Am I the only one who didn’t see this one coming?  It seems NYC Prep go-getter Camille Hughes was asked not to return to the prestigious Nightingale-Bamford School this coming fall!

Anyone who followed Camille on the show this is a BIG deal for her, a woman obsessed with SATs and Ivy leagues.  Quelle slap in the face!

Cityfile has got the deets:

“At some point over the summer, Hughes and her parents made alternate arrangements for her senior year. According to several Nightingale parents and students, Hughes was informed several weeks ago that she would “not be welcome” back when classes recommenced this fall. A school official, however, says that is not the case. Darrel Frost, Nightingale’s director of communications, says the school was “expecting her back this fall” and had reserved a place for her, but that Hughes and her parents had made the decision to enroll at another school, so that “Camille could focus on a different educational route.”

Instead,  I guess Camille will be attending the much less prestigious Professional Children’s School for “students who are preparing for, or already pursuing, careers in the performing arts, entertainment or competitive sports, or who are drawn to a creative environment supportive of the arts.”

Whoa!  Do you Camille’s experience on NYC Prep had an effect on her?  Did her priorities change from scholastic overachiever to superstar? Does Camille yearn to see her name in lights?

I doubt it.  I think Nightingale-Bamford probably saw the footage of her talking about how she’s into “random hook-ups” and thought her an unsuitable role model.  SNAP!

[Source: Defamer]

I’ll admit it, I’ve been quietly keeping up with NYC Prep since the show’s premiere.  Gossip Girl’s on hiatus, dudes; I have nowhere else to turn.

Today I came across this snarky li’l animation by KCS Cougar Productions spoofing the cast.  Take a look:

Sadly, kinda spot on.  I especially like cartoon Sebastian’s nasally, garbled voice and Jessie’s Operation Smile namedrops.  The PC, on the other hand, needs more angst, says me.  He’s bitchy, but not faux-self-loathing enough to be a dead ringer.

New NYC Prep episode tonight on Bravo, 9 p.m!  Be there.  You know you can’t stay away.

[Source: ONTD]

Now that we’re two episodes into NYC Prep (the real-life Gossip Girl), I’ve been able to form an opinion or two on each cast member.  My assessments, following last night’s episode:

PC - Though probably the most intelligent of the group, he’s disgustingly misanthropic in a super self-proclaimed way that makes his teen angst not charming in the slightest, like it is in most teenagers (love you, sad teens!).  You’re jaded, we get it, PC!  His ennui ($100 says he totally uses that word at least like once a week) stems from the fact that he thinks he’s “gets it” in a way that no one else could possibly even begin to fathom.  He wishes SO HARD he had a self-portrait in his attic that was growing old while he stayed eternally young.  Totally pretentious and condescending, this guy isn’t quite sure whether he’s going for Nate Archibald or Chuck Bass.  Sorry, PC, we don’t care.

JESSIE - She’s been PC’s best friend for ages and keeps him on a tight leash, telling him where to be and who to hang out with.  She fancies herself the Queen Bee, but her face is so busted, everything she says that implies she’s popular or powerful is hard to believe.  Can’t this girl buy herself a new face?  Nonetheless, Jessie organizes fundraisers and is working to get ahead in the cutthroat world of fashion.  She tries to give off the impression that she’s got way too much on her plate, but we can assume being “busy” means having to wait 20 minutes for a town car. Jessie hates letting n00bs infiltrate her social word, but truth is, she’s likely just bummed she’s not pretty.  Definitely going for Blair Waldorf.  Failing.

KELLI - Cute and sweet, but a total blah of a person.  She reminds me of Audrina Patridge from The Hills, in that you keep her around because she’s pleasant, not because you think she’ll ever contribute anything to any conversation you have or get any of your jokes of even any of the movies you watch together.  Kelli’s parents live in the Hamptons most days, but she’s too dumb to take advantage of it, aside from eating take out.  She’s got a huge thing for Sebastian, and acts so pathetic and transparent around him, it makes me want to shake her (DON’T LET HIM BE YOUR JUSTIN BOBBY!).  Ho hum, totally forgettable.  I’m out of words.  Is she Li’l J before Li’l J got cool?  No idea.

