The Orange Girl in Gossip County

The Gossip Girl blogs have been buzzing for quite some time about a new series, which is going to be spun off towards the end of this season. It will tell the tales of Lily--mother of Serena, formerly wife of the father of Blair's ex Chuck, formerly ex and no other half of Serena's ex Dan's father Rufus--as she grows up as a teenager in LA/Orange County. Oh, GG, you don't make describing characters' relationships to one another easy, in the absence of a mind map, do you?

Anyway, because she's going to be in Orange County and because she is the about the same age as Kirsten (another blonde, mother-of-a-female-protagonist/trouble-maker, played by an actress called Kelly--Josh Schwartz clearly has a type) from The O.C., there are rumours that the new spin-off may also involve some of the parent-characters from The O.C. interacting with those from GG. Whoa. GG and The O.C.? OMFG, that's like GGOC! Or something.

It's kind of a moot point because I don't intend to watch the spin-off. Both of Josh Schwartz's shows bring in the parents of the teenagers quite successfully, often giving them extensive plot arcs of their own. And it worked well most of the time--particularly in The O.C. even though Sandy and Kirsten--the rock on which all other relationships in the show were based--were pretty solid and sickeningly in love for most of the series, the writers still found obstacles (alcoholism, the re-appearance of Sandy's former college professor and his political refugee daughter who had to flee the country when she was accused of blowing up a factory and who was also an ex of Sandy's, etc.). In some ways, it might be nice to see what's happening down in Orange County--or, at least, how it all began, given the awesome little five-minute montage at the end of the series finale of The O.C. where Ryan became an architect, Sandy went to teach law at Berkeley and Seth and Summer got married tied things up quite neatly. Although I like Lily and Rufus in The O.C., I don't think I like them enough to watch a whole show based around their younger selves, even if it does shed light on some of what happens in GG.

Now, Dawson's Creek and The O.C., on the other hand; that would totally rock. Seth could hook up with Andie and they would irritate the hell out of each other. Taylor could be the perfect yin to Dawson's Yang and Ryan could take a shot at saving Little Joey Potter from the wrong side of the Creek. They would listen to awesome music and reference cool and obscure films all day and spend part of their year in Massachusetts and the other half in Boston... Nah, I don't really think that would work either (not least because the DC characters are all supposed to be born in 1983, while the O.C. characters are all about five years younger...).