Professor of teen angst

WITH ITS impossibly good-looking cast, parade of candy-colored designer fashion and provocative ad campaigns, it's easy to dismiss the CW's "Gossip Girl" as just another sexed-up, youth-oriented product to step off the TV drama assembly line.

There are certainly similarities between the show and its teen soap predecessors, particularly "Beverly Hills, 90210." "Gossip Girl" is also set in an affluent ZIP Code, Manhattan's Upper East Side, and features an ensemble of archetypal characters, including the social outcast and the pretty-boy rebel with great hair. Its female leads, Blake Lively, who plays reformed bad girl Serena van der Woodsen, and Leighton Meester, who plays conniving socialite Blair Waldorf, even bear a strong resemblance in looks and character to Jennie Garth's Kelly Taylor and Shannen Doherty's Brenda Walsh.

But "Gossip Girl" represents a distinct step beyond "90210" and the teen dramas before it, starting with the show's sophisticated use of point of view. Its rarefied world of youthful excess and angst is observed through the eyes of a mysterious blogger, the unseen yet ubiquitous Gossip Girl. The show deftly intertwines irony with authenticity, poking fun at itself while also commenting on the voyeurism and sensationalism driving the culture right now.

Visually, its depiction of New York City satisfies every last urban fantasy, and the city can't help but love it back. The New York Times has called the show's fashions influential to the country's retail economy, and New York magazine went so far as to call it "the greatest teen drama of all time" in a recent cover story. And in the final measure of its success, "Gossip Girl's" popularity has sparked the CW to resurrect and reinvent, yes, "90210" this fall.

The show, said "Gossip Girl" co-creator, writer and executive producer Stephanie Savage, "is a story, but it's also a platform for ideas. I think people like the Gossip Girl connection. The idea of people watching and talking about each other is something that's very real to their lives."

Savage is no stranger to teen dramas. She and fellow "Gossip Girl" creator and executive producer Josh Schwartz reinvigorated the genre with Fox's "The O.C." in 2003.