GOSSIP GIRLYesterday’s episode made complete fools of ourselves, don’t you think? Seems to me that the series screenwriters thumbed their noses at us! For example, we didn’t learn anything much and the little we found out yesterday wasn’t what we had been expecting at all for the past two weeks! I must say I have mixed feelings: on the one hand I feel pretty excited by all the unexpected drama; on the other hand I feel like I was happily taken in by the series writers, even maybe by the cast themselves!

Before I start going back to the “Treasure of Serena Madre” episode with a critical eye, I insist upon the fact that I absolutely love the show and that my article is not about pointless complaining about it…I’m just trying to understand the point of it and its possible dramatic value in itself, not just on the fan biased angle.

Okay, first things first: the plot and the setting. I was sooo looking forward to seeing this episode because obviously all the cast was meeting at Lily and Rufus’ place and the whole “everybody’s got a secret” thing was looking very very spicy! It wasn”t like Lily’s “fifth” wedding where every plot and scheme had to be turned off for the good cause and in the outdoors. The meal gathering theme sounded very familiar with the wonderful “Seder anything” episode where less drama was involved, and around a religious celebration, and still…”Seder anything” was, in my “writer” opinion a very good episode because a specific tone was chosen for the whole episode, that was burlesque and farce; and therefore that unity made the rest of the individual intrigues (Dan and Serena, Cyrus and his mother, Serena and Gabriel) linked altogether. Here, in this episode…

Well the sudden and coincident invitations to Lily’s was quite well-handled, true…although it seemed at times clumsy and unrealistic (Lily in the street congratulating some stranger for her coat? I always thought she was to tight-assed, but yeah..weird but funny, how it broke the idea I had of her character). The whole purpose to gather them at the Van der Woodsens-Humphreys was obvious and well-known and somehow made to make us stamp with impatience -like I personally did, expecting the “Blair in the cake” moment in the “Grandfather part II” episode-. The waiting was all the more justified than two main questions were to be answered after lots and lots of hypotheses and gossip: Who was pregnant? and of course, Who would Serena choose over down in the street, Nate or Tripp?

GOSSIP GIRL

I really feel like the writers tried to build a whole 42minute episode around those two big issues and that, in order to make the waiting bearable, they added past issues to the bunch, like you would add some pie or turkey on the table, to make everything brighter and more mouth-watering. Between Eric’s plotting against Jenny (which takes us back to at least three weeks ago), between Vanessa’s mother return as well as Sissy (?) and Eleanor’s, between the endless Dan getting over the threesome thing, it was hard to keep our interest focused on for each and everyone of them. Among them, I especially enjoyed Eleanor’s short return to New York, more colourful than the other short stories which sounded like they had been playing on and on forever, and Rufus’s blunder during the whole dinner. The episode lacked coherence and unity, both in plot (Serena’s father has been the underlining plot of the season and was passed over in silence with Lily out of the table), each character -or couple of characters worrying about their own problems, and lacked unity of tone: confusion and indifference prevailed upon horror, stupefaction or anger…Therefore the only possible joy we could have felt watching the episode was to be cherished and rare.

And there were tiny pieces of joy! The pregnancy gossip had nothing of a huge “drama-among the rich and famous”, it came out with such humility and simplicity, it added some sweet freshness to the confined atmosphere of the suite. Blair went through a huge amount of very different emotions and feelings in that single episode, until losing herself into her past bad habits (arent’ these bulimia habits typical of Thanksgiving? I think that it always has to do with a pie…), from almost wise lady to vexed spoiled child looking after her inheritance…Whereas some sad “drame bourgeois” is already happening in the Van der Woodsens, mother and daughter, son and step-sister, the Waldorves went deeper into closeness and true affection: whether it was the fondness we have for Dorota, who’s not just another maid, or the great relationship Blair has with her mother, their likeness (Eleanor giving her daughter the key to Manhattan’s conquest), those were pure delight! Did you know that Varnia was a man? Naively I thought it was either a russian book/movie or a girl-friend!

But apart from those moments, it was all just “last season”: we still don’t know what Serena’s father wrote in that letter -but we know Serena knows and that maybe it has to be kept a secret, this would explain why Maureen is so cheered up by its discovery (blackmail over making it public?); we are being confirmed that Dan is in love with Vanessa and that she’s not/doesn’t have a clue; that Eric still holds a grudge against Jenny and plans his revenge. And finally, we still know that Nate loves Serena and that Serena’s “affair” (I have to say how surprised I was that nothing more happened between them than a kiss…) wasn’t just a one time teenage fling.

GOSSIP GIRLThen what’s new, what have we learned so far, may we ask?

And this is where the episode shows its quality: it seems this episode was made for us not to be too demanding with the drama and great turn of events; that we can make hypotheses and plan to foresee each apparent gossip ahead, somehow this childish curious and impatient behavior of ours is not the right way to watch the show -unless of course you enjoy making plans that ought to be fooled (never trust a teaser that’s for sure!)…Thanksgiving is a holiday: maybe the series characters want to take a break off big dramas sometimes, maybe this is not the reason they act and think and feel this way. Gossip Girl is fiction and true, it aims at pleasing the audience and at keeping up their breath; but what makes it a good show is its ability, from time to time to give way not to strategical drama calculations, but to the various beautiful human core of its characters.

Time to look at ourselves in the mirror folks: how about we cut off the trivial speculating for a while?


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