Gossip Girl: Those Schoolgirl Days of Telling Tales Are Gone

Gossip Girl:
"The Goodbye Gossip Girl"

I wouldn't be me if I didn't start this post by pointing out Gossip Girl's second season finale episode's title is very similar to the seminal "The Goodbye Girl" episode of The O.C., in which Anna moves back to Pittsburgh and Seth chases her down in the airport with Nada Surf's cover of "If You Leave" playing in the background. Unfortunately, I think that airport scene packs more of an emotional wallop than everything in this episode of Gossip Girl combined. (By the way, look who was rocking brightly colored tights years before the Gossip Girl girls ever did.)

Well, you can tell it's a Gossip Girl season finale when characters start changing their minds about important life decisions extremely quickly and often without seeming to give it much, if any, thought whatsoever. I'm not going to recap all the flighty decisions from last year's rushed finale (here's a refresher). Tonight: Dan's suddenly going to NYU (because of losing his Yale money, we can assume, but why was this second option never mentioned before?), Vanessa's suddenly going to NYU; after deciding he doesn't want anywhere near Lily, Rufus suddenly decides to marry her; Nate suddenly decides that he doesn't want to do the internship with the mayor that he supposedly decided he really wanted to do a few episodes ago; after months and months of being absolutely incapable of letting Blair in, Chuck--in the last seconds of the episode, of course--suddenly can't stop telling her he loves her; etc., etc. I understand the appeal of having surprise cliffhanger-ish developments in a finale, but there's no reason that they have to come out of nowhere in the context of the episode.

Unfortunately, my complaints don't end there. The whole "let's find out who Gossip Girl and make her pay once and for all for picking on us" storyline was soooooooo fabricated. Yes, Gossip Girl unleashed some pretty nasty comments mid-commencement. Yes, I buy that Serena, etc. would want to expose her once and for all. Yes, I buy that that would piss GG off and she'd unspool even more dirty secrets. Yes, I buy that that would piss Serena off even more and she'd still try to take GG down. Yes, I buy that GG would send everyone to meet Serena and say (something to the effect of) "Look around, Gossip Girl is all of you." But NO, I do not buy that that wouldn't make Serena and everyone else even more pissed off. Everyone didn't call Nate a whore in the middle of graduation. Everyone didn't call Serena irrelevant. Everyone didn't call Blair weak or Chuck a coward. A specific someone typed those words, and if Serena was really that worked up about it, she wouldn't have accepted "it's all of you" as an answer. And, since they were all saying how much they hated Gossip Girl and how glad they were that she wouldn't be following their lives anymore, it's even more ridiculous that they so easily (and even somewhat gratefully) accepted the fact that she'll follow them to college. And, it's even more ridiculous that Gossip Girl explained that her hurtful words of earlier in the day were an attempt to "bond" these people. I mean, what are we supposed to say? How sweet of her to insult everyone and air their dirty laundry? What a humanitarian she is? Assuming that was her intention, since when has Gossip Girl ever been this sappy? She might as well have created a Photoshop collage of graduation pictures and captioned it with the lyrics of "To Sir, With Love."

(Also: Gossip Girl didn't give them all a clean slate. A clean slate is when no one knows anything about you, not when everyone knows everything about you.)

I'm sorry. I love Gossip Girl (the show) and I love Gossip Girl (the unseen character), but this didn't make sense.

I'm going to do my list of quotations and random thoughts now so I don't launch into more complaining:

• I like the blue and green graduation robes. That's so much more visually interesting than basic black ones.
• Serena's mug shot was on the cover of the New York Post? Is she really that big of a deal?
• Oh, good! Serena did tell Blair that Chuck said he loves her.
• I liked Blair stopping to give the paparazzi a couple shots of her.
• Um, isn't it creepy for Vanessa to be secretly filming her ex-boyfriend from afar?
• Noooooooooooo, please don't start the Nate and Vanessa thing again. Nooooooooo.
• Nooooooooooooo, Vanessa's going to NYU! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. She needs to move far, far away!
• Wow, that's quite a hoochy dress that Jenny wore to her brother's graduation.
• Izzy: "What would high school be without hierarchy?"
  Jenny: "Bearable? A nice place to spend time?"
  
• Blair: "I thought we were matching our headbands under our graduation caps!"
  
• Ha ha ha, Dan's name was left out of the program. A fitting end to Dan's time in St. Jude's.
  
• Wow, leave it to Chuck to wear an orangey pink shirt and tie with his bright blue graduation robe.
  
• Don't they at least play "Pomp and Circumstance" for these kids? Geez, what kind of a half-assed ceremony is this?
  
• Why is Serena not wearing her graduation cap? She just has her tassel clipped into her hair!!! How is that allowed?! If you tried that crap at my high school graduation, you would have gotten kicked out of the ceremony!
  
• Gossip Girl dubs Nate the "class whore." Amen to that.
  
• Chuck is not a coward--just look at that color combination he's wearing!
  
• Gossip Girl: "And as for Serena van der Woodsen, after today you are officially irrelevant."
  
• Why are we still watching Rufus and Lily?!?! No one cares! And it's physically painful.
  
• Whoa, when I agreed that Nate was the class whore, I wasn't thinking about how he took money for sleeping with Catherine. I was just thinking that he tends to get around.
  
• Nice try with the "Jonathan is Gossip Girl" fakeout. I didn't buy it. Frankly, I knew he wasn't that interesting. And he's only been around for a few months.
  
