On September 19, 2007, Gossip Girl premiered on the CW. Based on Cecily Von Ziegesar's bestselling YA series of the same name, the show was instantly a cultural phenomenon and the sole reason for a brief but intense resurgence of headbands. And since its series finale—on December 12, 2012—Gossip Girl has been analyzed by every possible metric: the episodes summarized, the characters ranked, the couples ranked, and the best episodes complied. Now, we're undertaking the imposing (but important!) task of ranking every. Single. Episode.
Armed with a Netflix password and a big bag of coke (soda cans!), I embarked on a non-stop binge-watching session that resulted in the following list. So read on for every episode of the worst-best series of all time, ranked (more or less) from worst to best.
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THE BAD
LAST TANGO, THEN PARIS (3.22)
Jennifer Humphrey loses her virginity to Charles Bass. This episode is dead to me.
THE PRINCESSES AND THE FROG (4.20)
Serena is mad at Blair for kissing Dan. Makes sense. It would also make sense if she wanted Blair to focus on dating Prince Louis because that would keep her away from Dan. Instead, Serena wants to break up Blair and the prince for revenge (and because the writers were really tired). Not that she can—Louis wants to marry Blair. But shouldn't Blair get back with Chuck? He needs her! And loves her! So much that he punches a wall and yells at her and accidentally cuts her face! Isn't domestic violence romantic? (No, it is absolutely not.)
WHERE THE VILE THINGS ARE (6.6)
There’s a secret document stuck inside a painting, which is a device that has been used in, I don't know, several hundred shows and movies before. I know it's a plot point in one of the later Princess Diaries books. Speaking of recycled plots, Dan and Serena get stuck in an elevator, a device that comes up again and again in this series. Also in the episode: Blair has no friends and no fashion line, until she gets an idea. Then she has no friends but a fashion line. Rufus and Ivy (Charlie) kiss, and the world spins ever toward chaos.
SAVE THE LAST CHANCE (6.7)
Ivy, I hate you, your schemes, and your romances so much.
SHATTERED BASS (4.21)
"Charlie" and Dan are falling in love. I guess Charlie mentioning her “medication” is supposed to be a red flag, but I’m more concerned with the fact that her favorite book is Flowers in the Attic. Her favorite book. Raina wants revenge on her father for her mother’s death (fair) and is willing to give Jack Bass control of Bass Industries in exchange. (Raina, team up with literally anyone else.) Blair figures this out and races off to tell Chuck in person because this is a world in which no one has a cell phone. Jack has Chuck committed, but then OH THERE ARE TWISTS. Jack ends up being good (for Jack), and then we get a cliffhanger because Russell is gonna kill Blair.
THE WRONG GOODBYE (4.22)
Cecily Von Ziegesar makes an appearance. Blair calls Chuck from the roof, and he rescues her, but then Blair’s like, I want to see my fiancé, I just called you because it was easy. Chuck’s like, I totally get that, but let’s get a drink, so Blair’s like…Yeah, OK. They go to a Bar Mitzvah, as you do. And then have sex. Serena is busy convincing "Charlie" not to kill herself. Oh, but maybe Charlie was never on pills and it was all a big act? Natch, Georgina wants in on it. Vanessa finds Dan’s book and is like, You should publish this even if it means you lose all your friends because being published is the most important thing in the world. Cut to the summer: Someone is knocked up, Vanessa’s gonna get the book published, and Serena gets a job with David O. Russell because she has read one book.
CARRNAL KNOWLEDGE (2.17)
Oh, for shit's sake. Why would you do an Eyes Wide Shut episode?
THE AGE OF DISSONANCE (2.18)
NO. I say NO to episodes about school plays. NO to episodes that have so little to do with the reality of the college admissions process. NO to Dan and Ms. Carr.
EMPIRE OF THE SON (4.17)
Raina has up and left Chuck for Nate because Nate is capable of saying nice things in a normal tone of voice. I’m still not totally sure how Ben arranging for Captain Archibald to be beaten up in jail figures into everything—but in any case, Ben and his mom are shady. Why did Ben’s mom give the affidavit to Thorpe to use as leverage to get Bass Industries instead of taking it to the D.A. herself to exonerate Ben? Not that any of this matters because bombshell: Bart had Thorpe's wife killed in a fire. And then bombshell part two: William and Cece are going to fix things, even though William literally poisoned Lily with prescription pills last time they were together. But what's a thing like that between old friends? And then shell of a bomb: Dan and Blair kiss and all that is good and pure in the world shrivels up and rots.
THE KIDS STAY IN THE PICTURE (4.18)
Why Epperly is doing Chuck’s spy work is a question for another time, because I want to talk about how this entire episode hinges on a misunderstanding. The life-changing kiss didn’t mean what you thought it meant, LOL! The business with the photoshoot and whatever’s going on with Vanessa will also have to wait because this is the episode where we meet Charlie. You would never know, from this episode, what a nightmare she's going to be. But make no mistake: Charlie is here to destroy any semblance of sense in this world. Charlie is the antichrist. Charlie is the demogorgon. Charlie hails from the negaverse.
GONE WITH THE WILL (2.15)
Delighted as I am by the shot of Jack eating cold meats like a Tudor king, this business with Rufus and Lily's not-dead love child is incredibly annoying.
ALL ABOUT MY BROTHER (1.16)
I appreciate the show's general attitude that all’s fair in love and high school, but watching a teenager be bullied and "deserve it" does not hold up well. When Georgina outs Eric against his will, she’s bad because Eric is a good person. But when Eric outs Asher against Asher’s will, that’s supposed to be OK? Because Asher is being a jerk? And he used the word “faggot” because he’s definitely NOT insecure about his own homosexuality? Who cares if he might be hurt or ostracized or traumatized—Eric only met the guy in rehab, after all. Also, Serena killed someone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RUFUS GETTING MARRIED (3.5)
What in the fresh hell is this episode. Scott and Georgina sabotage Rufus and Lily’s wedding also there’s blackmail also Vanya impersonates a prince also Bree and Carter have a backstory? Uch. UCH!
ALL OF SEASON 5
There’s the horrible Charlie Rhodes/Ivy Dickens/Lola nonsense (NONSENSE), the Blair and Dan relationship (NO), Georgina as Gossip Girl (WHATEVER), and Bart comes back from the dead (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD). Nate dates a powerful, sexy older woman (Liz Hurley, I see you), which he’s already done. He also starts a newspaper, The NY Spectator. Don’t let the fact that Nate’s supposed to be a Columbia student and the Columbia paper is called The Spectator confuse you. Dan’s book isn’t a terrible arc, but Dan vs. Everyone is hard to effectively play. There’s that awful business about Blair’s dowry (ARE YOU KIDDING) and the unnecessary and sad story of her pregnancy and miscarriage (THIS AIN’T DEGRASSI). They go to Sleep No More and UCB, which, fine. They even go to cotillion, my favorite, but they ruin it with a(nother) car crash. The best part of this entire season is Sloane Crosley’s cameo. And the musical number is fun. That’s it.
THE BLEH
TOUCH OF EVA (4.4)
I guess in the absence of Jenny the show needed a new villain, so they threw in Georgina and Eva at the top while Juliet’s plans matured. But they were just too…smart. They made reasonable decisions, strategized, and calculated. They never took risks or got away with things or simply took a moment to be unhinged and devious. They later replaced all of these villains with the more unbalanced though equally blonde Charlie, but even she was always, like, pining for something. Kind of a drag. And that’s what I have to say about that.
DIRTY ROTTEN SCANDALS (6.3)
Serena has moved in with Steven and Sage, and it’s causing real problems because everything is labelled “S.” Sage ate Serena’s yogurt and Steven borrowed Sage’s monogrammed iPad case! Ack! Sage, all of 17, is also borrowing Serena’s old boyfriend Nate. Double ack with a side of ick. Nate is publishing Dan’s piece on Rufus and Ivy, probably the two least in-world famous of the whole cast. Why would this be in the paper? Not that it’s not wild, because it is. This week’s traitors are Sage, who sabotages Blair’s show by taking off all her clothes, and Dan, who screws over Nate by selling the rest of his story to Vanity Fair. Sounds about right.
