An Expert Discussion On The Closing Of The "Gossip Girl" Ouvre

Lauren: Ok so seriously I did not even know about Gossip Girl ending until this morning when I read this article:http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/xoxo-conspicuous-consumption-how-the-economy-killed-gossip-girl/266181/

Lauren: Otherwise I would have been texting you much more often about it than I already have

Lauren: That, for me, is the saddest part about this whole thing...the end of our texts about Gossip Girl

Lauren:  "UGH SERENA'S DRESS IS THE UGLIEST DRESS THAT HAS EVER EXISTED"

Lauren: "I am riding the Dan & Blair train all the way to Awesomeville. DAN+BLAIR4EVA"

Lauren:  "Chuck has a dog. Its name is Monkey"

Lauren: “uggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh Serenaaaaaaaaaaaa”

Lauren: "ugh, serena ruins everything."

Lauren: "CHUCK+MONKEY4EVA"

Lauren: But I have to say that as someone who was initially not only resistant to, but actually disgusted by Gossip Girl, the show, in all its multifaceted horribleness, has really come to grow on me

Lauren: I went back and found all my posts tagged "Gossip Girl" - this first one is worth reading. And you HAVE to watch the video, the video is still amazing: http://the-hedgepig.blogspot.com/2010/08/you-cant-make-me-love-gossip-girl-if-i.html

Lauren: And the show came back from that and was on my "The Best" list last year:

"Dan and Blair (and Chuck?)
I know that it is never to be and that Chuck and Blair are meant to be together, but Dan's love for Blair and the possibility of them boning has kept me watching Gossip Girl even after I stopped reading Richard's Gawker TV recaps. And while Dan and Blair (Dair? Blan?) may never be a couple, that doesn't mean a future plot twist won't involve them knockin' da boots and putting everyone into a tizzy. MAKE IT HAPPEN, writers. Honestly, maybe THEY should all be polyamorous, Chuck and Dan seem to be getting pretty tight with all that talking and bonding they've been doing. Dan got him a DOG and Chuck named that dog MONKEY. That's at least worth a handy during a three-way."

My Favorite Things

I have a problem with "Best Of" lists. I'm not very good at ranking things, and the end of the year always brings these lists where one thing is often ranked above or below a different, almost incomparable thing. Why must I decide which is my absolute favorite? I've been watching a lot of Arrested Development lately, as I am wont to do at this time of year, and I love it so much - but I can't say I love it more or less than something else...I have enough love to go around! Television and I have a polyamorous relationship. So here are my favorite shows, moments, people, and things from 2011, in absolutely no particular order.

"See You Next Fall"

I'm so sorry it's been a whole week since my last post. But this is my third job, and the only one I don't get paid for, and it just so happens that my other two jobs are also culminating in these last two weeks of May, meaning that I barely had time to watch all the season finales this week, much less write about them. So - here's another big-ass Sunday morning post, just for you.

How I Met Your Mother

Not a bad episode, overall. Kind of a nothing plot leading up to the so-called cliffhanger, but that's 6th season HIMYM for you. Even Chi McBride and Dave Foley, two of my favorites, couldn't really do anything to help the episode beyond just being in it because the writing wasn't there. I did really like Barney and Robin coming together to keep Ted from getting back together with FJM, but the above picture may be the best thing to come out of the whole episode. I thought the pregnancy reveal was illogical and un-clever - just because you're a television character doesn't mean you would continually return to a restaurant that makes you sick (and Marshall & Ted's favorite pizza joint doesn't count - they were in COLLEGE). If that were true it would make humans dumber than the animals that don't eat monarch butterflies because they look like other, poisonous butterflies. So.

Robin and Barney are going to get together eventually, like I predicted. The problem with this is that it was already a cliffhanger two seasons ago - but then the writers freaked out and had NO IDEA how to handle their relationship and concocted the dumbest breakup story ever. I'm pretty sure that episode was the shark-jumper for me. Oh, sure, there have been great moments since then, but the overall quality of the show has been in decline ever since. The truth is that I can't really get completely behind any CBS show these days - and the new fall lineup doesn't show any improvement (except that new show with Ben Linus! That I will watch). It's just such milquetoast, hypocritical programming - they're afraid to do anything edgy in their comedies, but have gotten progressively more disgusting and disturbing with their crime procedurals. I love Bill Irwin and all (my mom went to clown school with him) but his SEASONS-LONG storyline on CSI has sucked almost all of the fun out of it - though most of the blame should be laid at Laurence Fishbourne's feet. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I miss Numb3rs, and I miss the days when HIMYM felt like it was getting away with something. Now it just feels like a show that comes on before Two And A Half Men reruns that doesn't give NPH nearly enough to do.