• And, dude, if it was that easy to figure out who Gossip Girl was, why didn't anyone do that earlier? That was like the calling-Georgina's-parents-and-having-them-send-her-to-military-school ridiculously easy solution of the year.
  
• Ok. Jonathan isn't GG, he just hacked into her server. That seems more likely. That's just boring enough to sound like what I would expect from Jonathan.
  
• Blatant allusion to The O.C.'s "The Goodbye Girl"! Dan used the phrase "sage wisdom," which is what Seth always said Anna possessed. That was no coincidence.
  
• Dan's going to NYU (and living in the dorms) too? Did we know that officially? So Serena is the only one who is going away?
  
• Lily goes through Chuck's room? That's creepy.
  
• Wow, I think Vanessa's wearing all the colors in the world. At least all the ugly ones.
  
• Dan: "Was she just about to tell me she loved me?"
  
• Gossip Girl knows about Blair and Chuck's uncle on New Year's! Oh nooooooooooooooo. I was wondering when that was going to come up and bite us in the ass.
  
• When was Dan is jail? Oh, that time he and Chuck got arrested for something. Punching people, I think? Geez, Gossip Girl deserves a medal for keeping all of this stuff straight.
  
• Um, sorry Blair, but Chuck sleeping with Vanessa is not the same thing as you sleeping with his uncle. At all.
  
• Well, Blair sure set herself up for another rejection there...
  
• Are we supposed to be happy that Lily has landed her fifth husband?
  
• Who cares if some of these people never talk to you again, Serena? Most of them are seriously horrendous human beings. You'll be better off without them.
  
• Sorry to ruin Blair's cautionary tale, but Anne Boleyn certainly did not think "only with her heart." She was a very calculating schemer, not unlike Miss Waldorf. (And I admit that while being a huge fan of both Anne and Elizabeth I.) It's time for Blair to watch some more of The Tudors and brush up on her British history. She can borrow Serena's DVDs. (S thinks Henry Cavill is hot.)
  
• Eric's dreamed about the waffle maker? That boy leads such a sad life.
  
• Ha ha, Serena should put her mug shot on the wall at Brown. That would be hilarious.
  
• Vanessa: "Humphrey, where's you mind?" (Well, if that isn't the million dollar question.)
  
• Dan: "I miss high school. ...Even Chuck Bass, who would get so close to talk."
  
• Is that Dan's secret brother? I don't think his name was Scott. I guess he's lying about that. It seems like lots of people lie to Dan about their real names when they meet him.
  
• Jenny needs that sparkly headband to smush that mess of a hairdo down a little.
  
• Jenny: "Ok, so, starting next year, no more headbands."
  
• Gosh, I hope Jenny doesn't make all the girls at Constance wear dark eyeliner and bleach their hair.
  
• Georgie's going to NYU too? Ha ha, and she's requesting Blair as a roommate. Wouldn't NYU have to clear that with Blair? Of course they wouldn't; it's a TV show.
  
• Carter found Serena's father? She was looking for him in Santorini? I thought she was just getting drunk and marrying other people's boyfriends.
  
• Why would anyone ever get Carter to help them with anything?
  

Now as for good old Chuck and Blair:

So, on graduation night, Chuck (again) just couldn't bring himself to say "I love you." Now, after a week of not being able to escape thinking about Blair, he can say it 5 times in a row. That's all very sweet, but why? What changed? From what I can tell, nothing. Sure, he felt haunted by her presence all week, but guess what--she had actually been present in his life all year and that never seemed to help.

All along, Chuck didn't want to tell Blair he loved her, because he was afraid he'd hurt her. So it seems to me that in order for him to feel like he could tell her he loves her, he would have had to come to the conclusion somehow that he was ready to be her boyfriend and he was not going to hurt her. He had serious personal issues that had to be worked through and we didn't see him do that. Instead of his speech about going all over Europe to buy Blair's favorite things, why couldn't he say something to the effect of: "I've loved you for years. I never felt like I could tell you though because I thought that if we were together, I would just find one way after another to let you down. I've continually pushed you away, because I thought you would be so much better off without me. But, I've realized something. No matter what I do, you still stand by me. And no matter what you do, I still love you and all I want is to make you happy. I know now that this can work because I will make it work. I'll do whatever it takes to be who you need me to be, because I love you." Or something. It doesn't have to be that.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't want Chuck and Blair to finally be together (I've wanted that for a long, long time), it's just that if we've dragged this God-foresaken storyline out for this long, we might as well end it correctly. They invented so many fake, forced reasons to keep Blair and Chuck apart, and when they finally got them together, they didn't bother to resolve any of them.

I don't know. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe if I watch it again, I'll realize that this episode wasn't as problematic as I thought it was upon my initial viewing. Maybe I'll be able to focus on the fashion and the quips and just seeing the characters I love and learn to not worry about the logic.

This post is approaching Illiad length, but since I thought of it, I can't help but do it:

Those schoolgirl days, of telling tales and biting nails are gone, but in my mind, I know they will still live on and on. But how do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume? It isn't easy, but I'll try. If you wanted the sky I would write across the sky in letters that would soar a thousand feet high, "To Sir, with Love."

The time has come for closing books, and long last looks must end, and as I leave, I know that I am leaving my best friend, a friend who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong, that's a lot to learn. What, what can I give you in return? If you wanted the moon I would try to make a start, but I would rather you let me give my heart, to Sir, with love.

(photos: cwtv.com)