Gossip Girl in the New Yorker - Books vs. TV

The most recent issue of The New Yorker reviewed Cecily von Zeigesar's Gossip Girl (series), which made me think to look back for a review of (the television show) (I found one written in November).
The reviewer of the books quite liked them, I think, for von Zeigesar's clever and witty writing, and the ease with which she connects to her intended audience.

Neither reviewer, however, was a big fan of the TV show. The reviewer of the books pinpoints her major problem with the show:

Among the many errors that the TV series makes, perhaps the most glaring is its promotion of the books’ parents from their status as emblems of parental inadequacy to that of characters in their own right. In the TV version, we are asked to follow the stories of the parents in tandem with the stories of their children... What makes classic children’s literature so appealing (to all ages) is its undeviating loyalty to the world of the child.

I certainly agree with her opinion on this. Watching the show, I was always ready to get up and get a glass of water, or whatever I needed to do, whenever the parents took to the screen.

The reviewer of the TV show discusses the circumstances that should have made Gossip Girl a hit CW show: the gossipy best-selling series, the over-privileged teenagers at the center of the stories - "Because this is a world open only to the few, it’s of great interest to the many." - and Josh Schwartz's part in creating, writing, and producing the show. After the success of The OC, obviously his next project would be popular.

But the writer dislikes the generic drama, the Abercrombie and Fitch-worthy actors, and the lack of center in the show:

(Hilariously, the Brooklyn of the TV show is so benign and “Dawson’s Creek”-y that a friend of the family habitually enters the apartment through an unlocked window.) Given these types of characters, there is a lot of soap opera, but there’s no center to the show, and no sense of life as it’s actually lived. There’s rarely a moment of quiet in “Gossip Girl”—perhaps because its content seems to be secondary to its primary purpose of marketing pop songs, which are heard throughout.

In my opinion, the pop music is often obnoxious, especially after the success The OC had with introducing its huge audiences to lesser known, small bands. That worked with the types of characters in The OC, but I think it would work equally well with Gossip Girl. The characters in Gossip Girl are the elite, fashionable, trend-setting, popular kids in their public spheres. So would they really be listening to Timbaland's "Way I Are" and Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around/Comes Around" (both of which were played in the Pilot episode) months after it was new in the viewer's world? I doubt it. They ought to be trying to find the newest, coolest, music, and spreading that around.

This reviewer goes on to say that The OC
"was a much richer show than “Gossip Girl” seems to be so far — more serious and also more fun..." Her review was ritten for the November issue of The New Yorker, before the last 4, and I think the best 4, episodes aired. Perhaps she was pleased to see the show pick up its pace and become richer - more fun, and more dramatic.