CAMILLE - This girl’s got a cool-looking face, which is fortunate for her, cuz she’s almost as boring as Kelli.  Camille’s really into school and the SATs and she’s somewhat sharp-tongued, so she gives off a sort of over-achieving intellectual bitch vibe à la Jessie Spano from Saved By the Bell.  Unfortunately, there’s no way she’ll contribute anything as interesting as OD’ing on caffeine pills to the show, so we might as well pay more attention to Kelli for the duration of the show.  Kelli will DEF either experience super dramatic heartbreak or have a pregnancy scare before the season’s through, so stay tuned.  Hey, maybe Camille and Kelli are the girls from the steps?

SEBASTIAN - My favorite character, hands down.  Dude’s got floppy Farrah Fawcett (too soon?) hair that he can’t stop touching and speaks fluent French, which he whips out to impress girls.  In fact, everything he does is in hopes of hooking up, which he does with “anywhere between two and 16 girls a month.”  Wait, I guess that’s it.  Sebastian flips his hair, speaks French, and hooks up.  Nothing else going on.  He’s like the poor man’s Chuck Bass with a dash of Nate Archibald, cuz he’s sleazy but sort of nice about it.  I’m into it; it’s such a pleasure to watch this guy work his transparent charm on babes with successful results time and time again.

TAYLOR - Token poor kid!  Taylor lives in the Upper East Side, but goes to public school and shops at thrift stores.  As a result, she fluctuates between her poor friends and rich friends, though between you and me, I assume the producers made her befriend Kelli and Camille, because she acts awkward as shizz around them.  In fact, she always seems incredibly uncomfortable to be interacting with anyone.  Who put this girl on a reality show?  She’s not into it!  Leave her alone!  Either way, playboy Sebastian thinks she’s helluv cute (meh, methinks), and starts pursuing her.  She’s likes.  Definitely the Vanessa Abrams of the bunch, though she lacks any spark or concrete interest.

There you have it!  The NYC Prep cast, per me.

Now, the one thing all these kids have in common (besides being rich as shizz) is that they all think the world they live in is real.  They act like mini-adults and parade around, going to bars, attending “networking” events, and having dinner parties  It’s sad to me to think that they have no concept of reality, because being real to them consists of emulating their parents and rich people they’ve seen on TV and in movies.  What a mind-eff to give these non-existing non-people their own reality show.

BUZZKILL!  Sorry to get all stoner philosopher on you, dudes.

Finally, the big day has come!

NYC Prep, dubbed the real-life Gossip Girl and filmed in the style of The Real Housewives of New York City, premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on Bravo.

The cast, as far as I can tell from Bravo’s NYC Prep bio section, includes Taylor, the bitchy/go-gettery Blair Waldorf knock-off, Sebastian, the sexy/ambitious Chuck Bass-flavored guy, P.C., the popular/jaded Nate Archibald dude, Kelli, the snoozy heart-of-goldish Serena van der Woodsen type, Jessie, the fashion-loving Jenny Humphrey gal, and Camille, who sort of seems like an amalgam of all the female characters.  NOTE: none of these kids are very attractive.

Already, the show is living up to my expectations and being knocked by the critics as snoozy, depressing, an unintentional parody.  Here’s a collection of reviews, with my favorite bits highlighted:

From The Boston Herald:

The cable network can’t show its mostly underage cast indulging in sex and alcohol binges without being viewed as an accomplice and opening itself up to legal sanctions. So it is forced to focus on teens who come off as second-rate imitations of such Gossip mainstays as Blair, Serena, Chuck and Jenny…

Bravo does its level best to shove these kids into a bad light. Their on-camera confessionals all take place in a faux study in an oversized leather chair surrounded by piles of books, as if to ram the point that despite their families’ wealth, these kids will never attain true class or sophistication.

From Salon:

Who wouldn’t instantly resent and pity these [parents], who can’t be bothered to raise their own kids, leaving it to the service industry professionals of NYC — boutique clerks, restaurant delivery people, spa attendants, prep school administrators — to do it for them? And yet, who wouldn’t instantly envy these people, who luxuriate in their vacation home while their irritating teenagers sift out their petty troubles on an overpopulated island far, far away? NYC Prep drags out the people we know just well enough to recognize that they’re very, very different from us — that grandstanding thug at work, the chick down the hall in college with the tennis courts in her backyard, the ex-girlfriend’s spouse who speaks four languages and summers in Martha’s Vineyard — and shows us why they’re so different. We ogle their many advantages and indulgences, then soothe ourselves with how twisted and pitiable they are, swimming in such a toxic, decadent, big-city marinade. We already know that they turned out wrong, but now we know why.

