The Missus has started us on Netflixing Gossip Girl. It’s pretty entertaining so far, one disc in. My observations:

1) We were hoping for a Cruel Intentions level of sleaziness and that’s what we’re getting.

2) Blake Lively, who is nonetheless pretty and despite being a real teenager in these early episodes, looks like she’s had a few trips around the track. The Missus scoffed at what she thought must be her real age before I remembered she’d just had her 21st birthday like a week ago.

3) As Matthew Perpetua pointed out to me, all the actors have better rich-people/soap opera names in real life than they do on the show. Blake Lively (a girl!), Leighton Meester (another girl!), Penn Badgely (that one’s a guy).

4) Also, because my only knowledge of Gossip Girl prior to watching it was the fact that the actors are now famous and lead glamorous tabloidy lives IRL, I actually think of them as characters rather than thinking of the characters themselves. When Matthew mentioned the character “Serena” to me, I actually said “Who’s that? The only one I know is Blake Lively.”

5) As I’ve noted elsewhere, however, I’m a little uncomfortable with the rapey character becoming a fan-favorite anti-hero, like Wolverine or Sawyer or something. We’re a little late in the day to still be doing Luke & Laura-style “oh yeah, the rape thing–uh, we’ll just not bring that up again, okay?” stuff in our soap operas.

This led to a lot of discussion between me and various friends. First up was some comment/email-thread chat between some members of the Wizard diaspora.

——

Me:

I’m enjoying it so far! I’m not really sure how I feel about the rapey guy, though.

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