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Well, it wasn't quite what we envisioned, but close enough for baseball. Right?
After a tearjerking, fun retrospective with the cast and EPs, the story begins at the tail end of last week: With Blair and Chuck on the run, Serena reading the Nice Chapter on her jet, and everybody else in a state of high readiness. Georgina's redemption comes in the form of organizing their getaway, while everyone else sits around and hilariously -- with the exception of Eleanor -- assuming that Chuck and Blair have finally murdered his father.
Uncle Jack finds Blair and Chuck in their hideaway and points out the obvious solution: Get married, so that the only witness to the quasi-murder won't have to testify. Chuck's emotional processing of the whole thing is a lesson in wisdom: "I don't feel guilty, which makes me feel guilty." Which is just about perfect, and not in an ironic way. Boyfriend has nothing to feel guilty about. A sentiment which the show runs with, as their Bonnie & Clyde storyline pivots abruptly into a "rush to the altar" sequence that sweeps you up with it, as all players on the board are suddenly activated.
Nate's sudden realization that with Bart Bass gone all he has to worry about is funding whatever the Spectator is -- and Sage's usual gentle reminder that unmasking Gossip Girl is still the key to making money -- means they're both home at play when the call comes: A courthouse wedding is simply Not Enough, so Georgina and Jack have been tasked with assembling everyone on the show at our dear Bethesda Terrace for a real, live, knick-of-time wedding. Which is fine because the rest of the parents, family and friends are otherwise occupied with sittin' around until summoned:
Wm vdW ditches Ivy Dickens for the now-single Lily in a flurry of exquisite brutality: "You're a Lifetime movie called Nobody Gives A Damn: The Ivy Dickens Story... Run along and be the Queen of the Swamp People." Doc Dubs, you've never been sexier. After Chair and Jack are at the courthouse getting their license and whining about whether or not it's the Perfect Wedding,
Halfway through the episode, Serena manages to get Dan to tell her what The Final Chapter (which he'll eventually give to The Spectator in return for endless Nate snuggles) has to say: Gossip Girl is NONE OTHER THAN LONELYBOY HIMSELF. As Dan (and Penn, subtly and gorgeously, in the pregame) point out, the tagline for the first season was in fact, "You're nobody until you're talked about," and that's exactly what he did, including bizarrely expert flashbacks to a lot of them as children, before or during the first season. (If I wasn't already crying, I would have started crying at that point, and you know how rarely I cry about television shows. I was so ironic and whatever about it until exactly five minutes before it started, and then I just sort of lost my mind and started drinking. That whole "your body remembers Artax in the swamp" thing turned out to a lot realer, and funnier, than just a little snarky aside.)
One hurried (but lovely) wedding later, the happy couple is hauled in for a few minutes' fruitless questioning, and the rest of the cast assembles for a reception. Which begins just after Sage has posted the Final Chapter, giving rise to a hilarious meta-convo involving everybody still on the show -- Rufus blustering, Georgina scrambling for Bitch Cred, everyone including my personal hero this week, Bloomberg, talking about how they always assumed it was Dorota -- and everybody not on the show -- a wonderful sequence of (my most) beloved female guest stars, from Juliet to Lola to Agnes ("That little bitch!") to beautiful Vanessa -- to even people who are not on the show at all: Rachel Bilson and Kristen Bell practicing for a pilot based on Inside Out, complete with literal wink at the camera!
I'm not really into plot holes or whatever, between similar had-to-happen-either-way reveals on PLL and The Killing, the activity of bitching about that has been beaten out of me, so I'll simply say that emotionally and thematically, that is pretty great. We've talked a lot over the years about this show's vexed relationship to money and class -- how you want to watch rich people but you also want to see them fucked, so it's as beautiful a meta-comment as anything could be. I don't think anyone expected that I wouldn't be a sopping-wet mess by the end of it, by six years of it, but yeah. Done good. (I'm finishing up writing this an hour later and I've had the experience -- like catching yourself in a dark mirror and thinking it's a home intruder -- of being like OH SHIT IT WAS DAN a few times already.)
