LOVE IT

All of my friends know what I think about Jenny on "Gossip Girl." Jenny, also known as "Little J," is a happy, buoyant, hard-working young lady with a penchant for designing clothes and finding hot deals on couture. In short, she seems to be a character that I would get along with. However, anyone who has ever heard me exclaim, "Screw you, Little J!" at the television screen knows that Jenny is not actually a character that I particularly enjoy. Rather, I am an impassioned member of Team Blair, which is to say that in the face-off between Jenny and Blair that began last season, I developed a profound dislike for Little J.

Let me clarify. I don't actually care about the twists and turns of the plot of "Gossip Girl." I don't feel any sort of kinship with the characters, nor to the lessons that one might learn from watching any sort of contrived television drama. What I do appreciate, however, is the knowledge that at 8 p.m. on Monday nights, I can be entertained for an hour as I unwind from a day of classes. And, in fact, "Gossip Girl" is entirely adept at entertaining an audience. So far, this season has been chockablock full of scandalous liaisons, relationship drama, gorgeous apparel, British accents-and, most interestingly, a situation involving a MILF-turned-pimp.

What I have come to realize is that in the world of network television, one would be hard-pressed to find a show that is both popular amongst our age demographic and in any way critically thought provoking. For intellectual stimulation, we have mounds of textbooks and readers-and, you know, HBO. For pure, kick-back-and-relax entertainment, we have "Gossip Girl."

-Zoe Carpou

HATE IT

It's not that "Gossip Girl" lacks in trashy melodrama, repetitive character development or plotlines as cynical as they are histrionic. It's not that the series enshrines the lives of Upper East Side socialites whose jealous elbow-jostling and petty ladder-climbing make Leninist Russian politics look like a cake walk peopled by jolly tots. It's not even that watching the show is a good way to bid bye-bye to all the brain cells in your frontal lobe.

The worst thing about Gossip Girl is that any of the above could be taken as a compliment to the series and that people watch Gossip Girl because it is trash TV. Indeed, promoters have exploited the show's reputation, emblazoning such laudatory critic taglines as "A nasty piece of work" and "Every parent's nightmare" over show ads in blaring, all-caps text.

Rich girl Blair Waldorf embodies both the series' appeal and repulsion. When the doe-eyed queen bitch systematically destroyed the social livelihood of poor Jenny Humphrey last season, were we supposed to burst out into congratulatory cheers? Or feel disturbed that the show seemed to be trumpeting cutthroat social Darwinism?

There's no doubt that the spectacle of hot rich girls brandishing boyfriends at each other makes for some seriously entertaining television. And it's fun to watch Chuck and Blair attempt to simultaneously tear each other's throats out and have sex. But the show never rises to achieve any kind of genuine warmth, and the masses don't expect anything more than sensationalist entertainment. Even in the teen soap genre, where trashy is a mandate, "Gossip Girl" doesn't try to fail better.

-Danica Li

Tags: THUMB WARS