The Cutprice Guignol

In the late 2000s, there was little on television that held more appeal that the scandalous world of Gossip Girl.

The adaptation of the Cecily von Ziegesar book series for young adults, when it came out in 2007, proved one of the biggest hits for its network the CW – though not without its controversy. Featuring sex, drugs, and well, maybe not rock and roll, but certainly some tasteful swing music, Gossip Girl became the teen show du jour for those looking to vicariously enhance their dull adolescent existences with something a little more interesting. I know, because I was there – as a fan of both the books and the show, this was the go-to for me for a hot minute in high school, when I was certain that I was as at least as chic as Blair Waldorf every time I stepped out of my house in a formal suit jacket and a pair of skinny jeans. Look, it was a different time, alright?

All this to say that Gossip Girl was something of a sensation when it hits screens in 2007, and plenty of shows tried to pounce on its popularity – though none more nakedly than NYC Prep, the Bravo reality show that aired in 2009 and claimed to follow a group of actual teenagers in New York through their lives of private schools, designer clothes, and making big, wet eyes at each other over questionably-alcoholic drinks. Though the show urgently tried to sell itself as reality, it was excruciatingly clear from the first moment that the producers were urgently trying to nudge the teens towards the arch wit and genre savviness of its inspiration, only to end up somewhere in the ballpark

As an actual piece of reality television in its own right, NYC Prep is so desperately beholden to copying its obvious inspiration, Gossip Girl, as to feel like a weird parody of the kind of upper-East-side lifestyle depicted in Gossip Girl. The show flits about from various major New York events, like Fashion Week, to teen parties and inter-relationship drama (though it never gets inside the fancy private schools the teens attend, but we’ll get into that), searching for something that might sort of pass for interesting if you squint at it sideways. This little slice of late-noughties TV only lasted one season, with dreadful ratings and even worse reviews, with much of the criticism coming from the seemingly-vapid privilege and wealth on display – Salon titled one article “Guillotine these Rich Teens!”.

And, well, I’m not going to dog on the teenagers featured in this show too much, given that they were just kids when this came out and most of what we see on screen is no doubt the result of a producer holding up cue cards just out of frame, but the one thing NYC Prep gets right is capturing in searing the detail the awkward and obvious fakery that we all bumble our way through during some part of our adolescence. Peter Cary – who insists on being referred to as “PC”, which is the name of a deleted character from Hackers and you can’t convince me any different – is constantly trying to look oblivious to the camera as he strides around in his button-down shirts and talks about how “money”, trying not to smirk too hard when he thinks about how Brett Easton Ellis is going to base a character around him in his next book. My favourite of the teens, though, is Jessie, who lives with an almost hand-wringing slavishness to the various trends of the old money he comes from; wear white after Labour Day, and her head is going to blow clean off her shoulders and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

And, of course, there came the scandalous side of Gossip Girl that they tried to transpose into this reality TV world – to varying degrees of success. And by varying, I mean none, because it is, at best, insufferably boring, and at worst so appallingly cringe you can feel whatever you’ve got down there trying to crawl back up into itself. Sebastian centres himself as the lady’s man, which mostly means peering out smugly from beneath his floppy fringe at whatever unfortunate has found himself on the other side of the table from him.

In Gossip Girl, teenagers would inexplicably find their way into bars to sip on martinis, attend wild parties dripping with sensuality and lust; here, the show tries to triangulate the teens around one another into some sort of romantic conclusion, fluffing out awkward teenage crushes into season-long romance arcs that mostly involve them hucking water bottles at one another.

But that scandalous side, as manufactured as it so obviously was, had real-world repercussions for many of the people on the cast – shortly before the broadcast of the first episode, one of the prep schools that served as Camille’s place of education sent a letter home to parents warning them of the upcoming release, saying that, while they encouraged their students to develop their own voice, “it is up to each of them to decide and how and when to use that voice”. Camille was, after the end of the season, announced to have relocated to a new school to see out the rest of her high school experience, and, while it was never directly confirmed one way or another, it was strongly suspected to have a whole lot to do with her involvement in NYC Prep.

I would love to hear about your memories of this show, if you watched it – do you think it could have turned into something more interesting if it had lasted a bit longer, or was it better letting it sink into the annals of TV infamy? Let me know in the comments below!

Check out some of my writing on other reality TV series here and here! If you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me by buying my books or dropping me a tip via my Support page.

(header image via IMDB).