And then not one but two appendices: The second, a well-produced horror movie ending, complete with a riff-heavy rock song by the Pretty Reckless, in which Gossip Girl reincarnates her soul into the latest poor lonelyboy with a man purse, being spit on by a new Chuck, new Blair and new (intrigued) Serena, whose face we never see. Give it up for the continued surveillance culture that defines us, it's great.
But really though: The first epilogue, a five-years-later flashforward containing more in-jokes and love letters to the fans than you would think possible. I'm talkin' Eric with a cute goatee, Jenny being fashion, Lola and Olivia doing a movie together (!), Nate running for Mayor, an adorable Baby Henry Bass being loved on by Eleanor, and the three most important show-ending couples of your lives: Georgina with Jack, Lily with William, and ... drum roll ... Rufus finally with Lisa Loeb. FINALLY. And why are they gathered together at what seems to be VITAMIN WATER ESTATES? For the wedding, finally -- and I'll say it, gorgeously, even if I always did love Dair more than the show did -- of the loneliest boy, and the only girl in the world.
Shipper pandemonium, probably, but from a sane standpoint it's so much better -- farther, bigger, stronger, wiser, more loving -- than I think any of us could have expected. They turned the mother out, with twists I certainly never saw coming and with a compassion and wisdom of spirit that -- Everybody Gets Out Alive, my number one rule for life -- I honestly find a little inspiring. I'm impressed, and I am grateful. To them, for what seems like a lifetime of service, and of course, to you.
You know I love you, right? XOXO.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Dan took Georgina to Tuscany so they could be super gay for no reason, and he screwed Nate over on the various "chapters" he is writing about everybody else on the show, but now even that has spiraled out of control and he's writing multiple chapters about people and sending them hither and thither. Hint: All of them are about Serena because everything is about Serena because spoiler alert, everything is literally about Serena. In a way, which the show has been saying for six years, actually has nothing to do with Serena. Which I always thought was the higher point, but the actual higher point is so much nastier -- and more beautiful -- than I could have imagined, even in the show's heyday, that it works out.
Nate thinks he knows who Gossip Girl is, he has no idea who Gossip Girl is.
Serena thinks... nothing. It has never mattered what Serena thinks and it will never matter what Serena thinks. Which is why she has always been my favorite character: If I sat you down and said, "Imagine what it would be like if the whole universe sat you down and said be pretty, be little, stop talking, stop thinking," you'd know what it is like to be a teenage girl. And bonus, you'd know what it's like to be a gay man, or a straight woman, or anybody that is not the default white straight man. You'd kind of know what Serena is about, but you still wouldn't really know what Serena is about, because the whole point of Serena is that there is no point to Serena. Just an infinity of Daisy Millers, standing on the shoulders of an infinity of Daisy Buchanans, alternating all the way down.
Blair used to balance that out, until Chuck, and now they balance out each other. They have their own little TV show inside the TV show of Serena. A thing Blair has always secretly worried was true, until she put her show inside the Chuck show, and now she's happy as a bee.
Everybody Else, from Lily to Rufus to Scott to Bart to Ivy to Jenny and Vanessa and Juliet and Carter Baizen, is a piece of this puzzle. Sometimes they're real, somebody they are not real. Much of the last three or so seasons has had to do with various people that are almost Serena but not really -- Ivy, Lola, Juliet -- but are connected with her closely enough -- William -- that they matter. But only kind of, and never for very long.
NOW
Blair and Chuck have killed his father, finally, watching him slip quickly over the ledge and down into the streets below. Blair calls Georgina, downstairs, who arranges through activities presumably scary and possibly sexual to get them into the trunk of their dumb limousine and away from the scene of their crime. If you're thinking this is an easy one-shot -- Chuck clearly would only kill his father in self-defense, Blair is the only witness to any of this -- you're right. The murder of thrice-dead Bartholomew Bass is no big deal.
But if you were wondering how it is that Chuck's plane disappeared with him on it, how it was that Dan was able to smuggle him into the Man of the Year celebration and ruin it, how and why the majority of last week's episode bothered to happen, you will never find out. This is also because Bart Bass's death is not a big deal; in fact, it is a mechanism by which Blair and Chuck can finally just get married and stop being everybody else's problem all the time.
