You know you love me.

These five words have been at the center of a pop culture phenomenon, “Gossip Girl,” the bestselling book series and hit CW show.

The show revolves around the lives of seven teenagers living in Manhattan’s affluent Upper East Side.  Starting with their lives in high school, the CW’s “Gossip Girl” has continued to follow each character’s story from one scandal to the next.

But now that most of the characters are in their freshmen year of college, the show seems to be getting less and less believable.

I know that viewers tune in to be transported from their dull and boring lives into a world of glamour and excitement.  However, at this point, the show appears to simply move from one scandal to the next without much connection.  It is as if the writers just sit around and try to think up the most implausible tale.

Then the writers somehow come up with a way to connect all seven main characters, and most of the side characters, to one anecdote.

The plotlines this season range from discovering an unknown son and brother to having affairs with married political officials.

This is a trap that the book series never fell into.  Yes, the events in the books are improbable, but the characters still manage to feel realistic.  They deal with the same general issues that all high school students deal with, whether it is drug, relationship, or body image.

Somehow, the show was never able to grasp the element of realism that the books embodied.  Maybe part of the reason that the books are superior is that they ended at a critical point—right before it was time to go off to college.

In the TV series, all of the characters wind up either foregoing college or going to NYU, which definitely stands out as an excuse to keep the show going by keeping the characters in the same place.

Ultimately, the book series, which has become a standard for young adult fiction, is far better than the TV series.

However, the two really cannot be considered the same, as the show’s plotlines now have no resemblance to those of the books.

The show still offers a great deal of entertainment and an escape from reality, and that is perhaps the reason viewers keep tuning in.

And as the Gossip Girl narrator says, you know you love it.

Caitie Beth Shauck can be reached for comment at [email protected]