THE REVENGERS (6.9 lol)
Blair gets kidnapped, Chuck gets sent to Russia, and Chuck is dead in a plane explosion. Wait, no, Chuck’s not dead. (But someone was flying that plane, right?) Everyone’s upset that Serena wants to move to LA because once you move you are never allowed to return, ever. And then Chuck kills his dad!
THE LADY VANISHED (3.14)
Is Chuck’s mom named Elizabeth or Evelyn? Or is Chuck’s mom named Evelyn, but this other woman is named Elizabeth? Wouldn’t it be funny if both of these women were totally inconsequential, and his mom was named Edith? Or we ditched the E theme and his mom was named Roberta? Twist!
THE UNDERGRADUATES (4.3)
Rufus finds out that Chuck tried to rape his daughter three years ago and is rightfully salty about it. But Eva’s like, “c’est la vie” since Chuck is a changed man. We know that because…he says he is. No acts of heroism or repentance or good deeds or donations to the poor necessary, he just Is Changed.
DOUBLE IDENTITY (4.2)
They set it up to be epic and Hemingway-y, but the scene at the train station is messy. Blair says she can’t be destroyed by Chuck, but that her world depends on him. Blair, is your sense of self dependent on this guy or nah? I dunno about this episode. And why have a character be presumed dead for only one episode? What does that accomplish?
THE LOST BOY (3.3)
There’s an auction at Sotheby’s. Who cares. Scott is doing something. Who cares. Nate and Bree are doing something, and I’m trying to care, but I can't.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ALEXANDER (6.4)
Why is it important for Sage to continue being in episodes? Why? I wanna know why! In perhaps the biggest twist in all of Gossip Girl, this episode is about horses. Sage loves horses. Bart bought horses. Chuck is looking for a horse. But what Chuck has is a dog named Monkey, a reference to the books, which you really should read.
IT’S REALLY COMPLICATED (6.8)
It’s Thanksgiving, and Lily has finally had enough of Bart because he killed some people. What a shock, after he came back from the dead. Dan has a typewriter because that was a fad for a while. Everyone is mad at everyone else. There’s some blackmail and some breakups. I can only assume Vanessa spent this Thanksgiving holiday sunning herself on a yacht and being fed fresh papaya slices by a broad-shouldered Greek shipping heir.
EASY J (4.6)
Blair quotes Tennyson. Points given. She also psychically knows that Jenny is in town. Points taken away. Meanwhile, Serena can’t decide what’s more important: her education or dating. I do sometimes get why Blair finds Serena insufferable.
WAR AT THE ROSES (4.7)
Nate and Serena make Chuck and Blair sign a peace treaty. A literal treaty. But Serena’s the one who needs a contract because she is simply too attracted to her professor to think straight. Meanwhile, Juliet's camera catches Serena kissing her professor/Juliet’s cousin, while another camera has captured Blair singing to Chuck. For some reason this is SO embarrassing. Robyn performs, and Rachel Zoe gets a bowl of chocolate sauce dumped on her head.
GASLIT (4.10)
Because it’s Thanksgiving, we take a break from talking about waffles to talk about pies. (As if any of these characters eat carbs on a regular basis.) Lily isn’t speaking to Serena because they got in a fight—and also because Serena has been kidnapped, but Lily doesn’t know that yet. Nate’s parents are getting divorced. Chuck and Blair are uncomfortable around each other when they aren’t having sex. And because they aren’t having sex, they’re uncomfortable. Everyone goes to the hospital to see Serena. Vanessa and Jenny are like, What dark forces hath we called upon our friend Serena? And then everyone spends the rest of the episode like this:
"I have to tell the truth."
“Don’t.”
“OK.”
“Now I’m telling the truth.”
“I’m mad at you for that.”
“I’m mad at you for being mad at me.”
“Let’s run away together.”
“Let’s not.”
“OK.”
THE KIDS ARE NOT ALRIGHT (4.12)
The good news: Juliet is gone, and our new mysterious girl is Raina Thorpe, played by Tika Sumpter, who is a gem. The bad news: Our current plots are about an affidavit, a business deal, two paroles, and two internships. Thrilling. I wish we were watching Lily scheme her way back into power instead of sheepishly selling Bass Industries with one hand and trying to control the Ben scandal with the other. And look, I get that Serena is not Dan’s intellectual equal. Maybe if he and Blair were bonding over literature, I might (MIGHT) be able to get behind it. But movies? That’s his thing with Vanessa.
THE SIXTEEN YEAR OLD VIRGIN (3.15)
Chuck is being sued for sexual harassment, big surprise. I’m glad this episode didn’t actually go the route of the lying, money-hungry woman stereotype. Instead, there’s a Twist™. It’s his mom, uncle, and lawyer, and they want his hotel—but it’s OK because Chuck has Blair and Lily and a new sense of emotional openness. Unlike Lily, who is lying to Rufus about sleeping with her ex when really he’s been treating her for cancer, but that’s another Twist™. Jack makes a de rigueur apology for trying to rape Lily by claiming he was on a number of substances, including meth. Lily’s like, Please go away. Dan and Vanessa are being secretive about their relationship for reasons unknown, but Vanessa thirst traps Dan and now they’re good. Meanwhile, Nate, Jenny, Serena, and Damien are in a four-way standoff over Jenny’s virginity. Serena comes up with an unbelievably stupid plan to break them up and is like, Nate? Why would you think calling Rufus would work? You make no sense! Then Nate tries to just talk Jenny out of it, and Jenny’s like, Nate? Why would you have a problem with drug dealers? It’s not like your father ended up in rehab for his drug addiction. You make no sense! Then Nate and Serena are in love, and Jenny’s like, Losing my V is a big deal. But Damien’s like, Let’s talk about it after we fuck, and Jenny’s like, Please go away. So, she is sad and listens to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.
THE DARK NIGHT (2.3)
Ah, more problematic consent politics. Nate, a minor, is extorted for sex. Blair, also 17, wants it rougher from her presumably adult boyfriend. Chuck wants to use Blair as “sexual Drano” and hires an escort. Fun for the whole fam.
JULIET DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (4.8)
The dresses in this episode are a lace dream. Nate and Juliet get back together and break up again. Dan is…involved in that? As is Vanessa? Or they’re involved in what’s going on with Serena and Colin? OK, here’s my question: Knowing, in retrospect, what happened with Ben and Serena—and therefore what Colin thinks happened—is he not a skeez? He thinks that his cousin statutorily raped one of his students, but instead of telling her what he knows and asking if she needs help, he quits his job to be with her. Men are useless.
THE WITCHES OF BUSHWICK (4.9)
Juliet kidnaps Serena, which I feel like she could have done earlier and saved us all the headache. At least we get more of Anne Archibald, queen of deadpan desperation.
WHILE YOU WEREN’T SLEEPING (4.16)
Maybe she’s an adult now, but Serena and Ben’s relationship is still icky, even if David Call has a good face. Moving on. Lily and Chuck play the pretend-to-fight-to-trick-your-common-enemy game, a game that is played on GG again and again and yet delights me every time. Meanwhile, Nate takes Raina ice skating, even though Raina has a meeting with Ivanka Trump (what is this plot). And then there are a thousand twists that include drugs, blackmail, and payments, and it ends with Blair falling asleep on Dan. I am NOT HERE FOR THAT.
GONE MAYBE GONE (6.1)
Dan’s in Tuscany, Blair and Chuck are in Monte Carlo, Serena is coked out, and Nate’s running the Spectator and has a swollen lip, but that’s not part of the plot. And then Blair is in Paris and Chuck is in Dubai. And then everyone is in New York, and they’re all trying to find Serena. She might be the dumbest person alive. After not answering anyone's texts all summer, Serena is flabbergasted, offended even, that people have come looking for her. How could they have tracked her down? She went all the way from Manhattan to Poughkeepsie. Oh, and the name she uses to conceal her identity? Sabrina, which is her name in Dan’s book. It's like half a sound away from Serena. Turns out, she’s dating whatshisface from all those shows and they’re at the wedding of two gay men named David and David. Dan gets slapped twice at this wedding, so it's a good one. Meanwhile, Lily and Bart are back in l-u-v even though Bart is being scary and trying to make sure his translator Amira doesn’t tell some secret. Also, Ivy has moved in with Rufus and ends up seducing him (ick). She really needs a throat lozenge or a cup of tea or maybe just some hot water with lemon and honey? Because, sweetie, you sound so scratchy.
