| 88 |
New York Daily News Cristina Kinon
While it remains to be seen if Gossip Girl will take the plot plunge "The O.C." did after its first season, the beginning here is encouraging. |
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Gossip Girl is eye candy, and mind candy, as pretty as a perfectly prepared martini--one that some nasty, picture-perfect have-it-all may or may not have drugged. |
| 80 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Welcome to the tawdry, tantalizing and altogether terrific world of Gossip Girl. |
| 80 |
Time James Poniewozik
Packing a sharp designer shiv, this clever saga of haves vs. have-mores proves the East Coast can be as enjoyably sudsy as the West. |
| 80 |
Washington Post John Maynard
At times, it's overboard and maybe a bit giggle-inducing, like watching little kids play dress-up. But overboard is exactly where Gossip Girl wants to be--and what viewers must embrace when taking the guilty plunge. |
| 75 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
Some of the lines are witty, and while parents won't approve of all that goes on, the kids talk about much more than they actually do. |
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
The cast is as good as its target demo, but I admire its fleet pace and sly craft. [21 Sep 2007, p.72] |
| 70 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Gossip Girl offers a fun, juicy mix of popular music and melodrama. |
| 70 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
Your feelings about Gossip Girl will depend on just how guilty you are willing to feel about your guilty pleasures. It can be entertaining to watch adults throw around money, attitude, and alcohol on soap operas; it can be grotesque to see teenagers doing the same things. |
| 70 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
It's very well-done teen angst, but at the same time made me feel very old and slightly pervy while watching it. |
| 70 |
Newsday Verne Gay
Gossip Girl actually isn't bad by the standards of the medium--with "The Hills" pretty much being the standard--and it's even surprisingly competent. |
| 70 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
It's a sleek, glossy, musically enhanced soap opera centered on wealthy, gorgeous high school students who connive and cavort to the sound of Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Peter Bjorn and John, Angels & Airwaves, and Timbaland. |
| 60 |
Slate Troy Patterson
The prep-school soap opera Gossip Girl is not as good--that is, not as bad, not quite so fabulously trashy--as the best-selling series of young-adult novels on which it's based. |
| 60 |
Variety Brian Lowry
Gossip Girl hardly breaks any new ground. |
| 50 |
Salon Heather Havrilesky
Gossip Girl should be a good ride, at least until all the characters become more and more likable and there's no conflict or tension anymore, and then you have to kill off the weakest one just to get people to pay any attention. |
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
The main action is pretty much standard soap fare. |
| 40 |
PopMatters Marisa LaScala
If you strip away the designer shoes and drinks, the show is left with all the hallmarks of a typical teen melodrama. |
| 30 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
Gossip Girl lacks the heart, humor and sweetness that balanced out the soapy happenings on "The O.C." |
| 30 |
New York Magazine John Leonard
I don’t care whether Serena (Blake Lively) and Blair (Leighton Meester) can ever be best friends again after what happened with Blair’s boyfriend before Serena ran off to boarding school is not just because I’m an old fart. |
| 30 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
But it's not just that the Gossip Girl cast lacks chemistry. Among these characters and threaded through these predictable, thin stories, there's precious little of anything that approaches sweetness, kindness, altruism or heart. |
| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
It's one of the worst new series--but for its cardboard acting and writing, not for the morals. |
| 25 |
New York Post Linda Stasi
It's a nasty piece of work filled with underage sex, vulgar, hateful kids and references to young girls that are flat-out ugly and disrespectful. |
| 25 |
Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
Slick, cynical teen soap nonsense. |
| 20 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
Gossip Girl is a bad mix of the popular book series by Cecily von Ziegesar and the production talents of Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who made "The O.C." |
| 20 |
Hollywood Reporter Ray Richmond
It's so consumed with its of-the-moment zeitgeist embodiment that it forgets to give its characters any depth beyond their reshaped noses. |
| 0 |
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
I hate it. |