MEANWHILE
Meanwhile, Serena -- on her Bass jet to start a new life in LA, armed only with my scarves and purses inside larger purses -- begins to sound out the words, syllable by syllable, of the Nice Chapter.
Serena: "Tell the pilot this is going to take a while. I'm readin' here."
Nate and Sage have laid out their Carrie Mathison-style index cards and clues to the identity of Gossip Girl on the kitchen island, in a final attempt at rescuing The Spectator, whatever it is, from the clutches of a man who is dead and a legal system that seems mostly indifferent to Nate's fraud.
Nate: "Tell the world this is going to take a while. I'm readin' here."
Ivy calls (?) to tell them to turn on the TV, where they learn nothing except that somebody died somewhere and they're not allowed to say who or where, until they call the dead man's wife and tell him she has been widowed now several times.
Lily apologizes to the lady at the spa for having forgotten to turn off her ringer, and then immediately takes the call anyway. Her impression of "shock and horror" upon hearing about her husband's death is equally sincere.
Ivy calls William van der Woodsen, Lily's first and most devious husband, to tell him the good news: Bart was the reason they had to leave Manhattan and go all the way to the Hamptons, but now he is dead -- thanks, in part, to Ivy -- so it's safe for William to come back to Manhattan, where his bereaved ex-wife, mother of his children, and object of his torturous schemes and obsession is now without husband. Right up until the end, Ivy finds a way to suck so hard it forces other people to mistreat her.
Kaylee DeFer was so cute in the retrospective that aired before this, talking about how her first taste of fame was being spit on by old and young alike, due to the awfulness of Ivy Dickens. Her mouth said, "This is great!" but her eyes said, "Please stop spitting on me."
EMPIRE/WALDORF
The police arrive at Nate's house and at Blair's house, to ask them if maybe Chuck and Blair are fucked-up soulless black holes that ruin everything around them and would think nothing of murder.
Police: "Sage, has Blair ever tried to kill you, or used you in a scheme?"
Nate: "You can't talk to her, she's a minor. Despite all appearances."
Police: "Heh heh heh. Allllll riiiiight."
Nate: "Don't be gross. As the person who is usually the May in the May/December, I know how yucky it can make you feel."
Police: "Eleanor, has Chuck ever tried to rape everybody who exists?"
Eleanor: "I labored endlessly for twenty years trying to turn my daughter into a serial killer. Nothing took. She got bulimia and then forgot she had bulimia. Chuck is the worst thing she will ever do. But no, they are not murderers."
Cyrus & Dorota: "You don't know your own daughter very well. The only reason Blair hasn't gotten around to killing a person yet is because she's been so busy, desperately trying to make Chuck like her."
WINDHAM B&B
Uncle Jack: "Room service! Just kidding, it's Uncle Jack."
Blair & Chuck: "Thank God it's you. You're so trustworthy."
Uncle Jack: "Hide your kids, hide your wife."
PRADA
Serena: "Hey, why are you chilling in my house?"
Dan: "Hey, are you still struggling to read that story?"
Serena: "I read it twice, thank you very much. It took all night. And I still don't understand anything about anything. Which Dan are you, the horrible bitchy one that wrote the mean chapter, or the pussy that wrote this one? Both is not an acceptable answer."
Dan: "Both."
Serena: "I can accept that."
B&C B&B
Uncle Jack: "I've had a tracking device on you since our last war when I made you think both your parents were dead, and then that neither of them were dead, and then I hypnotized your mother into pretending she wasn't your mother, using my penis. In case you suddenly needed this show to explain anything about the chaos nonsense that happens in it. So did you kill Bart?"
Chuck: "Kind of. I mean, yes. Only there were no witnesses except for Blair, who totally says it was self-defense, and also he tried to blow me up a few hours , so really there's zero reason for us to have run away or think any of this is a problem. We're just being huge drama queens."
Blair: "Just to contribute nothing helpful, I was thinking we should fly to an island and live off the land."
Uncle Jack: "Um, that's super stupid, but how about you guys get married? Then Blair won't have to testify, telling the truth that would exonerate you."