MONSTROUS BALL (6.5)
Cotillion! Everyone is trying to keep their terrible relationships going. Looking at you, Ivy and Rufus. But also, Serena and Stephen. And of course, Dan, who is still somehow in love with Blair. But don’t worry: Georgina has a sex tape of him and Serena, so that fixes that? Dan can apparently send Vanity Fair any chapter he wants, any time he wants, which is not how freelancing works. But with five more episodes to go, are we really going to quibble with something like that? Yes. Dan, you need to be in communication with your editor about deadlines, topics, themes, and drafts. The social team needs time to prep. This episode has no plot except that it breaks up the aforementioned terrible couples so things can get to where they’re supposed to be for the end. And Serena and Blair have one last fight because they have to.
ITS A DAD, DAD, DAD, DAD WORLD (3.20)
What does Serena do all day? She's not in school, she doesn't work, and she has no hobbies, skills, or even interests. Chuck gets Blair into Columbia, which is nice of him. And The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's Rachel Brosnahan has a line about pills! Did you also laugh when Jenny typed “cancer” into her Bing (oh, the product placement) search bar? "Hmm. I think someone is poisoning my stepmom. Where do I start? Ah. With the definition of cancer…"
NEW HAVEN CAN WAIT (2.6)
I like to see Blair and Serena fight, I do, but they keep fighting just to fight, and it’s not as compelling as it could be. The Skull & Bones thing makes no earthly sense and is even harder to buy into when “Yale” looks suspiciously like Columbia.
PETTY IN PINK (4.19)
Raina’s going to search for her maybe long-lost/maybe dead mother because she’s named Chuck Bass, I guess. Serena has to know why Dan and Blair are hanging out and involves Charlie in this investigation. Oh, and Louis is back, which would have been a big ol’ secret except Dan has joined the French paparazzi (lololololol). And even though Blair decided just an episode ago that she prefers Chuck to Dan, now she prefers the prince to them both and has to stage a kiss with Dan to help the prince, natch. There is way too much talk of kissing and crushes. This episode takes place in middle school.
THE TREASURE OF THE SERENA MADRE (3.11)
It's Thanksgiving, and Dorota is knocked up! Beyond that, this is kind of a convoluted mess of people finding things out without really doing anything. At least it focuses on the main characters and their families instead of random love interests or contrived events. Serena chooses Tripp over Nate because she is incapable of making a rational decision. Lily has a secret (Eric and Serena’s dad’s letter). Eric and Jenny fight, Vanessa and her mom fight, and Serena and her mom fight. The iconic "Whatcha Say" plays. And did anyone else catch Eleanor's lawyer's name? It's Lionel Tribbey a.k.a. John Laroquette's lawyer character on The West Wing. Do you want another post just about West Wing references and crossovers on Gossip Girl? Answer in the comments! (There are no comments; please send your response by carrier pigeon or telepathic vibration.)
BELLES DU JOUR (4.1)
Fashion’s Night Out, we hardly new ye (also, Karlie Kloss cameo!). We learn Nate has been bedding strangers all summer, Serena and Blair have been shopping, Cyrus and Eleanor have been taking care of baby Anastasia, Dan and Georgina have been taking care of baby Milo, and Chuck has been MIA. Vanessa shows up just to utter the line, “What other reason could there be in the God-I-Don’t-Believe-In’s universe?” Blair apparently has amnesia because for the second time in her short life she's being duped by a royal posing as a commoner. She also pushes Serena into a fountain, which is stupid, but wet Serena is funny. I wish she had more screen time. Chuck is dead, but then he isn’t because Fleur Delacour rescued him and fell in love with him. Those are plenty of dramatic arcs, but the MOST dramatic arc that starts in this episode is that we meet Juliet. She re-tags her worn designer clothes, which tells us that she's deceitful and, even worse, poor. She also has one of those boards covered in newspaper clips and string that only crazy people in television shows have. I do not like Juliet.
GOODBYE, COLUMBIA (4.5)
Chuck loved Eva so much, but he’s back to being the worst now that she's gone. This begs the question: Did you really love that girl or change for her at all? Guess not because in his quest to destroy Blair, he enlists the other woman he has hurt the most in the world, Jenny Humphrey. Everyone else is busy getting tested for STDs and freaking out about it, which, way to spread stigma. And Juliet coolly and calmly masterminds a plot that breaks up Dan and Vanessa and possibly will get Serena expelled. It doesn’t matter, though, because Serena is about to hook up with the hot guy from her building who played Joan’s husband on Mad Men.
IN THE REALM OF THE BASSES (2.14)
Hear me out, but I think Serena and Dan shouldn’t care whether or not their parents want to be together. Is it a little odd to date your step-sibling? Yes. But if you didn’t grow up with that person, it’s not really that gross. It’s a little more complicated if you share a half-sibling, sure, but the world is weird, life is short, and everyone needs to get over it. Besides, at this point, all of the couples in question have had sex. The line has been crossed. Which is all to say, Dan and Serena need some drama that isn’t Lily-Rufus related for them to be interesting to me.
THE FRESHMAN (3.2)
Quick story: During Welcome Week at NYU, a girl asked me where a person could go to see a movie because she was under the impression that New York, a city known for its plays and musicals, had no movie theaters. She thought there were no movie theaters in the whole city. I don’t know how any character is surprised that Serena doesn’t make it to Brown. Don’t they know they’re on a TV show that takes place in New York?
HIGH INFIDELITY (6.2)
The return of Nelly Yuki and Poppy Lifton! We didn’t miss you, but here you are and that’s OK. Serena thinks Stephen is cheating on her with Sage, but he isn't because Sage is his DAUGHTER. Dropped by his publisher, Dan decides to post all his gossip on The Spectator. Chuck is still investigating Bart. Doesn’t this feel a little too…season one? Misunderstandings and fashion sabotage. Fake texts and Dan’s class anxiety. Shrug.
IT-GIRL HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (4.15)
Ah, yes, the plot of being a cater waiter at a party your friends are attending never gets old. So many of the schemes in this episode are “I’ll threaten to tell someone something about you,” which is not my favorite kind of scheme. (My favorite, if you're wondering, is when someone tricks someone else into either publicly embarrassing themselves, making a decision that’s against their interest, or doing the trickster's dirty work.) I'm glad they developed Raina’s character, as well as her relationship with Chuck, for two reasons: It’s better storytelling, and there is no diversity on this show.
DAN DE FLEURETTE (3.4)
Rufus, your impression of Lily is ridiculous. Lizzie McGuire, you are ridiculous (“I love Godard.” “We’re like real roommates. That’s kind of totally awesome.”). Jenny, starting a punk rock trend at school is ridiculous. Tyra Banks, your performance is ridiculous, and your movie-within-the-show performance as Josephine Baker (!!!) is ridiculous. Nate, your love of vampires is ridiculous. Blair, your obsession with high school is ridiculous. Serena, your entitlement is ridiculous. You spend all morning failing to get an internship (hello, Tory Burch cameo) and decide that after so much failure you deserve a treat and take yourself to lunch, where you get a job you are mediocre at and get huffy when you’re fired from it a day later (and then she gets re-hired because she’s Serena). But most ridiculous of all is how Lily blames Rufus for Serena not going to college.
ENOUGH ABOUT EVE (3.6)
Blair and Vanessa are at war over the NYU “freshman toast,” a thing that does not exist. (It should!) Nate and Serena and Carter and the Buckleys are fun in a scheme-y way, but it’s never clear exactly what the stakes are. No one’s actually going to, say, murder anyone else…right? Now, here’s what I don’t like about Olivia Burke: If you’re going to have a movie star character, shouldn't she be more interesting? Missed opportunity.
THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO STICK (3.10)
A) I absolutely believe that Nate has been in love with Serena his entire life because I believe Nate's been in love with every woman he's ever met his entire life. I do not, however, think he or his cousin Triptopher have much chemistry with Serena. B) Of course Blair wants to be friends with the Tisch kids. Everyone should want to be friends with Tisch kids. We’re great and not at all an entitled, obnoxious scourge on the downtown arts scene. Go Bobcats. C) Lady Gaga performs, weirdly, not at the end of the episode. Instead, the end of the episode is the performance of a terrible-seeming take on fairy tales which brings us to D) Dan and Vanessa and Lizzie McGuire. He realizes his feelings in a kiss. Sure. E) Jenny wants to sell drugs now. Has Jenny ever taken a drug before?
THE HURT LOCKET (3.13)
Dan and Blair meddling in Nate and Serena’s relationship plays as fun, but it's creepy when you think about it. Blair knows what Nate likes, so she’s going to help her best friend do that to, what, get her ex’s juices going even harder for her best friend? And Dan, who was in love with Serena for two years, is trying to help Nate keep her. Crazy that this doesn’t work. Rufus and Lily are having troubles (when are they not?), and Chuck is looking for his mother. Meanwhile, Jenny is super good at selling drugs. She has always been a damn liar. I think it’s around this episode that we all realized Damien is the kid from Air Bud, right?
REMAINS OF THE J (2.20)
The writers finally let Vanessa and Chuck have scenes together—the actors were dating at the time—but it makes no goddamn sense for the characters. Poppy Lifton is back and was nice enough to bring Armie Hammer. Dan gets a fan letter from someone. (It's the brother. I hate this plot.) Jenny has a birthday party and is a dick about it. Serena is a dick because she forgot how fun being a dick is? None of this makes any sense, but at least Dorota got a boyfriend.
DAMIEN DARKO (4.13)
Damien is Chuck without his soft side: totally amoral. I don’t buy that Eric, the only character in the history of the show with a functioning frontal lobe, would get mixed up with him. Meanwhile, Dan and Blair are working at W. Ah, the halcyon days of Condé Nast interns. It seems once per season, there’s a fashion-related episode that involves Blair declaring that she, unlike other daughters of the elite, gets things on her own. Doesn’t necessarily make her more qualified than Dan, though. I would love to have seen them actually work together at the internship instead of compete for it, which would have given the characters a real reason to spend time together. Oh, but the best part of this episode? There is a character named Epperly. As her FIRST NAME!
YOU’VE GOT YALE! (2.16)
There’s a lot here, and it’s all over the place. Is this an episode about who got into Yale? About what that means for Serena and Dan? About Ms. Carr? About Blair’s new dog? About the fact that apparently Rufus and Lily have very loud sex? About Bass Industries? About Jack trying to rape Lily at the opera (seriously, what is with the Bass men and boundaries?)? Some good things: Eric and his love of “kick-ass Arias,” everyone’s outfits, Lily adopting Chuck, Vanessa and Nate having a disagreement that doesn’t turn into a fight, which is a rarity for couples on this show.
SEVENTEEN CANDLES (1.8)
You have to admire a series where half the episodes take place at parties and half of those parties are themed parties and half of those themed parties also involve a bet with sex as the prize and the winner is declared at midnight. This episode features some pretty awkward Guitar Hero product placement and some even more awkward acting. I don't know if the actors were given the script the night before or if the coffee ran out at craft services or what, but the acting in this episode is just bad. What's notable here is the start of Nate and Jenny's endless courtship (who doesn't root for two good-hearted simpletons?) and the touching, poignant conversation between Allison and Rufus. "My whole adult life has been about you." That's just terribly sad. Also, say what you will about Blair being a diva, but crying at your own birthday party is a time-honored tradition among a certain set of tightly wound women. There's a lot of pressure.
SEDER ANYTHING (2.21)
Lotta twists, lotta turns. Blair is so intent on becoming a prominent socialite that she doesn’t mind if her latest scheme is especially cruel to Nate, but then he finds out and she regrets it. Then he forgives her. But, Blair, why would you want to be a bridesmaid? It’s the most boring way to attend a wedding. Meanwhile, Dan wants to make money for Yale—but then he attends the party he’s working and pretends to be Serena’s boyfriend until he isn’t. I appreciated the French farce of the Seder, even if catering-based plots are somewhat cliche (seriously, they come up in every sitcom). Also, I really want to buy into Blair and Nate—but as we saw in the My Fair Lady opening, Blair uses relationships to define herself and figure herself out. She seems like an awful girlfriend, actually. I wish we had seen more of the delightful bitchy waitress Dan is paired up with at the Seder. We do get a jolt of personality from Cyrus, who deploys the criminally underused term “mugwump” minutes into the episode. Usually the voiceover is clever but inconsequential, but I have to point out one of GG’s lines here: “Baruch ata ay dios mio. This Passover’s gonna get its own Spanish Inquisition.” Pretty offensive, and so insane. And Chuck finally, half-heartedly, after being threatened/blackmailed/confronted/reminded of the truth by Jenny, apologizes for, whoops, trying to rape her. The apology itself is pretty mediocre, but at least he promises not to live in the same place as her. That's a good thing; but if seeing him is triggering for her, maybe he shouldn't be in her life every single day? Just a thought.
PANIC ROOMMATE (4.14)
I’m loving sociopath Damien. I’m loving Nate and Epperly together because can you even imagine how genetically blessed the child of Chace Crawford and Caitlin FitzGerald would be? Trying to trick someone into violating their parole is a pretty par for the course GG plot, as is Chuck mixing business and pleasure with Raina. Blair’s promotion is also fine. It’s all fine. It’s all normal. But here is my question: Don’t y’all have class?
THE GRANDFATHER, PART II (3.8)
This episode is going in so many different directions. There’s Dan and Olivia and Jimmy Fallon's like, “LOL! Relationships!” There’s Blair making friends with a sex worker named Brandeis. Serena pushes Blair into a cake. Serena’s so frustrating in this episode; she whines about the situation she created (a fake relationship), then quits her job. Less annoying is the staged drowning to get Tripp elected. Thank God Vanessa was filming! She always happens to film things she can use to blackmail/extort people, but she just wants to be a documentarian and evolve into her final form: Mark from Rent.
DARE DEVIL (1.5)
A vanilla episode. Nate is "helping his family pack up the yacht" (oh, to have such chores) and Chuck is MIA, so this episode is girly AF. It literally takes place at a sleepover where they try on clothes. ("Nobody leaves a sleepover!”) The Dan/Serena date is cute in a kind of class-anxiety-is-just-a-misunderstanding way. The Rufus/Lily plot is cute in a this-is-legitimately-cute way. But it's Blair who steals this episode with her imitation of a pill addict. Weird Blair is the best Blair.
ROMAN HOLIDAY (1.11)
Blair is acting out some kiddie version of melodrama by hiring her dad's boyfriend's ex to come lure said boyfriend away from said dad in a quasi-Parent Trap attempt to keep her family together for the holidays. Dan and Serena don't know what to get each other for Christmas because this is the Disney Channel, I guess. Blair thinks Vanessa is being duplicitous in helping Serena, but none of them do anything about it. Let's focus on the good things: the Constance a Capella group, of which I cannot get enough, Blair's ugly pom-pom'd hat, lots of turtlenecks, Eric, a pure soul who is also very funny, Dorota's holiday-themed apron, Serena and Dan having sex in the snow room (for the first time? second time? Unclear. Serena's dress is cute, though).
THE FUN
PRET-A-POOR-J (2.8)
I'm not going to comment on Blair and Chuck’s sexual standoff. Also, I’m not terribly interested in fashion world in-fighting, especially when the clothes are all so…don’t they look like paper fashion doll clothes? Remember those? You’d get a paper doll, and it had clothes you could put on top of it that for some reason we all thought that was a great time. The important things here are the introduction of Agnes, a character with too much personality, and Aaron Rose, a fuckboi. However, both serve important functions. Aaron is related to Cyrus, without whom we would all be lost, and Agnes is the evil mastermind behind Party Jenny, the truest Jenny to ever Jenny.
