Gossip Girl is the best guilty pleasure show. The Real Housewives of New Jersey is the best comedy on cable television. And NYC Prep is Bravo's biggest waste of money created to make a select group of ugly teenagers think they're cooler than they really are.
But they all have something in common: each show focuses solely on the lives of the ridiculously privileged. In the post-9/11, recession-stricken world we live in, do these shows exist to distract us from the horrifying reality of having to deal with job losses and home foreclosures? Or are they harsh reminders of what most of the country can no longer find attainable?
I realize I ask these questions knowing full well that my family has been relatively lucky and have not felt the effects of the recession as harshly as others have, and for that I am grateful. But not everybody else has been able to withstand the economic crash.
So do these shows, in which wealthy high schoolers and bored housewives with over sized checking accounts and too much free time, help us forget that our last president has put us into a 6 trillion dollar debt funding a useless war? Or that more and more businesses are folding every day as people are losing their livelihoods and homes?
Or do they simply remind us that the economic boom of the dot-com era is long gone and no one is quite sure when something like it will bless us again?
For me shows like Gossip Girl and Real Housewives are wonderful distractions from the pressures of trying to decide what to do after college and if I really want to be a grown up after all. In their worlds the high school crowd spends Monday nights at the hippest bars drinking Grey Goose martinis, plot the downfalls of their former lovers/siblings/friends, and attend weekly charity functions; bored 40-somethings build 12,000 square foot homes, pay cash to furnish them and gossip about their supposed friends' sex lives - and each clique does it all while wearing the most impeccable pret-a-porter couture shipped in from Paris.
NYC Prep is literally the biggest waste of a half hour ever created - well any VH1 reality show can also be considered for that top spot - except to provide fodder for ridicule every time that ugly cross-eyed opens her mouth. But it still stands as an example of the fantasy world some people are still living in despite the fact that the rest of the country can only dream of having a similar lifestyle.
Since the CW's prime-time hit is clearly a work of fiction based on a book series, it can sort of be excluded from my next question, the reality shows, however, cannot. Seriously, what world are these reality show strumpets living in? Who in their right mind spends 4 days a week shopping for new clothing or considers "downtown parties" an extracurricular activity? Do these people not realize they live in a bubble? I think they might burst into flames if they ever step foot outside of their insulated little worlds for even a second. Especially that PC guy. I'd like to see him try to survive in Worcester for 5 minutes, away from his Upper East Side universe.
But that day will most likely never come, so for now I'll just have to pray that these kids will one day grow up. Unless Bravo makes my dreams come true by canceling their show. We can keep the housewives and the crowd from Constance Billard, though: that Teresa is damn funny and the Blair-Chuck love affair is the stuff dreams are made of.
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