I’m guessing that a lot of fellow lapsed “Gossip Girl” watchers tuned in for nostalgia’s sake to Monday’s series finale. It played a little like a five year high school reunion (or maybe a 10 year one), since by the time the series started six years ago, most of the actors in the high school drama were at least 20 – and Blake Lively, perhaps because of her sophistication, looked even older.
Preceding the final hour with an hour’s looking back made it easier to see how much the characters had changed, particularly Penn Badgley, who sort of looks like a different person in his thinner face and poofier hair and Chace Crawford, mostly because of an accident last New Year’s that has made his lip look like Andy Rooney’s.
Ed Westwick used to look a little different too as bad boy Chuck Bass, with his hair and especially his fashion a mess. He got his business acumen and focus together as he aged, but his voice never progressed from that exaggerated whisper that was always so theatrical and unintentionally funny.
The specifics of what was happening in the plot were lost to me of course. But over six years and a specific cast these are the things that happen: everybody dates each other in various configurations and then breaks up. Until the end, when the couples you always thought would be together are together. (And here’s your spoiler alert).
Two weddings marked the finale of the very couples you’re thinking of (though one is in two years in the future, when suddenly everybody looks the right age for once).
The other revelation that came in the finale is who was Gossip Girl, who swore every week she’d never tell.
Well, it was the voice of Kristen Bell of course, but it wasn’t her (though the actress showed up in a scene with Rachel Bilson, as themselves, vying to be in the series made from Dan’s screenplay of his book). Instead, Gossip Girl was Dan himself, he confesses. And when he does confess the impact is nil because neither Serena nor the audience exactly believes him.
While pretending to be a zinging twist, the turn will likely actually poison any future watching of past seasons (something promos for iTunes downloads of “boxed sets” of seasons encouraged). There was no possible way that he was GG all the way through and there are likely dozens of episodes that refute it, right? (Don’t make me watch to prove it. Let me just say the explanation is unconvincing).
Disappointing too was the return of Jenny Humphries as well; she was the most interesting character in early seasons, but has been absent in recent years. In the finale, actress Taylor Momsen only manages to walk past a couple of times.
Will “Gossip Girl” be remembered in TV history? Was it the network adaptation of “Sex and the City” as producers hoped, a conduit of fashion, music and fleeting snark as the years went by? A precursor to Twitter and social media impacts?
More likely it was just another potboiling teen drama to fill the space between “The O.C.,” which had just ended and the forthcoming “The Carrie Diaries,” which more literally picks up the “Sex and the City” mantel by being a prequel, with boys and fashion and music, albeit the bad 80s versions. It starts next month.