SOUTHERN GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (2.22)
I don't like when the characters are being duped; I like when they are doing the duping. Still, they found a way to make a financial scam not boring. Maybe if Poppy and Gabriel were delightfully unhinged like Georgina, I’d enjoy watching them screw with the core cast. Instead, they’re just scam artists with good haircuts. And Gabriel is so skeevy. Speaking of villains, GEORGINA. GEORGINA AND JESUS. That's a couple we can all get behind. Finally, if I can quibble with Blair’s NYU-bashing for just a moment, I feel the need to correct something about my alma mater: She is right about the hipsters and, um, lack of intellectual rigor (sometimes!), but the school is absolutely teeming with rich kids.
DESPERATELY SEEKING SERENA (1.15)
We meet Georgina (“Sarah”)! And Asher, who is not nearly as interesting as Georgina, possibly Blair’s only worthy adversary of the entire run. The Nelly Yuki plot is funny and very high school, but did they have to go with the Asian nerd stereotype? If you’re not shipping Nate and Vanessa after this episode, we’re done. If you still think there’s any way in which Nate and Jenny make sense, we are DONE. Thus begins the endless talk of "old Serena" versus "new Serena," who constantly reverts back to "old Serena," which makes me think that there is only one Serena and she possibly has an undiagnosed mental illness.
THE UNBLAIRABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (3.18)
Chuck has a bad dream about what he did to Blair, which I suppose is evidence of a guilty conscience. More likely, it was probably written as an excuse to do a noir sequence. Chuck would dream in black and white. Meanwhile, Blair is not even pretending to live in the dorms anymore, Wallace Shawn is yelling a lot and making some top-notch reaction faces, Carter Baizen continues to be really really ridiculously good looking, and Eric is introduced to the concept of bisexuality. If that weren’t enough, Dorota and Vanya’s wedding includes a number of “old country traditions" to sustain our interest, like asking the groom questions about the bride and a game night that includes a “traditional” game that involves balloons. Balloons were invented in 1824, which I suppose is long enough ago for them to be used in a “traditional” party game. Also of note: the first mini-hints of Blair and Dan and the brief use of Leighton Meester’s “Your Love’s A Drug” which is, I kid you not, a jam. You should probably listen to it right now...
NEVER BEEN MARCUSED (2.2)
People go nuts for this episode, and I don't know why. Royalty (except The Princess Diaries) is not interesting. It's status without power. I don't really care about Marcus or, later, Louis, or, earlier, the prince Blair was going to take to cotillion, whom we never met. So as much fun as we’re all about to have with the quasi-incest and as much as we all love Riverdale's Madchen Amick (and we do all love Madchen Amick), I’m never gonna be a fan of Lord Marcus and Duchess Catherine or their attendant schemes. But the writing is still pretty good at this point, so.
DR. ESTRANGELOVED (3.19)
This episode is just about setting up storylines, like the deal with Lily’s illness and William’s tension with Rufus. Isn’t it super unethical to treat members of your family, even if you are divorced? My knowledge in this area comes entirely from what happened to Mrs. Bartlet in season three of The West Wing. In any case, Billy Baldwin as Dr. William van der Woodsen is one of the best casting choices of the show. Dan and Vanessa are squabbling over Vanessa’s acceptance into the dramatic writing program at Tisch, a school that the writers seem to be implying is not part of NYU (“They’re only taking one transfer from NYU”)? Blair believes Chuck has taken out a “dating fatwah” against her, a plot that is entirely an excuse to make the characters say “dating fatwah” again and again.
REVERSALS OF FORTUNE (3.1)
I like Joanna Garcia Swisher, I like her character, I like the idea of Nate getting caught up in a Romeo and Juliet-esque love across a family rivalry or, alternatively, a Mary Matalin/James Carville-type clash of ideologies that nonetheless defies the odds through the power of love. That ends up not happening, but it’s fun to watch this episode and pretend it might!
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BASSNESS (3.7)
This episode gets points for it being Halloween for once. The bit about the two co-stars needing to continue to date in real life lest the male star become irrelevant is maybe kind of definitely what actually happened on Gossip Girl. Jenny is truly the worst in this episode. Isn’t throwing yogurt on a formerly suicidal gay kid and his boyfriend and then egging the boyfriend kind of a high school hate crime? Lines that date the episode: “Bruce Jenner biopic”, “Lizzie Grubman wannabe.”
THE DEBARTED (3.12)
Drama with a soupçon of noir. We start with a flash-forward wherein Serena and Tripp, literally dressed as Bonnie and Clyde, get into a car accident. (It's not the first or the last on this show. No one can drive.) Cut to 12 hours earlier: On the anniversary of his father’s death, Chuck is having hallucinatory conversations with Bart as he decides whether to buy a building that’s currently a homeless shelter and kick out all the residents just before Christmastime. Nate is merrily giving Dan advice on what to do about Vanessa, a girl whom Nate once loved. Nate only has eyes for Serena now. His advice? Bang an actress, for they are crazy. And then guess what? The actress turns out to be crazy. Off in Nassau, Tripp and Serena take a break from their sexfest so Maureen can convince Tripp that he can have his cake and it eat too. When that doesn’t work on Serena, well, Maureen can blackmail her using the letter that proves Lily’s affair! Ha-HA! But blackmail aside, am I the only one who thinks Maureen is justified? She’s not exactly crazy to think Tripp might get over this teenager he’s been with for a few months and want his career back someday. Serena says she's “risking everything” for their love, but is she? She has no career, she’s not in school, and she has a terrible reputation. Everyone rushes to Serena’s side at the hospital and confronts their feelings: Dan tells Vanessa he loves her, and Rufus reads the letter. Nate is the only person who spends the night in Nassau, and he punches Tripp in the face. Nate is the best. Meanwhile, Chuck is overcome with grief and self-doubt, so Blair very sweetly picks him up and receives the world’s tenderest forehead kiss in return. Then he goes to his father’s grave and sees a mysterious woman who is probably his “dead” mother. Not a bad episode of television, but it’s not really an episode of Gossip Girl. It's so sincere and dark and political, which is a weird tone for the show.
THE GOODBYE GOSSIP GIRL (2.25)
Serena sticks a graduation tassel in her hair. The “labels” blast is super uninteresting, but I guess they needed motivation for Serena to try and find GG once and for all. To do so, she embarks on a number of schemes that basically amount to “Trap her!” Come on, GG is not about to be trapped so easily. Although I do wonder why Jonathan, who apparently hacked into the server months before, never thought to tell his boyfriend or his boyfriend’s sister, both of whom had been affected by Gossip Girl in the past. But who cares because we have a new queen of Constance! Blair is like, Jenny is my pick. Penelope is like, No, Blair, you don’t pick. And Blair is like, It’s Jenny, so Penelope is like, OK, it’s Jenny. Good for her? Rufus and Lily are engaged. As with the first season finale, we wrap all this up fairly quickly with a non-answer to our central question (Who is GG? Everybody!), and then time jump a bit ahead to tease the next season: The kid who wrote Dan a letter and also is Dan’s half-brother just transferred to NYU, Carter found Serena’s dad, Georgina is going to Gallatin (LOL), and Chuck is back with presents and love for Blair.
THE MAGNIFICENT ARCHIBALDS (2.11)
Thanksgiving does bring out the best in the show. Serena’s red and gold ensemble, in particular, is a high-water mark of the whole Gossip Girl experience. Good things: Dorota, Cyrus, Eleanor. Bad things: Jenny, Vanessa’s sudden descent into moral relativism. Best thing: Nate's dad's mustache. Worst thing: Aaron. Final thought: Please go back and watch the little arm squeeze that Vanessa gives Chuck after they talk to Nate at the end of the episode. It’s completely out of character, but the actors were dating at the time and apparently too lazy to not flirt in scenes.
