Gossip Girl Deathwatch? Josh Schwartz Kamikaze?

One can easily tell the difference between a television show with a great showrunner and one with a poor one.

Productions helmed by a great showrunner usually feature plots, characters, motivations, casting, and production design that is sensical and coherent. The internal logic is always sound. Excellent examples include shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Seinfeld, Friends, and Lost.

Poor showrunners programs are usually a mess and you can tell. My oft-cited dislike of Heroes is an excellent example of this. Characters switch motivations haphazardly, viewers are provided with the sense that while the writers may have a vague sense of where they want to go, the show is being made up as it goes along. The X-Files is another great example.

Blog site The Daily Beast ran an article last month (I only just stumbled upon it) comparing the story arcs between Gossip Girl and The OC, both shows run by writer Josh Schwartz. While the article is very symptomatic of a writer seeking to read into a text what they wanted to read, it seeks to show that Gossip Girl is repeating the very same plot developments that led to the internal collapse of The OC.

Now, I’ll admit to having not really seeing enough of either show to have an opinion on how right this proposition is, but it does propose an interesting idea. Often one looks at auteur show-runners as being in complete control of their productions. For example, Larry Gelbart on MASH, Larry David on Seinfeld, Greg Daniels on The Office (US), and David Simon on The Wire. These are writers who have visions for the construction of their show and provide a forward momentum in getting their characters through specific arcs to take them to a specific point. What of an auteur showrunner like Josh Schwartz. He clearly has a very specific vision, however it seems to come with it a sense of self-destruction. It’s almost as if once the show is up and running, he doesn’t know how to steer the well-built ship away from the iceberg.

Is Schwartz ruining his own show, repeating his mistakes of yore? And if so, why do I treat him with more credibility than, say, Tim Kring? Perhaps it is purely perception that has lead to my predjudice, but it certainly seems to me that while both men may not be great at running their shows once up and running, Schwartz has the appearance of having known what he was doing when establishing each series. Kring, however, seems to have stumbled arse-backwards into success.

Of course, it’s certainly premature to say that Schwartz is killing Gossip Girl. The show certainly still has life in it. But for how long?