down an opponent, typically they stay taken down—Georgina being the one exception, but she’s an ally as often as she is an enemy—but Juliet has defied this more than once. She survived Serena and Blair teaming up to expose her initial scheming and still kept Nate under her thumb for a bit after. She managed to toss Vanessa under the bus for trying to get Serena booted from college and even retained her as an accomplice later on. Most impressively, she became the first character ever to survive the full brunt of the Gossip Girl Justice League coming down on her in brutal fashion at the ballet and bounced back to recruit Jenny and annihilate Serena over the next two weeks. She has actually evolved from each defeat to the point where it’s now going to necessitate the unlikely duo of Blair and Dan—Dan basically being the Adam Strange or Phantom Stranger of the Upper East Side JLA—to put the final nail in her coffin.

Not just a pretty face
It helps that Katie Cassidy is an attractive girl since otherwise she’d stick out like a sore thumb on a CW show, but she’s also got some solid acting chops, which believe it or not you also need on Gossip Girl, which I maintain features one of the more talented young casts on television. She’s been able to lend a depth to Juliet and make more sympathetic more than a few times, be it in her relationship with Nate or reluctance to turn on Colin; I felt really bad for her after the ballet smackdown! At the same time, she still revels in being a bitch and doing horrible things, so you never really mistake her for the good girl. The line Cassidy walks between these two roles is perfectly subtle and fluid; on Melrose Place, Ella tanked in spite of Katie’s talents because the writers seemingly had no grasp on who she’s supposed to be, whereas here the crew of Gossip Girl definitely seem to have a plan for Juliet, albeit a layered and sometimes confusion one, that the actress portraying her has pulled off wonderfully, proving once and for all when it came to that other show she was most definitely not the problem.

Though Juliet has certainly exceeded the average shelf life of a Gossip Girl villain already, I certainly wouldn’t be upset to see her stick around even longer; barring that, I look forward to Katie Cassidy’s next role, which will hopefully somehow be on Smallville.

What Ben's Watching

My comrade the lovely and talented TJ Dietsch has been chronicling his television viewing habits in multi-part fashion of late, so I figured I’d take the idea out for a spin.

I guess you’d probably say I’m a bit of an odd duck when it comes to TV. My tastes are pretty all over the place; from sitcoms to period pieces to sketch comedy to hour-long dramas to sports and some really dumb shit, I like a little of everything.

I don’t watch some of the stuff that’s supposedly among the best out there (according to friends whose opinion I trust) and am really into other shows people don’t have high opinions of. I’ve been accused to having almost a feminine inclination as far as some of my favorite programs (you may recall my enthusiasm for Melrose Place), but I’m a pretty strong believe that gender, age, race, etc. should never ever dictate what you enjoy from culture and will speak fairly passionately on it when pushed.

Off the soapbox, here’s what I watch and what I think of what I watch, probably a little more scattershot and brief than TJ because I want to try and get this done all in one shot.

MONDAY


How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
Only started watching this last season after playing catch up on DVD, and after dipping a little last year, I think it’s back in a nice groove now. Very different from most of the comedies I watch in that even though it’s zany, it’s still pretty grounded, the characters are pretty believable and there’s some moral grounding to the whole deal; it’s heartfelt, a bit more like shows I watched as a kid. Really great cast, as I feel like even the weakest link—Ted—is damn funny at this point, and they’ve all got great chemistry.


Gossip Girl (The CW)
Not just a show, an experience. If you’re going to watch Gossip Girl, you’ve got to accept you’re not gearing up for a refined television experience, but pure entertainment that is not afraid to cater to every denominator. The thing I like about Gossip Girl is that it’s quite self-aware of how over-the-top and preposterous it is, and rather try to switch things up, it revels in all that with ridiculous dialogues and the characters saying exactly what you’re thinking as a viewer (“Serena, you’re a whore” being the most common thought, I’d imagine, though I really liked when Juliet actually said the chain of hookups between the core cast out loud the other week without irony). And yet, as much as they switch romantic partners with absurdity and cycle through story arcs with reckless abandon, you really care about the relationships between the friends and lovers, and a lot of that comes back to some really talented young actors who run with what they’re given. This season has been everything I’ve wanted thus far.


