Gossip Girl

This melodrama isn't high TV art, or even middling; but it's dishy, farcical, and funny, as the willowy Serena (Blake Lively) and her circle prey on one another.

It knows exactly what it wants and needs its new hybrid product to be. The hockey fights video of teen romance drama.

We like to fantasize, every now and then, about rich people looking good while behaving badly. That kind of escapism will never go out of business, and Gossip Girl delivers it in of-the-moment fashion.

I'm thinking most of these kids seem way too old to be headed back to high school from the Hamptons. It's not so much the actors--it is their characters, who've morphed over the summer into people whose world-weariness is palpable and their genuine problems so few that the writers needed to manufacture some truly outlandish ones to keep things interesting.

True, the episode threatened to jump the shark when it was revealed that James (Patrick Heusinger), the unsuspecting man Blair corralled to play of the part of her wonderful new boyfriend, had his own secret, ludicrous even by Gossip Girl standards. But in the coming episodes, Blair and Chuck retain their place as the series’ most exciting kids in turmoil, its salacious center.