So I know Gossip Girl ended *crying in the fetal position* over half a decade ago, but I’d be lying if I said I stopped watching after the truly horrific two hours that was the 2012 finale. Thank you Netflix for answering my prayers and giving us Nate Archibald back. Anyway, as excited as I was to rewatch the garbage that is the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite, I had a thought: watching Gossip Girl as a jaded, tax-paying adult is a different experience than watching it as a young, dumb eighth grader. So as I sit in my floor-length bathrobe in my Upper East Side Murray Hill living room with a tall glass of pinot, I’ve learned something important about the show that I never noticed before: it is truly a terrible program full of unanswered questions. Like, a bunch of full-grown adult teenagers with Platinum cards are galavanting around Manhattan shopping for ballgowns, noshing on caviar at Michelin restaurants and sipping gin martinis in 5-star hotel bars alone??? I THINK NOT. The only realistic part of this show was that one time Serena ate yogurt. Honestly, like my GPA in college, Gossip Girl started off really strong and then plummeted towards its death as the seasons ticked on. But an addiction is an addition, so I rewatched the entire show despite it being pure trash and was inspired to launch an investigation into the unexplained plot holes of each season. Please see my findings below.
Season 1
Ok I’m not breaking any glass ceilings here when I say the first season was the best one by a long shot (I am right about this, so don’t @ me). Need we remember that this season had 18 one-hour episodes, which is like a full lifetime in television years, so there was a lot of room for sh*t to go down? As I stated before, the series started off strong (minus the ungodly amount of shorts-with-tights combos), and almost convinced 14-year old me that this is what high school would be like. What a fat LOL I had rewatching this as a 25-year-old hermit and realizing that my high school experience was the literal opposite Gossip Girl. I digress. So season one was fire/amazing/perfection/educational/blessed until Georgina Sparks showed up and ruined everything for both the characters and myself. Georgina circa season one (and for like the entirety of the show) is enormous plot hole #1. This fully-functioning psychopath girl returned to New York with the sole purpose of blackmailing Serena into being friends with her (are you five years old?) by threatening to reveal Serena’s casual murder of her f*ck buddy/drug dealer/boyfriend. Relatable, right?! Ok so let’s unpack that. Serena is supposed to be 16 (lol, k), which means she was a 15-year old coke head murderess at the time of the incident? Again, relatable! So Serena obv doesn’t want to be friends with this crazy b*tch, so Georgina retaliates by outing S’s little brother as a proud gay man, taking on a new identity, stealing Serena’s boyfriend, acquiring roofies, and using said roofies to prevent Serena from taking the SATs. A little much for being ghosted by a former friend, if you ask me. If I put this much effort into destroying the lives of people who don’t want to be my friend because I secretly recorded their crimes, I would be on top of the world.
Season 2
Season two spared no ridiculous plot lines to keep the absurdity of the first season alive, but of all the huge holes in this season, one took the cake: Nate and Duchess Catherine Beaton. Before I delve into everything wrong with the double felony that was this relationship, I just need to give some other moments of this season some much-deserved recognition, so here goes: the actual prospect of Blair and Serena getting into Yale, (I was a straight-A student with a 2200 SAT score and got flat out rejected from all of the Ivy League schools. I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.), Chuck casually purchasing a New York landmark as a 17-year-old, the Snowflake Ball and everything that happened in that episode, and Serena’s marriage to the Winklevoss twin Gabriel Edwards. Back to business…season two opens with a much-welcomed steamy scene of Nate and Catherine having foreplay in a car in broad daylight. K, same. First of all, where and how did these nymphos even meet? Secondly, I obviously understand Catherine’s obsession, as Nate is a hard 10, but he is also supposed to be 17 and she is supposed to be in her mid-40s. I know it’s 2018 and we are progressive and open-minded now, but gross? Lastly, this relationship was illegal in more ways than one and no one really talked about that. For starters, this was straight up statutory rape, which is just not a good activity to engage in ever. Additionally, Catherine was paying for the pleasure of Nate’s company, which, may I remind her, is also against the law. Except for Vanessa (and Blair, whose boy toy was Catherine’s stepson and sex slave) no one else really cared about this affair, which is shocking, considering that if this happened in real life, Nate would have to give his hard-earned cash to the feds and Catherine would be in jail. Side note: as truly perfect as Nate is, his love interests took a nose dive after he and Blair called it quits. Just saying.
