Welcome to New York's Upper East side where the wealthy and connected mingle at benefits and try to deal with their always dramatic love lives, not to mention picking colleges. Blair Waldorf is the so-called toast of adolescence in her world; she and her friends, Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates, go to a prep school and fancy parties with their rich parents. Blair is envied by her adversaries because she is thought to have the perfect life, not just because of her gorgeous boyfriend, Nate Archibald, but because she's also planning on getting into her dream college,Yale. With everyone worried about college(or procrastinating on worrying, which everyone seems to be doing), and senior year dragging along, her seemingly perfect life is interrupted by her ex-best friend, the beautiful Serena van der Woodsen, coming back into town after getting kicked out of boarding school. Serena comes back into her life, and into the eyes of Blair's boy friend. When everything Blair knows starts to fall apart, everyone will realize that her life is far from perfect. Will life in the the Upper East Side redeem itself of what it's really supposed to be? Or will the false facade reveal that the rich have the same problems as the not so rich (Jenny and Dan Humphrey), if not more. And just maybe Jenny and Dan are all the more happy with their simple, not so expectant lives. Written by Jessica Cymerman

The beautiful Blair Waldorf is the toast of the adolescent population of Manhattan's Upper East Side, envied by her friends and the adversary of many fellow rich girls. Her ideal world begins to collapse, however, when her ex-best friend, freshly excluded from her previous boarding school, enrolls at Blair's private school.

From WashingtonPost.com: "Gossip Girl," from the teen-addled brain of Josh Schwartz, who served up the canceled "The O.C.," carries on the legacy of that West Coast soap opera and perhaps turns it up a notch with both drama and sheer teen-soapy goodness.... At times, it's overboard and maybe a bit giggle-inducing, like watching little kids play dress-up. But overboard is exactly where "Gossip Girl" wants to be -- and what viewers must embrace when taking the guilty plunge.

From NYTimes.com: The television version [of the Gossip Girl novels] does not violate the books' basic principles: The anonymous Gossip Girl is an unseen narrator (Kristen Bell, "Veronica Mars") who blogs about the movements and misdeeds of Serena (Blake Lively), her B.F.F. Blair (Leighton Meester) and other friends as they drink, smoke pot and hook up at trendy clubs.... "Gossip Girl," along with similar series like "The A-List" and "The Clique," is Mean Girl lit, mass-market paperbacks that put "Sex and the City" in a teenage context, with lots of sex and erotic brand names like Prada, Absolut and St. Barts.

From SFGate.com: There are less than a handful of producers who know how to write for this highly coveted and super-stylized demographic and [Josh] Schwartz is right at the top.... He has switched coasts and set his sights on the wealthy trendsetters of New York's Upper East Side. This time it isn't just about money and status, though that is the giant through-line of "Gossip Girl." No, the conceit is that in the new media age, where texting has added high speed to old-school gossip, there's a chance to tell a story where the Greek chorus essentially has a blog. In "Gossip Girl," someone with that very name is writing about the sometimes scandalous doings of this ultra-in crowd. She - well, we're left to assume it's a she because the narrator is female (voiced by "Veronica Mars" star Kristen Bell) - sees and tells everything. And everyone in "Gossip Girl" frequently checks in to find out the scoop.