recess guides you through this fall's hottest shows

Viewers still lamenting the end of Fox's The OC earlier this spring need only change the channel to enter a new world of adolescent privilege in this fall's Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl, roughly based on the popular fiction series of the same name, trades strolls down the Newport Beach boardwalk for rides up 5th Avenue in stretch limousines. Concerts at the Bait Shop have been replaced by formal galas and lavish brunches at some of New York's hottest hotels and restaurants. Even the characters' actions in the series' early episodes seem to be written using The OC's well-established penchant for bringing together diverse personalities using serendipitous soap-style plot twists. The leading lady is Serena van der Woodsen, a Marissa Cooper knockoff whose intimidating good looks serve as a thin veneer for a troubled past. Even leaving New York City to go to boarding school in the backwoods of Connecticut for several months could not quite free Serena of her dark secret. Then there's Dan Humphrey, the cute yet awkward Seth Cohen-esque outsider-from the uncivilized, plebian borough of Brooklyn no less-whose unwavering moral compass and selflessness set him starkly apart from his peers. Dan even goes dress shopping with his younger sister at Barney's. Now that's a good guy. Throw in the impeccably dressed, I'm-a-womanizer-because-I'm-obviously-gay Chuck Bass; the I'll-always-feel-inferior-because-my-mommy-never-loved-me Blair Waldorf; and bouts of underage drinking, potential date rape, drug use and the occasional fist fight in a tux and a series good for at least two seasons is guaranteed. Yet even though it's easy to criticize Gossip Girl for being just an east coast The OC-the creators, Josh Schwartz and McG, are the same after all-the show shows glimmers of real promise. The glamorous New York City life that the show's characters enjoy will polarize many, but it's unlikely relationships, both their heart-wrenching pitfalls and small triumphs, that make for entertaining television.