Season 3
I know season three was the one where literally nothing that occurred could have actually happened, but the biggest WTF of this season was how much Gossip Girl Dan Humphrey could pull. First, he dated Lizzie McGuire smoke show actress Olivia Burke. Then, before exclusively dating Vanessa, he had a threesome with them both in his dad’s apartment. No better way to decide who’s a better match than sleeping with both options at the same time, amirite? Then, in vintage Dan Humphrey fashion, he pathetically drags his dad bod back to Serena and she is kind of down for it. But she has to go to Paris for the entire summer before making a decision because that’s what you do the summer before college, I guess? I was a waitress in my hometown’s Le Pain Quotidien during this exploratory summer, but whatever.
Season 4
Even though season four was the one where Jenny went from being girl-next-door who sewed her own disaster outfits to a full-blown crypt keeper, her transgressions were not the biggest plot confusion of the season. I know I said I would only pick the absolute best plot hole per season, but this one has too many to choose only one, so I chose two. Sue me. The first is Chuck’s double life as a peasant living in France and shacking up with Fleur Delacour Eva. Let’s not forget that this sad new life of his was provoked by his on-again-off-again high school hookup thank u, next-ing him. Moving to Paris and assuming a new identity as a pauper just seems like a tad overdramatic, no? Ok the second just as questionable moment in this season is Serena’s relationship with Ben. Who? Ben, you know, the teacher she allegedly had an affair with when she was a student at the boarding school where he taught and soon thereafter said affair was appropriately arrested, arraigned, and convicted. Yeah, I watch Law & Order. Ok so their blast from the past is weird enough, but once Serena frees him from the state penitentiary, they immediately start dating. Like literally the same day. I can’t even get my booty call to text me back before 2am, and she can get a hot older dude to exclusively date her after she basically threw him in prison for a very serious crime he didn’t commit? I get she’s a regulation hottie and can get a reservation at Carbone night-of, but really Ben?
Season 5
Blair is my favorite and the betchiest Gossip Girl character, so she deserves a spotlight (for once in her life) on this list. Ok so in season five, Blair is engaged to the Prince of Monaco because of course and later becomes pregnant with his child. Glad to know that premarital sex is officially on the table now that royals are participating. Anyway, what’s the rush B? When I was 21, I was super into my college boyfriend and wanted to spend every waking second in his bunkbed at his frat house, but I was definitely not trying to marry him and bear his children. Also, is the CW really trying to tell me that Park Ave Princess Blair Waldorf isn’t on any form of birth control and prefers to raw dog it than be safe? Sorry that was gross, but just trying to make a point here. Lastly, I know this pregnancy wasn’t planned, but she took longer to forgive Jenny for banging Chuck than she did to get over her miscarriage. Everyone grieves in their own way, blah blah blah, but still, have a heart Blair.
Season 6
Ah, the final season of this six year ego-stroking blab fest. I know everyone is expecting this season’s curveball to be Dan as Gossip Girl, but I’m wild and unpredictable, so I am not going to go with the plot line that the writers came up with the night they experimented with drugs. But my final roast is about Dan, who spent this season as one of Vanity Fair’s most successful contributors. I am a writer and I got laughed at when I applied for a f*cking unpaid internship at Vanity Fair. Again, I digress. So the second to last scene of this soap opera show is Dan and Serena’s wedding. No. NOOOOOO. Serena, why? Not that marriage means anything to anyone (hi Lily’s six divorces, Rufus’ two divorces and Serena’s annulment). So many things were wrong with this wedding, aside from the fact that it even happened at all. First, Serena van der Woodsen would never get married in her best friend’s apartment. She wouldn’t even get married in her own apartment. It’s a beach wedding in St. Barth’s or bust, okay, plebeians? The moral of the story is that no wedding should ever take place in an apartment. Secondly, this dress looks like a Project Runway challenge gone wrong, and I personally believe that U.S. Americans such as Serena van der Woodsen wouldn’t be caught dead in a gown that had any trace of metallic whatsoever. But back to Dan. Everything that happened to him from the moment he had that awkward encounter with Chuck and Nate on the bus (why were Chuck and Nate on a bus? I don’t even take the bus) makes zero sense. Speaking of Consuelo, I don’t understand how every character on this show isn’t in jail or dead. I saw Serena drink three cups of pure absinthe as a 15-year-old and she lived to narrate the flashback.
But I don’t want to end this roast on a negative note, so I would like to commend the only team who truly did its job on this show, the costume designers. Y’all killed it and I would like the tear sheets of every outfit Blair wore. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Images: The CW; Giphy (3)