WWE Raw (USA)
It’s been over a two-decade love affair between myself and professional wrestling, and honestly probably one I’ll maintain my whole life. Having grown up and been around the industry a bit on the fringe recently via friendships with guys like Christopher Daniels, I’ve gotten a bit more insight on how the wrestling business works, and to be honest, I’ll vacillate between being amazed by the performers and disgusted by some of the folks running the show. But regardless of all that, wrestling is my comfort food; I watched it with my dad as a kid, I went to shows with my buddies through high school and college, and likely I’ll keep my standing date on Monday nights as long as I’ve got the ability to do so. World Wrestling Entertainment’s live flagship show has certainly undergone a lot of changes in the past decade in particular with a shift to PG-TV, and I guess I miss the more adult trappings at times, but I still dig the athleticism, and frankly the current youth movement with guys like Nexus and Sheamus as well as young veterans like John Cena and Randy Orton has pushed Raw to the best it’s been in quite awhile.


Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It (VH1)
As an avid Rock of Love viewer, I was psyched for this show, and then a little let down when it turned out to be a complete 180 from that beautiful train wreck, focusing on Bret Michaels: Family Man rather than Bret Michaels: Sex Addict. However, Bret is honestly one of the most likable and endearing celebrities I’ve ever seen, particularly on reality TV, and his daughters have completely won me over—the adorable temper tantrum-prone little one and wise-beyond-her-years tween—so I’ve found nothing but a good time with this show.

TUESDAY


Glee (Fox)
Some people freak out over this show, and I’m not one of them, but I do really enjoy it. There are characters and aspects that really rub me the wrong way occasionally, but for the most part, I find it one of the more entertaining hours on TV. I’m not looking for epic storytelling here—and I’m a bit mystified by the Emmy nods for acting, truth be told—just musical numbers that I can dig, funny lines, and Jane Lynch or Mike O’Malley carrying the heavy lifting on the dramatic stuff. I appreciate that some people are really into these characters, and I think the actors are incredibly talented, but honestly I’m more in it to see what songs they cover than how most of the arcs resolve; well-produced program with performers who work harder than maybe anybody else.


Parenthood (NBC)
The best show on TV right now, I do believe. I read a piece on this where several members of the cast commented on how so much of what they do is heavy improvisation; it shows and I think it brings out the best in all of them and of the series as well. Kinda cool that there are no gimmicks here, just a funny, emotional, well-written and well-acted show about the bonds of family. I think the Bravermans are the kind of cool, extended family you’d actually want to be a part of, which is of course a major boon for Parenthood. I enjoy watching Lauren Graham and Mae Whitman banter on this show, but I also get really invested in the more serious stuff about raising a kid with Asbergers, so it’s a one-stop-shop for the emotional payoff and lighthearted fun I look for on TV.

WEDNESDAY


Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! (DisneyXD)
I don't need to be a company man to tell you this show is fucking awesome. It's Justice League Unlimited for the Marvel Universe in all the best ways, but just as Marvel has its own unique flavor from DC, so do this show from JLU. Experience it for yourself and come join me on the Marvel.com liveblog while you do it! Shill over.


Hellcats (The CW)
I have watched the first few episodes of this cheerleading tour de force because myself, my wife and two of our friends who recently moved to the area thought it would be fun to follow a show we knew wouldn’t last a year and make fun of it along the way. So now it got picked up for a second season and I’ve got Hellcats taking over my DVR and three people on my case about when we’re going to do a marathon; what have I done…


Top Chef (Bravo)
The only reality show I watch on a regular basis and the cream of the crop as far as I can tell (with the Emmy hardware to prove it). After a so-so season seven of the standard show set in Washington, DC, they’re now ramping up the brilliant Just Desserts cycle and the first-ever All-Stars installment is weeks away. The franchise keeps finding ways to reinvent itself and I definitely appreciate that. I love and am fascinated by food and the art of cooking and wish I could be more of a foodie than my lactose intolerant, IBS-suffering body will allow, so this show allows me to do a bit of living vicariously. The competition has some real characters and the judges do a great job running herd on them, so I hope they keep doing what they’re doing for a long time.


