Gossip Girl - The Complete Second Season - DVD

Movie: The beautiful and rich kids of the Upper East Side enter the second round with their love affairs and intrigues - always watched by the all-knowing "Gossip Girl", who promptly spreads all scandals, fashion missteps and relationship crises all over New York via her blog. Whether it's the briefly rekindled love between Serena (Blake Lively) and Dan (Penn Badgley), the sordid competition between what should be best friends Blair (Leighton Meester) and Serena for a spot at Yale, Jenny's (Taylor Momsen) attempts to make it in the fashion world, which leads to considerable trouble with her father Rufus (Matthew Settle), or Chuck's (Ed Westwick) various intrigues, under which also Vanessa (Jessica Szohr) has to suffer, all this spreads the mysterious Gossip Girl (in the English original spoken by Kristen Bell, in the German version by Nana Spier, the regular voice of Sarah Michelle Gellar) in no time - so that there are actually no secrets on the Upper East Side - or are there?

A little "Ice-Cold Angels" spiced with elements of "O.C., California" (whose creator Josh Schwartz also shares responsibility for "Gossip Girl") and "Beverly Hills 90210" and garnished with a little (more demure, of course) "Sex and the City" flair, all this makes the "Gossip Girl", based on the popular books by Cecily von Ziegesar, what the Americans like to call "Guilty Pleasure" - just a series that you watch with great pleasure without admitting it to your acquaintances (especially if you no longer belong to the teenage target group). But even though at first glance the series seems to be just as superficial as the little problems of the rich kids of the Upper East Side, once immersed in that world, you have to admit that high society intrigue hasn't been this much fun on TV since Alexis and Crystal Carrington got into a pool fight in "Denver Clan".

It's also thanks to the show's high popularity that some of the cast members have since made the jump to the big screen. While Blake Lively got to show a very different, not at all glamorous side alongside Ben Affleck in "The Town" and Jessica Szohr had to deal with flesh-eating fish in "Piranha 3D", Penn Badgley was seen in the surprise hit "Easy to Have" and Chance Crawford in Joel Schumacher's drama "Twelve". But even these forays into cinema certainly won't mean we'll have to do without the latest gossip from "Gossip Girl" in the near future. In the USA, the fourth season has already been running since the summer of 2010 and there is still no end in sight. Here's to a happy: "XO XO Gossip Girl".

Picture + Sound: While the well-mixed 5.1 sound is dominated primarily by the hip soundtrack and entertaining dialogue (the English language version adds some good ambient sounds from the streets of New York, which are somewhat lost in the German version), the clean picture with its decent level of sharpness and good coloration is also on the level that can be expected from a current TV series. Good.

Extras: For individual episodes, there are some short deleted scenes to see on almost every disc. In addition, Disc 3 has Jenny's Fashion Music Video (approx. 3 min.) in full length. Disc 7 contains the rest of the extras. In addition to an interactive map of the city that allows viewers to take a tour of the "Gossip Girl" clique's most popular hangouts, there's also a featurette on the show's creators, who are responsible for fashion and art. The "On the Hunt for Dorota" webisodes and some amusing spoiled scenes round out the bonus package.

Conclusion: "Gossip Girl" is an entertaining and amusing exaggeration of all soap clichés, spiced with biting humor, sexy actors and a cool soundtrack, that manages to entertain across target audiences and is far more clever than one might think at first glance. The second season presents 25 episodes and a few nice extras on a total of 7 discs. For fans and all who want to become one, an absolute must!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp