The battle between Gossip Girl and The Hills

There are two types of people in this world: those who prefer The Hills to Gossip Girl, and those who go the other way. (We are unwilling to entertain the notion that a third type of person is enthused by neither.) There are clearly more who prefer their arch young adult melodrama sunny and fake-tanned: 4.7 million viewers tuned in to the season premiere of The Hills—almost twice as many who watched this season's premiere of Gossip Girl. But does that mean The Hills is actually better? To find out, Radar pitted the key players from each series in a steel cage battle to the death. Game on!

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THE PRETTY BOY: Brody Jenner vs. Chace Crawford
Earlier this season on Gossip Girl, when Blair asked to be filled in on any gossip she missed while taking sabbatical from Constance Billard, Serena replied coyly, "Maya finally made it into Brody Jenner's cell phone." The reference was an in-joke from the show's writers, who no doubt recalled the scene in The Hills last season when Lauren toggled through the iPhone of Jenner, her on-again/off-again boyfriend, and unearthed a bevy of slutty-sounding female names he'd accumulated in his capacity as Les Deux's in-house swordsman. (Like Maya has any shot of getting a 3 a.m. text when Bro-dog has "Bridget Wanna Bang" on speed dial.) A prototypical California surfer hunk, Jenner, the son of Olympian Bruce Jenner and the stepbrother of vacuous reality TV entity Kim Kardashian, is affable but bland—the perfect match for the similarly affable (at least superficially) but bland Lauren. She's no doubt thrilled that he's single again, but she'll have to claw her way through a pack of orange-skinned beach bunnies if she ever hopes to get at him.

Crawford's dreamy Nate Archibald, on the other hand, trades in Jenner's bonhomie and Vans for pensive stares and carefully tousled hair. Nate, you see, is tortured: about mediating his own desires (California!) with those of his coke-sniffing dad (Dartmouth!), about his secret love for Serena, about making sure little Jenny Humphrey doesn't fall into the wrong crowd (too late!). Real-life Chace also appears to be tortured about some things, though his well-documented bromance with a certain former boy-band member doesn't seem to be hurting his game with the ladies.

WINNER: Crawford. Brody owns the peroxide-blonde set, but Chace's appeal goes both ways.