Blair: "Yes. That would really solve the nonexistent problems here."
PRADA LOBBY
Lily: "William, thank God! I was just wondering who I would be marrying ."
Wm vdW: "I just want to be here, with you. And all of your money."
Lily, verbatim: "Oh, God. A funeral. Well... The good news is, we can do the same thing we did the last time Bart died."
Yep. Just hold the same funeral again. Same Bloc Party tunes, same block party atmosphere, Chuck drunk as fuck... Maybe that was when the show ended, really. Now that you mention it.
FLASHBACK
Dan: "Instead of explaining about the Serena Chapters, I will tell you the mythological origin of this entire show, which will then take up the entire episode. Are you ready."
Serena: "My body is ready. My brain is as good as it's gonna get."
They were at this party. It was one of those early high-school parties where everybody is wearing wigs to look like high-schoolers. It was the first party Dan had ever been to, in his life, so he was very excited. He sold his last matchbook and swept his last chimney and headed out, wearing glass slippers on his stupid Dan feet. Serena was drunk on the stairs, and feeling vaguely like having a conversation with a poor person. "I love Hello Kitty!" she blabbered, out of nowhere. And the rest is history.
Serena: "But wait, how does this story explain anything about why you published a hit piece on me in Vanity Fair?"
Dan: "I will never actually explain that. But you're going to want to stick around for the ending of this incredibly long story."
EMPIRE
Nate: "The people in charge of these things just called, and apparently if a guy secretly gets you to defraud him in order to loan you money, and then dies, you get back control of your newspaper and/or web app or whatever unclassifiable deal. Apparently that's the law in this town."
Sage: "The important thing, don't worry about Chuck or his nonexistent problems. Blair Waldorf is like a pit bull about that guy, she won't let anything happen to him."
Nate: "Thanks for reminding me to give a shit, and then telling me why I don't have to."
COURTHOUSE
Blair: "Poor people. Everywhere."
Chuck: "You're right. Uncle Jack, go round up all the fashion designers and socialites we know. This secret wedding needs to be a much huger, more public deal."
Blair: "We deserve it!"
Uncle Jack: "Georgina Sparks? Get in this car. Apparently when Blair makes a list of her closest friends and family, you and I are at the top of that list."
Georgina: "Oh good! An orange stranger. Tell me sir, what are your thoughts on roofies? And televised sex murder?"
Uncle Jack: "It's possible I have found the cowgirl to break this wild stallion."
PRADA LOBBY
Lily: "It's been five minutes, so I'm comfortable saying that you've been a real solid dude today, William. Shall we remarry?"
Ivy: "Stop right there! My vengeance is complete! Lily, I have traveled backward through your many marriages, sexually assaulting and defrauding each of them in turn. Now do you like me?"
Lily: "Honey, I am drunk as shit and I can't be doing this right now. I have a funeral to reenact and a wedding to pretend to care about. William, make her go away."
Wm vdW: "Go away, little girl. Go away, Grunty."
Ivy: "But I have sexts!"
Lily: "I don't know about technology."
Ivy: "But he helped Lola, your daughter-niece and my clone-sister, steal my money for me!"
Wm vdW: "Lily's niece-daughter is in Budapest right now, so I guess we'll never know."
Lily stumbles out into the street because Ivy is so awful she can't take it.
Ivy: "I don't understand how this fits into the plan."
Wm vdW: "Uh, this is the plan. You were the fake cancer. You were the desperate psychotherapist, the fake-cancer prescription. You were the scarf carelessly left on the couch. I have been trying to break up Lily and Rufus since this shit started. But thanks for all that money I scammed out of you."
"You're a Lifetime movie called Nobody Gives A Damn: The Ivy Dickens Story. I don't know what you have to complain about, you got Lola's money. Now go back to Florida. Run along and be the Queen of the Swamp People."
Ivy loses her shit, as anybody would after that amazing fucking takedown, and that's basically all we ever hear about her. It is one of the episode's many small grace notes that Georgie and Jack get to see the tail end of her meltdown, as they arrive to grab Lily for this wedding that nobody even really cares about.
PRADA
Dan: "Have you ever wanted something and know you're not going to get it?"
