Respect Authority

In sitting down to watch the premier episode of NYC Prep, I thought to myself that the success of this show will really depend on one thing: how well it manages to fulfill the “real-life Gossip Girl” prophecy. Will it add a spark of awkward melodrama to an otherwise timeless “hate the rich” plot line? Or will it inadvertently highlight the very reason we stoop the level of Gossip Girl to begin with — because it’s sensational,everyone is glamorous, even the nerdy guys are good-looking, and no one has bad skin.

Initially, the former seems to be the case. The characters are the same stereotypes, the drama is the same drama — the first episode features an argument over the worthiness of a certain charity, much like GG’s Blair was lambasted for her peregrine falcons fundraiser. Basically, NYC Prep is Gossip Girl, except everyone’s just six inches shorter and has mediocre hair. PC, who will clearly take the role of leading douchebag, is a dead ringer for GG’s Chuck Bass — in truth, he’d probably do a better job of playing the part than the current actor, who reminds me a lot of Chris Klein, circa American Pie–awkward, annoying and with a questionable hairline. PC clearly thinks himself above not only everyone on the show, but the show itself, in the sense that he less than subtly uses it as a platform for making the kind grandiose statements douchebags make; things like “Everything in New York City is about pulling connections. It’s all about who you know and how much money you have. And It’s really sad, and I’m not saying I’m like that, but that’s what New York is.” Thank you PC, let me know when you get your degree in urban anthropology.

Outside of PC, there are few characters that manage to make it non-awkward to be watching actual high school students go about their daily lives. (Seriously, think about it, it’s creepy). Jessie, long-time friend and ex-girlfriend of PC’s who’s still in denial about what league they’ve both grown into appearance-wise, is the kind of girl who never got the guy in high school, but twenty years later will probably be married to a real estate developer and own two companies. Sixteen-year-old Kelli is one of the easily confusable brunettes, memorable only because she lives alone with her 18-year-old brother while her parents shack up in the Hamptons six days a week. Sebastian is the “player,” except he’s a teenager so watching him hit on girls is like watching a baby learning to walk. Camille is the Type A academic one, who indulges in the dramatics, but never at the expense of her “plan” (Harvard, husband by 40, the works). In normal high school, though, I’m pretty sure she’d be “that girl who really likes horses.” Taylor, another brunette, is the only public school character — a veritable pauper by Prep standards: her mom is exceedingly mom-like, and her first-episode party had fewer than one million guests. She’ll probably be the redeeming one until one of those private school sluts gets her drunk and uploads a YouTube video of her peeing in public.

But despite its calculated truth to Gossip Girl, NYC Prep is no GG where it really matters. Indeed, there’s something about comparing the two shows that brings out the flaws in both. GG is indulgent, and ludicrous, and more or less an affirmation of the stereotypes Bravo and NYC Prep are snarkily trying to criticize. Meanwhile, NYC Prep is a stark reminder of how not worthy of national television we were in high school — how, regardless of income or social status, we were all self-righteous and immature disasters. And so awkward.

The differences in glamour are obvious. For one, there’s the fact that Prep’s Jessie is ugly. I hate to say that, because this show, by virtue of filming real teens instead of the 20-somethings that play characters on Gossip Girl, actually ends up highlighting how very young we were in high school. But Jessie’s the kind of girl that has more bitch in her at 17 than I could ever aspire to in a thousand lifetimes, so I’ll say it anyway; she’s ugly. Which in a way proves the show’s central theme better than any series of “We, like, don’t even think about money” statements could. Rich people rule the world, even the ugly ones. Had Jessie been born to a waitress and a cab driver in Forest Hills, you can bet she’d have a lisp and be on the props crew of some shoddy public high school rendition of Hello Dolly right now.

Moreover, the NYC Prep moments most familiar to us from GG – the parties, the flirting, the shopping — are remarkably mundane when compared with the cheese-cloth montages of Serena and Blair browsing at Barneys, or Serena and Dan’s first kiss on a cobblestone corner that in actual New York probably smells like raw sewage and homeless people. There’s nothing particularly riveting about watching two 16-year-olds mill around an overpriced clothing store together in a bizarre abbreviated high school version of a “date.” I’ve been to the mall with boys, I remember.

NYC Prep is entertaining, no question. But it’s sort of like a dramatic version of The Office; the over-the-top moments make it great, but at the core is a lot of cringe-worthy truth. And I don’t mean about the class divide, or the ethical quandary of the super-rich, I mean about high school. We were losers, all of us, and while watching Gossip Girl is to observe faux teens flaunt their above-average linguistics and collective dimples, watching the kids on NYC Prep is like traveling back to the time in your life when to be mature was to make out in the back of a movie theater. Basically, you don’t want to miss it, but it kind of hurts to watch.