Okay, everyone has a favourite TV show. I mean everyone watches TV. It just happens to be that way. No need for explanations.

Disclaimer: Nowadays, who watches TV on TV anyway?

Anyway, we are all here to read about my favourite TV show. Even I am waiting to see how this is going to pan out. Since I live under a rock most of the time, I usually catch my favourite shows when my friends dully pass them on to me and tell me what an outdated so and so I am. I can’t blame them. So, since I get my shows from my friends, I guess I watch whatever that’s deemed cool, hip, happening and ‘in’ at the moment.

Unsurprisingly, the only ‘In’ show I have been following is Gossip Girl. Yes, I watch Gossip Girl just like you, and you and you. (If you happen to be one of those people who don’t watch Gossip Girl, just keep quiet and keep reading.)

Gossip Girl is the teen soap opera of the moment. First it was The O.C. Or was it One Tree Hill? I can’t quite remember. My memory doesn’t span to that long ago. Moving on, Gossip Girl is filled with drama. It has been named, ‘The Greatest Television Show of Our Time’ by New York Magazine. Is it, really?

You see, Gossip Girl is as mind-blowingly out of this world, even when it supposedly is in ‘real’ time. We have Serena Van der Woodsen who seemingly ‘killed’ a man and ran away to boarding school. She then goes to France for a holiday and doesn’t go back to boarding school. She gets kicked out of said boarding school and returns home. Once she gets home, she learns she didn’t kill that man per se, and her guilt instantly vanishes into ether. My point is, honestly – why is this show even allowed to air?

Next, we have to talk about the fashion on the show. Maybe this is what’s real in the Upper East Side and for some people here, yes it is – real, designer fashion. But seriously, teenagers twittering around Tory Burch flats? Carrying designer handbags which cost more than how much people earn a year? I guess money isn’t a matter for the rich. Having said that, I must stress on this. Jenny Humphrey from, God forbid I say this, Brooklyn (!), carries a Valentino handbag to school! Realistic? I don’t know, considering her dad is a failed rock star who now runs a little art gallery.

I admit, despite questioning Gossip Girl’s credibility like the hater I am, it is a guilty pleasure. It is just so irresistible, captivating, inviting and glamorous that I can’t help but love it. What can I say? You can’t help who, or in this case, what, you love.

I guess Gossip Girl is somewhat relatable to. I use the term relatable loosely. Relationship problems, social status and so on are apparently what we teenagers all around the world have in common. Apparently we don’t really study or worry about exams for that matter. Which I must disagree with – I know some really hardworking teenage people.

To conclude, Gossip Girl was created for one and one reason only, to bring us to a world we all wished we lived in. Who wouldn’t want to? Gossip Girl is meant to be as unrealistic, as blown out of proportion as it is, so it can be an ‘escape’ for us. An escape for us to go through the magic cupboard, or shall I say screen, into a world we know nothing of and wish we did – or to at least pretend, for a little while that we belong to that group of glamorous, rich, pretty teenagers who carry designer labels like we carry school books.

The question really is: Are TV shows meant to be realistic or not? Think about it. If shows were ‘real’, would we like them as much as we like ‘unreal’ shows?