When Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively, THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS) returns to her posh Upper East Side private school life after a secretive stint in boarding school, supposed-to-be BFF Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester, “SURFACE”) begins a power struggle that unravels their lives and the lives of their friends.

There’s Blair’s perfect boyfriend Nate (Chace Crawford, THE COVENANT), who still has mixed feelings for former bad girl Serena after the night they spent together before she disappeared. Nate’s best friend Chuck (Ed Westwick, BREAKING AND ENTERING) is a darkly nihilistic teenager whose penchant for screwing others before they screw him just might be some kind of twisted defense mechanism. Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley, “THE BEDFORD DIARIES”), a partial-scholarship student from Brooklyn, has harbored a crush on the great and powerful Serena for two years; and his little sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen, PARANOID PARK) will do just about anything to be accepted by Blair’s clique. Throw a few parental units into the mix who all have a past, a present, and/or a future with one another, and the show’s relationship diagrams become more confusing than molecular biology.

How good could a show about privileged private school brats actually be? Sporting one of the prettiest casts on television and some of the snappiest, snippiest, snarkiest teen’s life writing ever, GOSSIP GIRL – THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON is a scintillating, rollercoaster ride of the lives of the rich, beautiful, and spoilt; lives full of secrets, sex, lies, and even a video tape or two.

Picture and sound are average, clean and clear.

* Unaired Scenes. Eleven (11) episodes.
* The Beginning, XOXO: Concept to Execution. Making of interviews with the cast, crew, and author. (22:00)
* Gossip Girl Couture. Featurette on costume design and trendsetting fashions.
* A Gossip Girl Wedding. Featurette on the season finale’s wedding spectacular. (5:00)
* Music Videos. The Pierces’ Boring and Secret.
* LOL: Gag Reel. (12:00)
* Disc 5 weirdly opens with promos for GOSSIP GIRL and THE CLIQUE.