NYC Prep

Underneath it, we also see kids. Yes, rich kids, but also insecure kids coping with the universal dramas of teenagers. That may be the most engaging part of NYC Prep.

Yes, cliches about wealth and privilege abound and are confirmed, or perhaps further embedded....But NYC Prep is so eager to establish a kinship with "Gossip Girl" that it's forgotten to tell much of a story.

It is both an active agent of moral depravation and a total hoot.

Viewers are treated to the spectacle of teenagers who can freely roam New York unsupervised by parents or teachers, tethered, by their own volition, to the strict rules and unyielding cliches of a Bravo reality show.

NYC Prep is the reality version of "Gossip Girl" for those who take "Gossip Girl" a little too seriously--and don't mind that real prep school kids are far less witty and fascinating than the scripted ones.

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.

Thanks to a collection of well-off New York adolescents whose parents really should have known better, the NBC Universal-owned cable network's out to convince us that those kids from "Gossip Girl" are real. As if anyone would want them to be.