How Art Informs Our Worldview

I re-watched the Pilot for the TV show Gossip Girl again the other day. As trashy and angsty and soap opera-y that show was, I liked the first season of Gossip Girl for many of the same reasons I liked the first season of The O.C.: Well-rendered teenage characters who were both intelligent and stupid, both mature and childish, story lines that while melodramatic were for the most part believable and romantic entanglements that were more considered with the difficulties of keeping people together than the relative storytelling ease of tearing them apart. Both of these shows became much more dramatic and ridiculous over the course of their run times, but those first seasons were full of genuinely emotional moments, and they caused me to empathize with nearly every character presented.

The glaring omission to that category would be Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass.