Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (June 13, 2008)

COUCH POTATO PICKS

I like this time of the year. The regular television season is over, and all my favorite summer cable series (Big Love, Weeds, The Closer, etc.) have yet to start. That gives me time to actually catch up on any new television shows I managed to miss during their original run. This past weekend I checked out two dramas from the CW.

On Saturday I managed to skim through all 18 episodes of Gossip Girl. I know what you're thinking: "Dennis, you really need to get a life." Anyway, I know I was thinking that, but somehow I couldn't tear myself away from the frothy teen drama.

If you're not familiar with the show, it concerns itself with spoiled rich teens at an exclusive Manhattan prep school. It's pretty much like that Ryan Phillippe / Sarah Michelle Gellar movie Cruel Intentions — only not quite so cruel.

There's certainly a lot of cute guys on the show. Penn Badgley and Chace Crawford are the two standouts, but they really only function as accessories to the catfighting female characters played by Leighton Meester & Blake Lively. These girls are basically teen versions Crystal & Alexis.

From left to right: Blake Lively, Chace Crawford, Leighton Meester

The show developed quite a buzz over its first season. So much so that their sweeps week "one of our male characters is gay" publicity stunt seemed a bit like overkill. The show wound up outing Eric van der Woodsen (played by Connor Paolo) in episode 16: "All About My Brother."

It was a fairly entertaining episode and had what seemed to be a healthy message that gay boys should come out of the closet and not pretend to be straight. Yay for them. Unfortunately, the Eric character doesn't have enough of an edge to him to be interesting, and is it me or does he have the absolute worst hair on the show? Brother needs to put away the frosting cap and go back to his natural color.

Connor Paolo plays "Eric" on Gossip Girl

Sorry, I digress. My point is, Gossip Girl's gay character / story angle is well intentioned, but so far hasn't really been a reason to tune in. Here's hoping down the road the show explores Dan's bisexuality (something that is covered in the books that the TV show is based on).

Penn Badgley plays "Dan"

Even though Gossip Girl is of limited gay interest at the moment, I do consider it trashy good fun, and would recommend it on that basis. If you want to catch up on Gossip Girl you can download individual episodes from Amazon.com or iTunes. The season 1 DVD won't be out until August 19th.