If You Like…Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl is all about rich kids who live a life of glamour as they scheme their way through life.

If what you like about the show is all the teen drama, consider shows like:
CW’s 90210 reboot about a bunch of kids in Beverly Hills. They’re the west coast version of GG. Also from the CW is Hellcats about a girl named Marti who joins her college cheerleading squad in order to get a scholarship for school.

ABC Family has some particularly strong teen drama with Pretty Little Liars (four girls deal with the death of their friend while trying to figure out who killed her and dealing with threats by a mysterious texter known as “A”, Greek following fraternities and sororities in Cyprus Rhodes University, Make It Or Break It about girls who train as Elite Gymnastics with the goal of competing in the Olympics, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager which is technically about a girl who gets pregnant as a freshman in high school after having sex for the first time but is really a show where kids talk endlessly about sex.

Some other current shows involving teen drama are Fox’s Glee which follows a high school glee club as they try to improve as a club and gain acceptance in high school, Teen Nick’s Gigtantic which follows the children of celebrities in Hollywood, and MTV’s Skins about a bunch of wild teens who spend most of their time drinking, partying, and having sex without concern for the consequences.

If what you like best about Gossip Girl is all the scheming and backstabbing, in addition to a number of the shows listed above, you may want to check out CBS’s Survivor and MTV’s The Challenge which revolves around people being thrown into some remote location and battling through challenges in order to make it to the end without getting voted out by their peers to win some money. Both shows are reality shows, so they are different, but you have more tricks and sneaking around than just about anywhere else on television.

If you love the crazy wild behavior and out of control people, consider Jersey Shore from MTV about a bunch of Italians who go to the Jersey Shore and spend their time drinking and partying or Showtime’s Shameless about a poor family who do anything the can to survive with no adult supervision to really look out for them.

Gigantic

I found this show mostly by accident because I enjoy Degrassi more than I should and figured why not try another Teen Nick show? This one is about a bunch of kids living the lifestyle of the rich and famous in LA as the children of well known actors. While I get where they were going with the name, Gigantic is more reminiscent of a show about fate camp (Huge) than it is about famous people. I also want to point out that the children of celebrities are a bigger deal when they’re little, not so much when they’re older. It almost feels like the world they imagine Hollywood to be rather than the one it is. (Though I do believe that people use the kids of celebrities all the time.)

Anna Moore is the super down to Earth daughter of a celebrity couple. She and her family have been away from LA for a couple of years as the parents filmed a movie. She is super organized (she makes lists about what lists she has to make) and wants to be a journalist.

Walt Moore is the younger child of the celebrity duo and wants to be a musician. His father pressures him not to use any of his connections in order to succeed because he wants him to “earn it.” He also meets a girl who wants to be an actress. He likes her but does not date actresses because they tend to use him.

Piper is Anna’s best friend who has fully embraced the Hollywood craziness. She falls for her family therapist and has issues with her stepmother who is obsessed with being thin when Piper is overweight.

Joey is the guy Anna likes. He likes her too but while she was gone he had a fling with Lulu and got her pregnant. He is not from the celebrity scene and only knows Anna because of school.

Vanessa is a sort of friend of the gang. As an aspiring actress who grew up with a messed up mother and whose father ran away. She constantly backstabs other people in order to get ahead and we have yet to really see any redeeming qualities.

Finn is Piper’s adopted brother and Walt’s friend. All we really know about him so far is that he has little-to-no game and has a crush on his stepmom.

I was surprised to find myself really enjoying this show even though I don’t know why. The acting is just okay, the stories aren’t particularly unique. Funnily, two of the actors are actually the children of celebrities (Vanessa is played by Gia Mantegna daughter of Joe Mantegna, Anna is Grace Gummer daughter of Meryl Streep).