INGLORIOUS BASSTERDS (3.17)
Assassin seems fun. The best moments are courtesy of Dorota, who is adorable playing with that little torch tool that people use to make creme brulee and then gets proposed to. Jenny is desperately trying to win Nate over by reminding him of her (legit) victimhood to, I guess, appear to his savior side. Dan and Vanessa are both applying to the Tisch writing program, which I may have attended. Blair, Chuck, and Jack are acting out the plot of Indecent Proposal, but with a hotel and just the first part where they break up. It’s weird and sad.
MUCH “I DO” ABOUT NOTHING (1.18)
For the first 22 minutes, we wrap up season one: Lily gets married, Dan and Serena break up, Nate’s dad skips town, and Blair makes Georgina disappear. In the back half of the episode, we tease season two: Nate and Serena flirt, Dan and Vanessa flirt, Jenny gets her internship, Chuck meets and eye-bangs Lydia Hearst. But the issue I'm here to discuss is not the perfectly decent storytelling or the cringe-y dialogue. (“I am the most understanding person in the world,” says Dan, about himself.) No, what needs to be discussed—and at some length—is how terrible everyone looks at the wedding. Oh my God, they look so bad. Lily, the bride, is rocking a perfectly mediocre white strapless with some kind of goofy poof coming out of her hip. Chuck and Eric are stuck in light-gray suits with orange-patterned bowties. Dear sweet Nate is in a pinstriped suit that clashes loudly with his pinstriped shirt. Blair, oh Blair, is in the pinkest pink floral satin monstrosity ever. It’s not even the right length for a black tie wedding! To literally top it off she has a pink plastic headband with a flower-like structure coming out of it on top of her head. Jenny, meanwhile, must have some secret vendetta against Vanessa because she makes her a bell-sleeved frock that is bright orange. She looks like she should be in the ensemble of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and her only part is to say “Orange!” But the winner is Serena van der Woodsen, a canonically stylish teenager who has been somehow transported to a Hunger Games-style Old West Saloon and back in the space of a few hours. Who wears black fingerless leather gloves to a wedding? And what the hell is that cutout? We get it: There are boobs. What is that black flower thing around her neck? If there were one thing I could ask Kristen Bell to explain in the voiceover, it would be why the costume department decided to ruin a perfectly good episode with a single black flower stuck on their main character's neck.
THE TOWNIE (4.11)
This is the relationship Blair and Dan should have. It should be the dynamic of a bickering odd couple, like a rookie cop and an old cop or a rookie detective and an old detective or a rookie lawyer and an old lawyer.
THE EX-FILES (2.4)
The schemes here run the gamut from pedestrian (throwing Nair on someone) to calculus-level complicated (Chuck hires Amanda to seduce Dan so that Serena will get her groove back and take down Blair). I do not care about “projects and victims.” What I do care about (so, so much) is the moment near the end when Serena says, “From now on, everything goes through me.” Bitchy Serena! Yes! Fun Fact: Amanda Lasher is not the first character to be named after a GG writer. Watch the opening credits, and you’ll notice Headmistress Queller shares her name with Jessica Queller.
SCHOOL LIES (1.12)
The theme of money-as-solution (it’ll buy off the school board, but not very ethical Vanessa!) is all good and well, but I think they missed an opportunity to do a great bottle episode. You have a dozen kids, one incident, one secret, one perp, and who knows how many accomplices. There’s an episode in here somewhere that just takes place at the Waldorfs’ place as they argue, Twelve Angry Men-style, about what to do in the face of possible expulsion. Wouldn’t that be good? (Another idea I had is an episode titled "Blair Me Up Buttercup.")
THE WRATH OF CON (2.23)
Schemes! They don’t make sense, but at least there are schemes. And everyone's using their best weapons. Lily tries to fix things with money, Blair and Serena with manipulation, and Chuck with lies and intel. Trite as it sounds, there’s something fundamentally heartwarming (or at least enjoyable) in watching people put aside their differences and come together for the greater good. This is what makes World War II movies so popular, and it’s what makes this episode work. Well, that and the line, “You can tell Jesus that the bitch is back.”
THERE MIGHT BE BLOOD (2.9)
The guerrilla fashion show—what an iconic, stupid, great, dumb, weird thing. There’s something happening here about Serena and Aaron and a worm, but I slept through it because Aaron is so boring. The continuation of the get-into-Yale schemes is what it is, but I have a serious question: What was the writers' plan here? Why make it so important and high stakes that every single main character wanted to go to college in Connecticut, when they very well knew they couldn't continue the show in that direction? Yale is an interesting MacGuffin in the short-term, but the storytelling design flaw is so obvious. We all know nobody’s gonna end up at Yale!
EX HUSBANDS AND WIVES (3.21)
Holland, you tricky bitch. Did we ever find out what favor she owed William? Did I miss it? I liked how this episode was all twists and turns without scary dramatic moments; it was like a logic puzzle, and, how appropriate, it took place at a party at the library.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES JACK (3.16)
Agnes is back! How is it that Jenny can be the most deceitful, manipulative character and yet be so easily tricked by this model? Agnes’ big plan is to flush Damien’s drugs in front of him, a feat that will accomplish nothing. Jenny describes this plan as “brilliant.” Later, Agnes tries to get some bachelor partiers to rape Jenny, but Nate intercedes because he is a budding feminist. Blair has no friends (fantastic) and hires Brandeis and her call girl coworkers to pretend to be her friends (more fantastic) and ends up blackmailing a closeted businessman (ick), but it doesn’t matter because her mother’s fashion line has integrity (huh?). The call girls are also of no use in taking down Jack Bass. Meanwhile, Vanessa and Dan are on a Rear Window-inspired date. I kind of wish the theme had applied to more than just the costumes and the food and they had actually pieced together a murder.
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THE GRANDFATHER (2.19)
Er mah gerd, Tripp Van der Bilt, played by incredibly charismatic stage actor Aaron Tveit, doing his best impression of a less toothy JFK. And we have a new devious grandparent in town, who literally goes by Grandfather. Carter Baizen makes an appearance just to bang sad Blair. (Were the actors dating at this time or after? I forget, but they dated.) Rufus and Lily are off on an incredibly immature plot involving sex lists that I won’t get into. Bex pops up, that’s how nothing this plot is. The big stuff here is the breakup of Nate and Vanessa (um, Nate, please confirm your breakup before you have sex with Blair. We were just starting to really like you!) and out-of-control Blair, whom I love. Shoplifting Blair! Begging her way into Sarah Lawrence Blair! These are good Blairs. We even get a moment of Dorota yelling in Polish.
THE HANDMAIDEN'S TALE (1.6)
This is quintessential GG. It has a ridiculous theme party (two, actually), an over-complicated scheme from Blair, drugs, a random guest star (this time ANTM's CariDee), and Rufus ’n' Lily are sittin’ in a tree. The drama here, insofar as there is any (my, they do spend a lot of time wandering around at parties), is the introduction of Vanessa. We also meet Nate's mom, who I treasure. But the best thing about this episode is the screen name of the Dalton senior who asks Serena out: RichBoyIV.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIE (2.12)
There are fashion schemes by Jenny and the mean girls, a bet between Chuck and Blair, some weird slut-shaming of Aaron and his artist friend Lexi (reminds one of Bex from season one, no?). This is basically a season one episode plunked into season two, and for that I give it much thanks. There’s a lot of Dorota happening, another thing for which I give thanks. Look, I don’t think anyone really loves Vanessa or Jenny at this point, but thinking about it from Nate’s point of view, I get what he sees in Vanessa. I do not get what he sees in Jenny. She’s a whiny brat who constantly needs him to rescue her. My favorite detail from this episode is that Bart’s secretary is apparently named “Mrs. Landingham” because someone on the GG staff is as big a West Wing fan as me.
BONFIRE OF THE VANITY (2.10)
Cyrus! Rose! Is! The! Bomb! How dare Blair not realize she is in the presence of a truly wonderful man. This episode is kind of all over the place, but has enough moments to sustain it, the main two being CYNDI LAUPER (yas yas yas) and Agnes burning Jenny’s dresses. Honestly? Let them burn. Let it all burn.
