Confession - I can tell you the plot of every Gilmore Girls episode before we even get to the credits, and it’s a good thing too, because I am always misplacing the episode guide in my DVD boxed sets with that handy chronological recap. For once my geekdom makes life a little easier.

However, for once Gilmore Girls is not the point, despite that opener there. Coming in two weeks - a TV season on DVD where the DVD menu itself includes plot recaps of each episode right next to the play function for each one! I tell you it’s a breakthrough in guilty pleasure engineering that will go unequaled in the annals of pop culture history.

Not to belittle the newer CW hit Gossip Girls, which is the series so well recapped in its DVD menu - first season out August 19th, just in time for the premiere of season 2. Well, maybe a little. Serena (Blake Lively) and Blair (Leighton Meester) are no Lorelai and Rory (Gilmore Girls title characters) - not even close.

But I’ll admit, along with the amazing DVD menu, the actual episodes are much better than their basic premise - a bunch of spoiled brat rich/troubled prep school kids work out their angst in the nightclubs and penthouses of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, all watched over by the elusive and snarky Gossip Girl. It all sounds very Mean Girls goes big city, picking up shades of daytime soaps on the way. However, if you ignore the fact that these are supposed to be high school kids (apparently if you have that much money you can pay all symptoms of puberty to stay away…or have an actor in their 20s play you on TV), you might actually catch yourself enjoying parts of the show.

Such as? Kristin Bell (formerly of Veronica Mars) brings sneaky back as the voice of Gossip Girl, the anonymous keeper of a website devoted to tracking the aforementioned prep school brats. Or maybe Matthew Settle and Penn Badgley as Rufus and Dan Humphrey, as the across-the-tracks love interests of Serena and her mother (Kelly Rutherford) and the hottest father-son duo since Sean Connery and Harrison Ford did that Indiana Jones movie. Or, speaking of the Humphrey family, little sis Jenny (Taylor Momsen) shows that Cindy Lou Who is all grown up when she tricks asshole Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) onto a nightclub roof without his pants then locks him up there in revenge for his creepy attempted sexual advances earlier in the show.

Still not a huge fan of the show as a whole, but now that Gilmore Girls is gone, I can stand it once in a while. Especially now it’s out on DVD and I can skip the stupid parts.

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