Blue Mountain State (SpikeTV)
I started watching this show on a total whim a couple weeks ago and have become mildly obsessed with it. A sort of Van Wilder-on-TV mash-up of football, sex and college excess to ridiculous extremes, it’s not necessarily very good, but it’s really a lot of fun. My jaw is pretty regularly dropped at just how far they go with the humor, even if it’s the softest of balls they’re knocking out of the park, but it’s nice to turn my brain off once in awhile. Highlight far and away is Alan Ritchson, Smallville’s bland-as-heck Aquaman as the crazy, hyperactive, over-stimulated team captain who speaks just about every line in a high-pitched semi-squeal; dude is a genius of physical comedy.

THURSDAY


Bones (Fox)
Megan and I raced through Bones from beginning to present this past summer, so I saw the best and worst of the show in pretty short order. I think the current season is definitely midway between the two extremes, as it’s not my favorite thing to watch, but once it gets going, I enjoy it more often than not. I think the undeniable chemistry between Booth and Bones still makes for potent fuel and the cases remain pretty fascinating—even when I can’t necessarily follow them—so that’s all good. On the downside, it feels like most of the supporting cast has grown pretty stale and there’s not much to do with them, so we’re getting a lot more gimmicks, both good and bad, as opposed to character development. This one may be on its last legs, but hopefully it finishes strong.


30 Rock (NBC)
Gets better every week and if I could only watch one thing this might well be it. No cast or writing staff is more perpetually in the zone than 30 Rock’s and every line, scene and storyline just rolls so seamlessly. It’s the most quotable show on TV and benefits from knowing exactly how to use fantastic guest stars like Matt Damon, Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Banks. It’s a lot harder to write about something good than something bad, I’ve often found, so honestly I don’t know really what more to say about 30 Rock.


Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
After a strong start, Grey’s Anatomy had a rough couple of seasons worth of terrible writing and characters who you wanted to punch in the face constantly. Now I’m not saying all those problems have been erased, but they definitely started to turn the corner back around last year and now they’re in the midst of their best season in years with a string of incredibly strong episodes to kick off the latest run. I feel like a lot of this had to do with a pretty significant turnover in cast members, as a lot of the played out characters like George and Izzie bolted to be replaced by far more entertaining and affable folks like Arizona, Teddy and Jackson. Veterans like Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, especially Justin Chambers and even Ellen Pompeo have really stepped up their game to match the raised bar and Chyler Leigh’s Lexie is one of my favorite characters on TV. The game-changing season finale last year has really ratcheted up the intensity—even if the traumatized Christina storyline is dragging like crazy—and I’m pleased at how well things are going for this show.

FRIDAY


Smallville (The CW)
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how I feel about this show. It’s my greatest guilty pleasure, I have way more affection for it than I sometimes think I should, and I’m loving blogging about it with Kiel.


WWE Smackdown (Syfy)
I don’t watch Smackdown with quite as much urgency as Raw, probably since years of it being pre-taped have trained me into seeing it as less important (and it’s on Fridays), but some of my favorite performers ply their trade there, including Edge, Cody Rhodes, the currently injured Christian and more. This makes for good DVR fodder when I’m bumming around on a Saturday or Sunday.

SATURDAY


Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Another show that has made a real resurgence over the past few years, picking up steam with the 2008 election and then working hard to stay topical and relevant even without Sarah Palin to kick around. The first couple episodes of this season seemed to squander talented hosts like Jane Lynch and Emma Stone a bit, but I was really impressed with the new cast members, so there was a silver lining. Last week with the show’s latest go-to host Jon Hamm back again, the writers really shined, and if we’re lucky that will be the pattern moving forward.

SUNDAY

Family Guy (Fox)
This show is sleepwalking at this point, and I’m worried it won’t be long until it’s as formulaic as The Simpsons has become. I still get at least one decent chuckle a week, so I’m not giving up yet, but pushing the envelope when nobody cares seems to have become more important than humor, and that’s a shame.


Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
A couple years ago, this was Parenthood, but now this once-great show with a still-tremendous ensemble is off to a terrible start for what looks like it could be its swansong. The loss of Rob Lowe hit Brothers & Sisters harder than I ever could have imagined, and now with Emily VanCamp gone as well, there are some serious holes I’m not so sure can be filled. The boisterous energy of seasons past has been replaced with morbid, depressing storylines and I’m afraid the Walkers may have hit a nosedive there’s no pulling out of.


Eastbound & Down (HBO)
Just out-of-control offensive and hilarious in the process. Danny McBride is one of the funniest performers on the planet and the nonsensical stream of machismo he’s constantly uttering is spectacular; you should really really not love Kenny Powers, but how can you not?