VALLEY GIRLS (2.24)
Serena refuses to leave jail to make a statement, and she is so steadfast in this that all it takes to get her to leave is for Dan to show up with a dress. Lily is mad at her mother until she isn’t. Blair’s prom is going poorly until it isn’t because Chuck loves her, but she doesn’t know. She breaks up with Nate anyway, though, because high school is over. I would love to know why they’re playing swing music at prom. It's not as silly as the ad-hoc election for king and queen, but still silly. Meanwhile, the ‘80s are happening! A pretty fun backdoor pilot for a spin-off that wasn’t—but oh, what if it was? The Lily Rhodes Origin Story had everything: Andrew McCarthy (who directs a number of GG episodes, BTW), Krysten Ritter, Brittany Snow, Dick from Veronica Mars, some guy named Owen, who apparently came to a horrible end at the hands of Cece and is never spoken of again, and No Doubt. This would have been a show that posited Caroline Rhodes as the money behind the man who invented the fanny pack. Is it too late to make this show happen?
THE FANTASTIC
CHUCK IN REAL LIFE (2.7)
Classic antics. Blair and Chuck use Vanessa as a sexual pawn, Dan and Jenny are being nice to little teddy bear Nate, Serena's a mess just to piss off her parents, plus there's Jonathan, Erik’s only good boyfriend. There are a lot of cute Humphrey moments, which I like, and many instances of people being very tense and very angsty at a party, which I adore.
WOMAN ON THE VERGE (1.17)
This. Episode. Has. Everything. We get a coked-out Serena, a meddling Dorota, “Everytime” by Lincoln Hawk, Lisa Loeb, the UES Justice League (whom Blair describes as “the non-judgmental Breakfast Club,” which forces me to point out that the original Breakfast Club wasn’t particularly judgmental either but that’s a minor quibble). It loses points for the Georgina/Dan kiss (blech), but wins for the Lily/Rufus kiss (noice).
THE SERENA ALSO RISES (2.5)
This episode shouldn’t work. It’s so contrived. The Serena-usurps-Blair’s-fashion-spotlight is a rehash of “Bad News Blair,” except this time with an All About Eve twist, courtesy of Jenny. Dan is going to follow Chuck around as a…writing exercise? And Chuck is cool with this? And ends up confessing his darkest secrets in jail? And yet, somehow, GG pulls it off. This is a fun episode. Sometimes things just work out the way you want them to. As Chuck says, “Twins find me.”
THEY SHOOT HUMPHREYS, DON’T THEY? (3.9)
Where to begin. I know, Cotillion! We meet the power cliques of the other NYC prep schools, each of which has its own take on how to wear a blouse and cardigan. Jenny and her terrible platinum extensions feel so insecure around them that she’s willing to accept help from Eric who—plot twist!—lies to and manipulates her throughout the episode, all while clinging to the moral high ground. Eric thinks he’s helping her by hurting her, and he needs Kyra (Kira? Kiera? Keiraugh?) to do that, so anyway, Sarah Steele is there. But! Makeovers don’t mean anything compared to the status you can get from having the right guy on your arm, and Nate finally finds his one true calling: eye candy. I might love Nate? Meanwhile, Tripp and Serena are falling in love over…prolonged eye contact and playful touching. Do they have anything in common? Chuck traps Serena and Blair in an elevator so they can work their problems out, both of which (trapped in an elevator; locking Blair and Serena in a room together to figure their problems out) have been done before on this show and on every other show. Vanessa and Dan (why isn’t he at his sister’s cotillion?) are showing Lizzie McGuire a Grand Ole NYU Time before she goes off to film another movie. And then they have a threesome! Now here’s my question: If Tripp and Serena got married, would her name be Serena van der Woodsen van der Bilt? Serena van der Woodsen Bilt? Serena van van der der Woodsen Bilt?
THE WILD BRUNCH (1.2)
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that this entire episode takes place the morning before, and then during, brunch? (It's an entire episode about brunch, before avocado toast Instagrams were a thing! And there are women painted to look like marble statues! God, this show...) Specifically, this is the morning after the pilot a.k.a. the Kiss on the Lips party, and the plot is that people tell each other things. There's literally a scene in which the main fivesome (S, D, N, C, and B) stand in a circle and...tell each other things. At brunch! She doesn't get much screen time, but this is also the episode where we meet the series' best character: Dorota. However, "The Wild Brunch" loses points for its ending shot, in which Serena does the ultimate Thing That Characters Do That Real Humans Never Ever Do: She throws her cell phone away.
A THIN LINE BETWEEN CHUCK AND NATE (1.13)
Nothing like a good old-fashioned sex scandal sparked by a pregnancy scare. So (so!) often in fiction, the loss of (a woman’s) virginity means punishment, usually either a baby or death. I give this episode points for instead “punishing” Blair by trashing her reputation because that’s accurate. The Internet, society, teenagers, whomever, all love to slut-shame, and Blair is no exception. It's sadly one of the more relatable and universal arcs on the show. Other plots include Bex and Rufus (snooze) and hints that Jenny may very well be a sociopath. Just because a girl she has only known for a few months doesn’t want to be her best friend, Jenny gives herself permission to fuck up that girl’s entire life. This is also the episode of big speeches. Dan does the Good Guys Listen To the Girls They Knock Up speech, and then the This Is Why I Love Serena speech. Serena, then, gives the This Is Why Blair Should Stay in New York speech because poor Blair is so distraught after Chuck’s You Are Literally an Object To Me speech. Great Blair line: "Maybe I am a total bitch. Did you ever think about that?"
THE BLAIR BITCH PROJECT (1.14)
It's interesting that Blair, reeling from a sex scandal, imagines herself as Holly Golightly, a sex worker. Then again, it’s not uncommon for a certain set of basic brunettes to entirely miss the story of Breakfast at Tiffany's while focusing hard on the clothes. This episode especially, for some reason, screams 2008. There are so many flip phones, Chuck's in multiple popped-collar polo shirts, Butter is A THING, and Resurrection and Socialista exist. It was a simpler time. I will ignore that this is an episode in which someone drops yogurt onto someone else (what?) and focus on the fantastic scheming being done. Mostly by Blair, but also by Jenny. There’s also a scene where Eric mentions a friend named Branforth (his first name! Is Branforth!), and I, for one, think it’s a real shame we never met this Branforth.
POISON IVY (1.3)
This is probably the most realistic episode in terms of what high schoolers are like and what they do: petty, and try to get into college, respectively. This episode opens with an a cappella version of Fergie’s “Glamorous” (Hey! That’s the name of this magazine! Kinda!) that might be better than the original and includes the first recorded utterance of the line “I’m Chuck Bass.”
BAD NEWS BLAIR (1.4)
Margaret Colin as Eleanor Waldorf! Michelle Hurd as Laurel! Sebastian Stan as Carter Baizen! Chuck’s hideous basketball outfit! There is so much to recommend this episode, which is delightfully Jenny free. This is clearly the episode when the writers realized Blair was more interesting than Serena. Honestly, it’s hard not to feel bad for B. Her mom is so mean and won’t let her eat a croissant. Croissants are delicious.
SUMMER, KIND OF WONDERFUL (2.1)
There's so much going right. Jenny’s dress, once re-made for herself, is quite cute, as is literally everything else everybody wears to the white party. Actually, everything everybody wears the whole episode is on point. We also get some of the wittiest lines of the series, the use of Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” the phrase “that mother-Chucker,” the appearance by Tinsley Mortimer, and Blair’s challenge to Chuck to say “I love you” is, here, an appropriate way to heighten the stakes. It's too bad the rest of the series had to drive the “eight letters” bit into the ground and then push a stake through its heart.
BLAIR WALDORF MUST PIE! (1.9)
This is sentimental and satisfying, like Thanksgiving itself. Chuck is MIA and Nate is off dealing with serious things, but the main arc puts kids and parents on a collision course, tangling the Waldorf, Humphrey, and VDW families in an emotionally consistent way. For an eating disorder episode, it’s refreshingly non-preachy. The bathtub water fight is stupid cute, but best of all is the chemistry between one-time real-life couple Matthew Settle and Kelly Rutherford: You really believe they hate each other, and you really believe they love(d) each other. This is also peak Sassy Dan (the best Dan) and the beginning of Protective Dorota.
