The Perks of Being a Couch Potato: TV’s Terrible College Transition

If I know Josh Schwartz, creator of Gossip Girl—and I think I do—I’d guess that he’s pretty worried right about now. No, not because the conceit behind the show’s recently announced spin-off sounds iffy at best (does anybody really care about what Lily, Serena’s boring mom, was like as a teenager?), or because his show appears to be rapidly running out of ideas (Chuck’s dad was in a secret society where everyone wears Mardi Gras masks and sexy formal wear? Seriously?). Come to think of it, both the spin-off and the story lines are also legitimate causes for concern.

But the main reason I’d give for Schwartz’s hypothetical shvitzing is that Gossip Girl’s characters are, by and large, high school seniors who will soon be vacating their fancy East Side academy for the Ivy League universities of their choice. The show’s plot for the past few weeks has indicated that most of the gang will likely end up at the same college, but that is small comfort after examining TV precedent.

The simple truth: college is the ultimate show-killer, even worse than the sudden addition of an unseen relative to the cast or Katherine Heigl having sex with a ghost. Almost without fail, shows about groups of teenagers inevitably start sucking when everyone goes off to seek higher learning. And series in which every main character somehow ends up at the same (usually fictional) school—think Boy Meets World or Saved By the Bell: The College Years—fare no better than those that take the more realistic approach of scattering characters across the country—like Dawson’s Creek or The O.C. The latter show, also created by Josh Schwartz, had so much trouble making the transition to college that it ultimately had every character drop out of school so they could all reunite on the California coast. The tactic failed to impress: The O.C. was promptly canceled during its first post-high school season.

Furthermore, shows that are centered on college students from the start tend to be ratings-challenged and extremely short-lived. Judd Apatow’s underrated Undeclared, The N’s The Best Years, and The Bedford Diaries, a WB show shot largely on Barnard’s campus, each lasted for only a single season. The ’90s staple Felicity is an exception to the general rule: it was on the air for four years, but even it ended its run with abysmal ratings and an absurd series finale involving time travel.

What is it about dorms and professors that make a formerly popular TV show unwatchable? Maybe a shift in environment is too much for any series to handle. Uprooting characters fundamentally alters the delicate alchemy that made a show work in the first place—Manny and Emma make sense at Degrassi Community School, for example, but they don’t seem to fit in at a bogus college with a stupid name like Smithdale.

College is also a thorny time: an ambiguous, transitional period between adolescence and adulthood, and it is nearly impossible to show familiar characters growing and changing, in the way college students naturally do, when they are still tied down to the same people they knew in high school. It is also hard to tackle more serious, college-appropriate stories on a show when it is still trying to appeal to teenagers.

It is possible that the college problem might dissolve. I have heard good things about ABC Family’s Greek—if they can make a college show work, there might be hope for Gossip Girl yet. Let’s just pray that Schwartz doesn’t decide to jettison his university-bound characters altogether in favor of focusing only on the ones still in high school. If nothing else, there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure of: nobody wants to watch a show about Eric and Jenny.

Hillary Busis is a Columbia College junior majoring in history and English.
arts@columbiaspectator.com