With its impossibly good-looking cast, candy-colored designer fashion and its racy, provocative ads, it'd be easy to dismiss Gossip Girl as just another sexed-up, youth-oriented product right off the TV assembly line.

There are certainly similarities with predecessors such as Beverly Hills: 90210. Gossip Girl is also set in an affluent area, and features an ensemble of archetypal characters like a social outcast and 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, catty socialite Blair Waldorf, even bear a strong resemblance - in both 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 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 commenting on the voyeurism and sensationalism of modern culture.

• 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 even called trend-setting Gossip Girl fashion influential to the country's retail economy.
• Moreover, 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, the CW resurrected 90210 itself thanks to Gossip Girl's popularity.

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."

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Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.