Skip to main content

"Gossip Girl," Meet "Rich Girls"

WB comedy mascot Michigan J. Frog must be rolling in his amphibian grave.

While the comedy department at netlet The CW may have been shown the door this week (along with more than 25 CW staffers who lost their jobs), the drama department, under topper Thom Sherman, has been busy, snapping up another pilot this week as the mad crush into a truncated and chaotic pilot season continues.

The CW has ordered a pilot for drama How to Teach Dirty Rich Girls. Like its predecessor Gossip Girl, it too is based on a series of teen-centric novels from Alloy (and author Zoey Dean) and will be written by Rina Mimoun--who last performed writing duties on this season's Pushing Daisies--and executive produced by Alloy's Bob Levy and Leslie Morganstein.

Story revolves around a Yale-educated girl who loses her job as an assistant at a tabloid magazine and is hired as a sort of live-in tutor/life coach for two teen heiresses in Palm Beach. Can she get these two to see sense while she figures out her own life? We'll have to find out.

While Filthy Rich Girls seems like a shoo-in for the CW and a good companion for the netlet's current breakout series Gossip Girl, I can't help but wonder if they really need two soapy series about privileged teens on the air at the same time. Will Filthy Rich Girls really help Gossip Girl's ratings? Or just cannibalize them?

Gossip Girl, meanwhile, returns to the airwaves with new episodes on April 21st on Mondays at 8 pm.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Big Brother 9 (CBS); Deal or No Deal (NBC); America's Next Top Model (CW); Wife Swap (ABC); American Idol (FOX)

9 pm: Criminal Minds (CBS);
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC); Pussycat Dolls Present Girlicious (CW); Supernanny (ABC); Moment of Truth (FOX)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Law & Order (NBC); Men in Trees (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: America's Next Top Model.

Cycle 1o officially begins tonight, following last week's casting episode, with a brand-new episode ("Top Model Makeovers"), it's makeover time already as the twelve remaing girls get new looks and participate in a lingerie-clad photo shoot with guest star Elle Macpherson, while tension between Fatima and Allison reaches a breaking point.

10 pm: Project Runway on Bravo.

On Part Two of the two-part season finale, the final three designers show off their brand new collections, encounter some well-edited and demanding pitfalls before the big shows, and face the judges--along with guest adjudicator Victoria Beckham--one last time before one is crowned the winner of Project Runway 4. Come on, Christian!

Comments

Unknown said…
Heh. Your first reference to the show called it How to Teach Dirty Rich Girls (not Filthy and I had a totally different image of the show. ;)
Anonymous said…
I'm a big fan of Gossip Girl but "Rich Girls" sounds a little too cutesy for me.
Anonymous said…
I'll be skipping this if it gets picked up to series. Really, CW? This is the best you can do?

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...