O BROTHER, WHERE BART THOU? (2.13)
We pick up a few days after Bart’s death, so instead of an episode about grieving, everyone is over it—except Chuck, who is spiraling. The blowout outside the funeral feels earned, even though it comes at the start of the episode. Nate making fun of Blair for taking such good care of Chuck is precious, though I take issue with Blair saying, "We can’t let anyone see him like this” as she shoves Chuck toward a church full of everyone he knows. But more on their dynamic in a bit. Cece is back, as confusingly devious as ever (she is/isn’t sick, she does/doesn’t want Rufus and Lily to be together). All she really does is tell Rufus Lily’s big secret, which was, let’s be honest, predictable. Of course they have a love child somewhere. But let’s talk about the moment in Grand Central, a notoriously fraught spot in the GG universe: Rufus arrives without his bags, but Lily thinks they’re still going away together because she's so in love and love is blind and need not pack bags. And then Rufus says, “Just tell me one thing. Was it a boy or a girl?” It's a good line because it communicates the big reveal without saying, “Hey, I found out you gave our baby up.” But it's a bad because it doesn’t make any sense. Really, Rufus? That’s the only thing you want to know? What peace will knowing the sex of an infant bring you? You don’t want to know, maybe…literally anything else about the situation? Anyway, this moment is touching enough in an episode of many touching moments, which brings us to the wedding of Cyrus and Eleanor. I love this couple! I love that they get married right after a funeral. It’s so morbidly Jewish. Everyone looks great (J, my dear, you did a very nice job on Eleanor’s jacket, though Blair’s silver dress is stealing the show), even though Serena is still deep into her stone-and-wire-necklace phase. She’s also still in her Aaron phase, and Serena clearly hates him. She has no love in her eyes or heart or mind for this guy, yet she needs Dan to give her a reason not to go on vacation with him. Serena, just chill alone. Be single. I honestly don’t understand Cyrus and Aaron being related because Cyrus is objectively the best and Aaron the absolute worst. The episode, though, belongs to Chuck and Blair. Chuck’s seething “You are not my girlfriend,” his desperate, wordless look to her on her bed, Blair waking up without him the next morning. This is peak Chuck and Blair.
THE PILOT (1.1)
This pilot does an incredible amount of work in just over 40 minutes. It quickly and efficiently introduces us to the main players, the world of the show, the concept and mechanism of the “Gossip Girl” blog, and the main conflicts. There are tights! And headbands! And yogurt! All of these are woven into the satisfying arc of Dan and Serena’s first date. Most impressively, we learn straight from this one episode who knows what and who wants what and from whom.
But as fun, funny, and structurally impressive as the first GG episode is, the thing we really have to talk about is: This is the episode where Chuck tries to rape Jenny. And Serena, actually. For some, this makes Chuck’s later redemption completely unacceptable. We don’t see him behave quite so aggressively again, but the show treats him as a bad boy instead of a bad person. So it’s understandable if you watch this episode and think: nope. And unlike so many other series' deranged (read: hastily and melodramatically written) rapist characters, Pilot Chuck has a consistent M.O. He finds and flatters a vulnerable woman, physically isolates her, gives her something he knows she wants, and then demands sexual satisfaction in return. He leverages his money and position to influence both Jenny and Serena. He mentions to Nate that perfection needs to be “violated.” In short, he seems practiced at this. It would have been interesting to see a teen show with a sexually entitled main character who has to either unlearn his view of women or suffer the consequences. Instead, the show...pretends it didn’t happen.
I have a theory about what went down. It's not uncommon for series to have a minor, or even major, retooling between the pilot and subsequent episodes. On GG, you'll notice that Chuck has a mom in the pilot and doesn't later. Blair’s mother is played by a different actress; the Waldorf apartment is a different set; the whole gang smokes a lot more weed. We see Nate and Chuck riding the bus, but they have drivers the rest of the series. Minor changes, sure, but the point is that what works in a pilot doesn’t always work on the whole. It seems like the writers needed a villain to create conflict and heighten the stakes, all of which Chuck does in the pilot. They’ve said before they didn’t know how often he would be in the series—initially, he was going to be a sometime player like Georgina. Maybe they planned to make him deal with harsher consequences for the assault. Maybe they planned to kill him. I don't know. But they decided to keep him around, and no one really wants to write a charming rapist week after week. I know (through secret channels, xoxo) that the network put the kibosh on a plot that would have made Serena much more culpable in the murder she confesses to in season one; I think similar noting happened here, and they had to walk it back.
VICTOR, VICTROLA (1.7)
This episode is so well done. We have Jenny in three scenes—the perfect amount of Jenny—being spurned by Blair and realizing that instead of a mother-figure she needs her actual mother. We have Dan's sexual performance anxiety made hilariously explicit in dream sequences. Good job sneaking that message about communication between consenting partners in there, writers. Serena thinking it can "just happen" when what she doesn't realize she needs is a thoughtful, plan-ahead guy like Dan, who gets new sheets because Vanessa said. A guy who looks at Serena with love and respect, and she's never had that. If that moment doesn't make you want to cry, then you are dead inside. Which is all to say, this is the episode where Dan and Serena (maybe?) bone. More importantly, this is the episode where Chuck and Blair bone. Blair, who has tried to many times to engineer the perfect deflowering, doesn't realize she needs a passionate guy like Chuck to finally buy what she's been trying to sell. What gets overlooked here, because it's such a strong episode for the couples, is the father-son plots: Nate taking care of his drug-addict father by getting him arrested and Chuck trying to impress Bart but accidentally screwing up his relationship with Lily. Just a great episode start to finish.
NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU XOXO (6.10)
YEAH. SECOND BEST OF THE SERIES. DEAL WITH IT. Finales are incredibly difficult. And if this insane, sappy, over-the-top melodrama of a show is what you came for, this too-tidy, ridiculous, implausible finale is what you get. And Lisa Loeb is there, so just you shut up about the final scene. The problem here is that Dan is Gossip Girl, and you know what? I love it. Fuck the plot holes. Fuck the fact that it ruins the series in retrospect. They picked the writer character and gave him a creepy/sweet reason for stalking Serena for a decade and called it a day. It doesn't have to make sense. It shouldn't make sense. What started as a juicy teen drama descended so far into camp that there was no getting out, so they leaned in. Once the Titanic has hit the iceberg, you don’t bother about whether or not the engine’s running. You climb into a lifeboat and watch, enraptured, as the glowing, majestic vessel descends into the icy sea.
HI, SOCIETY (1.10)
This episode is so self-serious, gaudy, dramatic, and my favorite. There are family secrets. The Pierces sing their song about secrets that later became the Pretty Little Liars theme. Blair (wearing the necklace Chuck gave her for her birthday) and Serena look like the goddamn moon and the mother-freaking sun, respectively. Nate's wearing his heart-on-sleeve green sweater, which is a detail from the books (of course I read the books). And Blair's red tights and blue romper combo? I can't even. Jenny is such an asshole in this episode; she rejects perfectly cute vintage shoes and demonstrates an alarming lack of fashion imagination for someone who wants to be a designer. Rufus and Allison are co-parenting reasonably well, though Rufus longs for Lily. Who wouldn't? She is a cold goddess. Cece is a villain for the ages by concern-trolling Dan and eloquently laying out the themes of the series. Chuck is a straight-up dick in this episode, but what else is new? I think part of the reason I love this episode is that it's just about the characters manipulating one another and the main families interacting, rather than some outside force (a business deal! an interloper! a death!) forcing them into a corner. Another part is Sebastian Stan in a tux. Best line of the episode: "You almost made a fool of me in front of The New York Times!" And a major development: Blair and Nate finally bang. Also, points for the flawless use of Timbaland's "Apologize," the song of the late 2000s. You know you love this episode.
