Ten Ways to Get Rid of Your Vanessa Effing Abrams

Everyone encounters at least one Vanessa Fucking Abrams in her life. These are awful, annoying people who are enthralled by their own hipster-ish lifestyle, act as though anyone who chooses a different lifestyle is crazy/stupid, fuck up the lives of most of the people around them, and manage to offend you merely by existing.

So, I've decided to make your life easier by giving you ten ways to solve the VFA problem*:

1. Shove her into the path of an oncoming F train. ("When you're a Humphrey, you're always on the F train.")

2. Asphyxiation via her own stupid American Apparel "hooded scarf".

3. Get the Chuck Bass in your life to seduce her and give her an especially virulent (and fatal) form of syphilis.

4. Pull a Kevin Spacey in Se7en and chain her to a table while force-feeding her Annie's organic frozen turkey dinners until her stomach explodes.

5. Horrific "accident" involving the espresso machine at the coffee bar she (of course) works at.

6. Run her Vespa down on the Manhattan Bridge.

7. Forced marathon viewings of The City. Inevitably, she will claw her eyes out from boredom.

8. Call up the Blair Waldorf in your life and sit back and watch the carnage, pineapple mojito in hand.

9. Lure her to an impromptu "Save this building!" protest that takes place in a building about to be demolished.

10. Arrange for her to meet Michael Moore, then tip him over so that he crushes her.

Boom. You are welcome.

*These are not things you should actually do to anyone in real life. I am not advocating murder, because, as previously mentioned, I am not a serial killer.

On Privileged Children

Okay. It is one thing to take a fictional world (i.e. Gossip Girl's UES; The O.C.'s...Orange County) and turn it into a reality series (MTV's Laguna Beach; and now, apparently, Bravo's NYC Prep). It is an entirely different thing to make your reality show the exact same thing as its fictional counterpart, which is precisely what they're doing on NYC Prep. No, seriously. Look at the bios.

(Side note: How stupid a name is that? You really couldn't come up with anything better, Bravo? I know The City was taken and all, but sheesh.)

My love for GG is well-documented. But this love mostly stems from the intricate plot threads that (...usually) weave together seamlessly, and from the well-developed characters. I mean, I'm starting to develop neutral feelings for Vanessa Abrams. Vanessa. Fucking. Abrams. And that is happening because the writers are making it happen. In real life, you don't often see those layers, and people don't generally change that much. The date-rapists don't evolve into caring monogamists over the course of just a few weeks; nice girls from Brooklyn don't throw yogurt at people's heads. (Okay, actually, that last one does happen in real life.)

So, the trouble you run into with a reality show--especially one where all your players are essentially ripoffs of characters on a drama--is that there is no reason to watch your show. Odds are these people are boring, and what drama they do have is probably not interesting enough to hold someone's attention for an entire half hour. So what you'll probably do is construct various situations for your cast which will be (marginally) more enthralling. However, they will not be nearly as well-written or engaging as the plotlines on the counterpart's show, so the audience will say, "Why am I not just re-watching season one of Gossip Girl?" and you will fail. (Hopefully.) Granted, it's not hard to top GG in the ratings, but still...What the fuck, Bravo?

Hey, CW? Can you just mosey on over here for a sec? We need to talk.

Look, we all know you've had it pretty rough the last couple years, what with just being created and all. And it's not like you inherited any ratings giants (when Cuidado Con El Angel is outperforming your shows, you know you're in trouble). But I think it's high time you embraced your status as a niche network. A niche network for teens (and "grown-ups" like me who still have that adolescent mindset). Granted, the "revival" of 90210 is both a critical and ratings failure, but everyone seems to have high hopes for the Melrose Place revival, and Gossip Girl is truly transcendent.

However, like a couple other nets with shows that tend toward niche audiences (Fringe being the first one that comes to mind), you have fucked up intensely in your scheduling. I know things have been weird this year. February sweeps got moved, and you started your shows incredibly early.

I also know nets are panicking about having to have fresh programming all the time. So I get why you premiered your key shows so far ahead of everyone else. But for the love of God, stop fucking up the momentum of your shows.

There are shows with which you can get away with that sort of thing. But serial dramas? Momentum with those is meant to build up over the course of an entire season. This is why the first season of Veronica Mars was so fantastic--besides a few "mystery of the week" eps, everything built to this wonderful climax at the end of the season. But when you put Gossip Girl on hiatus for months at a time, then show three new eps, then put it on hiatus for another month before showing the last couple eps? That ruins the effect considerably. I can't believe I'm actually writing these words, but...Try taking a page out of Fox's book. (I know, I know.) Instead of dragging your shows out over a nine-month period, just run everything straight through. 22 episodes all at once.

Boom. You are welcome.