From The New York Times:

Viewers are no longer shocked at tableaus of conspicuous consumption - limousines, personal shoppers, weekends in the Hamptons - even when the careless spendthrifts are children. If anything, this paean to Upper East Side plutocrats looks a little out of date - if the camera panned the other side of Madison Avenue, it would show darkened store windows and “for rent” signs. But Bravo, home to other reality shows like The Rachel Zoe Project, specializes in pinpointing stereotypes and inflating them into full-blown cartoon caricatures. The deliciously vulgar heroines of Housewives of New Jersey shop and bicker, spend and shout, without ever falling out of character. On NYC Prep, PC in particular struggles to insert a little self-awareness and humor into his role as the spoiled preppy ne’er-do-well, but the script keeps veering back to the Gossip Girl playbook.

From Variety:

Ultimately, the main problem with NYC Prep is that the show never gets better than its title — lacking the sociological insight to score as a documentary or the hyper-real situations and “characters” that would make it sizzle as a soap. As crass as it sounds, for something like this to truly pop requires a little more Less Than Zero than merely Clueless, which is what we initially glean from our encounters with the half-dozen featured teens.

At first blush, the boys register more strongly than the girls, perhaps because they appear less concerned about (or more oblivious to) the prospect of looking like self-centered little bastards. So pretentious 18-year-old P.C. lords over underclassmen, while 16-year-old Sebastian will surely make his folks proud by cavalierly saying, “Some girls like it if you’re an asshole to them.” See you on The Bachelor, kid.

It basically sounds like NYC Prep inspired pity and depressed the shizz out of anyone who got the sneak peek.

To summarize, I CAN’T WAIT TO WATCH!!!  Let’s revisit this in the morning, shall we?

Eeek!  I just came across the promo for NYC Prep, a.k.a the “real life” Gossip Girl.  Watch:

Grody!  It’s even worse than I thought.  These ten year olds are running around like a bunch of bobbleheads dressed up as adults.

In fact, they look like Richie Rich in the old cartoons.  Huge heads and tiny tuxedo’d bodies.  Gross me OUT!

Fitting imagery, no?

Beyond that, I HATE when kids that young talk about “hooking up.”  Ew!  Don’t they have homework to do?

And even more so, these prep kids are seriously uggggs.  If I wanted to watch a bunch of plain janes and pimply peters, I’d literally go hang out at the local public high school.  Come on, rich kids!  Can’t you guys get nose jobs and stuff?

We’ll have to wait and see what happens - though I’m predicting it won’t be anything like Gossip Girl.

NYC Prep premieres June 23rd on Bravo.  I’ll admit, I can’t wait!

OMFG!  Bravo has announced a premiere date for the “real-life Gossip Girl” we heard about a few months back.  The show will be called NYC Prep and is set to hit the boob tube Tuesday, June 16th at 11 p.m., before it moves to its regs timeslot the next week at 10 p.m.

The show will follow six affluent teens who are “firmly entrenched in Manhattan’s social circle”!!!  OOooOOooh!

I’m Not Obsessed posted a photo of these suckers this morning.  Check out these richies:

Barf, am I right?  What a bummer scene.

First of all, that Blair Waldorf girl totally lacks sex appeal,and the Serena’s face looks like a piece of burnt toast.  I have no clue what that long-haired girl is going for, and the outcast Li’l J type in the background has zero fashion sense.

And that’s just the girls!  The Chuck Bass needs to fix his bangs and look less like he’s in a pop-punk band from Orange County, and the Dan Humphrey guy needs to visit Brooklyn for like, a second time in his life and figure out that those scarves are SO 2k7.  You’re not fooling anyone, Humphrey.

And umm, hello, WHERE are their cell phones?!?!?  These kids look like they’re on their way to a piano recital.

Ugh.  Is this what heartbreak feels like?