THIS is why I watch Gossip Girl

Richard Lawson on Gawker does the most brilliantly hilarious recaps ever. Read the most recent one here.

Oh, man, I am seriously still chuckling to myself.

"She wants to have doing it with Dan."

It's like a poem.

OMG, it's Gossip G-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Seriously, Gossip Girl is so boring. How is it possible that a show with so many dramatic events - Babies! Shootings! Fountain-pushings! - could be so goddamn dull?

I started watching Gossip Girl because I was home sick for a weekend and had nothing else to watch. The first season did not impress me. The second season got me hooked on Chuck Bass. And now I'm left with no other way to get my CB fix than on Gossip Girl...and now I don't even get to hear him say, "I'm Chuck Bass" anymore? Fail.

I watch Gossip Girl now because it's the beginning of premiere season and I've got my mornings free - and, you know, it's mildly entertaining. But it's seriously a terrible fucking show with terrible fucking boring characters and I really wouldn't recommend that anyone else waste their time with it. And if you're suffering from symptoms of Chuck Bass withdrawal, go watch something with Cillian Murphy or Jonathan Rhys Meyers and get your British dandy needs fulfilled elsewhere.

You Can't Make Me Love Gossip Girl If I Won't

First, watch this:

(It's ok, you can laugh. In fact, laughing is encouraged.)

Bullett Magazine + Penn Badgley from BULLETT MAGAZINE on Vimeo.

So, there's that. What stands out to me most about this video (besides his white turtleneck of which I had a similar one in 3rd grade and his repeated need to stick his tongue blowjobily into the corner of his mouth...and his terrible, terrible hair and his terrible, terrible, seizure-like singing) is that it says to me that Penn Badgley takes himself seriously. And if Penn Badgley takes himself seriously...then he must take Dan Humphrey seriously as well. And, you know, just typing those two names together made me realize how similar they are. Honestly, this video could be a Funny or Die parody of Dan Humphrey doing a pretentious interview after his novel gets hugely popular or something equally implausible....but it's not. It's Penn Badgley, talking about why he's this amazing Renaissance man (and pretty much just trying to get women to sleep with him). Penn Badgley is just Dan Humphrey with a better wardrobe and more name recognition (but only slightly more - for the longest time I thought Blake Lively was Penn Badgley and vice-versa).

I've never been a huge fan of Gossip Girl. I started watching it towards the end of the first season because I was stuck at home sick for a weekend and was avoiding writing my thesis. I was unimpressed. As a hardcore Dawson's Creek fan, I felt like Gossip Girl represented a lot of things I didn't like about the younger generation: the obsession with celebrity and notoriety through sexuality, power, money, overpriced status clothes, and texting. It lacked the honesty, the self-aware campiness, and the bare emotions of The Creek. And the editing was awful.

Things haven't gotten any better.

Now, I love me some Chuck and Blair. They're pretty much the only reason I've continued watching the show, and that's because I'm a sucker for Ed Westwick and a star-crossed lovers story. But even Chuck and Blair have become dull and staid. The (laughably bad) writers shot their collective wad too quickly - and then over and over and over again. Any sensible plotlines were used up long ago, and now they insist on making complex mysteries about things that no one cares about. Serena's dad? Snooze. Jenny not-doing drugs, not-having sex, and being unbearable? Double snooze. Anything involving Dan Humphrey and Vanessa lying to each other in order to not hurt each other's feelings? Double VOM. And god, Dawson's Creek, How I Met Your Mother and even Friends handled the inevitable incestuousness of a small ensemble cast miles better than Gossip Girl. They had a sense of humor when necessary yet hurting people and betrayal had real, continued, tangible consequences; on Gossip Girl something that is a huge deal one episode is NBD the next, and then all of a sudden something from the past will come back and be a huge deal again. I really just don't have the energy to care anymore.

And FOR PITY'S SAKE, enough already with every fucking episode having a party/gathering/gala/wedding/French ambassador thingy/traditional Roman Bacchanalia where every character shows up, invited or no. The writers are clearly atrocious, unoriginal failures and should be fired. Or maybe, since this whole thing seems to have started with the creators of the show, they should just stop making fucking Gossip Girl. The clothes aren't that great anyhow...certainly not enough to distract from the swirling vortex of mind-numbing stupidity that is plot, script, and character development.

In other news (and by news, I mean well-researched personal opinion), Penn Badgley is clearly an atrocious, unoriginal failure and should be fired from being Penn Badgley.

Image via blogs.fashionclub.com