Serena: "Uh, no. That sounds stupid."
Dan: "Or is it because you're a bitch? Anyway, I realized I could never destroy you enough that you would date me, and I didn't have the balls or class to change myself to be more acceptable or likeable, so I thought, there has to be a third, more awful way to do this. What if I ruined everything for everybody?"
Serena: "Wait, are you Gossip Girl?"
Dan: "Stop ruining it and just shut up and listen, for Chrissake."
Serena's white dress had gotten wet, probably by design, and one girl Dan overheard -- be prepared, there is a lot of Dan creepin' in this story -- was talking about how S would be a laughingstock, and everybody would be talking about her. And then the other girl he was eavesdropping on said, "You're no one until you're talked about."
Dan: "And that's how I came up with Gossip Girl. And also how I learned that Oscar Wilde went to our school."
EMPIRE
As Dan and S are getting rounded up (and he must pause in his epic story about himself) Nate and Sage have, bizarrely, fallen right back into the "we have the power to unmask Gossip Girl" conversation they were having a half-hour ago, as though when we are not looking at them they come to a glass-eyed rest, awaiting further instruction. But this conversation -- which actually started last week, come to think of it, which makes it even scarier -- comes to an end when Uncle Jack shows up to get them for the wedding. They never stop talking about how they know who Gossip Girl is. Which is funny, because they still don't?
In the momentum and rhythm of the episode itself, you wouldn't notice that they're all just circle the same narrative idea in scene after scene, because they're adding up to a sum of parts: It's not about five sets of people having similar conversations, it's one conversation the show is having with you, spaced out over all the characters on the show. Sometimes it's really neat when a show does this, sometimes it isn't, but rarely is it is a sign of craftsmanship or effort.
In this case, it works very well, because the show itself has always worked this way, and if they're bound and determined to reveal somebody on the show as Gossip Girl, it's going to have to play out in this way. Our omniscience has to be highlighted, we have to be thinking in terms of the overall show as a single artifice instead of individual storylines. And for a show that coasted on shipper nonsense for as long as it did, that becomes doubly important to remind the viewer where she's sitting, which is outside the show.
Nate & Sage: "Is there anyone Gossip Girl ever went easy on? Someone she cared about? That could be a clue. The only selfless thing she ever did was shut down after Chuck and Blair's accident. Although she did lead Dan and Blair to Juliet, after Serena was drugged. That was the right thing to do. And wasn't there a lot of stuff that she knew but didn't post until Serena went to war with her at graduation? Maybe Gossip Girl was really our guardian angel..."
Gossip Girl: "Spotted: Chuck Bass back in Manhattan. We hear he's on his way to turn himself in. Who's up for a little stakeout at the big house?"
Nate: "Oh wait, that's ludicrous. She's always been a vengeful, resentful cunt. Maybe that's a clue."
THE MET
The show actually goes up the steps and into the Met, which is a cool idea without a home, because the wedding isn't actually going to be at the Met, it's at the Bethesda Terrace, so all this scene is, is an excuse to have more conversations about how the wedding isn't at the Met, it's at the Bethesda Terrace. Outside, GG girls are amazed to see S, D, N and Georgina all heading into a museum of any kind, separately or together. Other GG girls are amazed that Chuck and Blair are getting married, because they haven't been paying attention. Still more GG girls are surprised that Nate is with a girl, that Serena is with Dan, and that this show stayed on the air this long.
BETHESDA TERRACE
Crystal-blue Elie Saab wedding dress with a long, long train; Chuck's wearing a matching tuxedo that is maybe slightly less crazy than you were expecting, but there are pointy white elf-boots happening.
Serena: "Your wedding is as compromised and plot-driven as your whole relationship, which is kind of touching. But back to me, where's Dan?"
Blair: "Getting flowers. Remember that time Dan was in charge of flowers and he ended up being a drug mule? That was cool. Also, Dan is a worthless loser. I'm not sure I've mentioned that before."
Serena: "I honestly can't recall. But yes, he's the worst. It's why I love him!"
Serena: "Need I mention the many rapes of Chuck that never happened? The time he didn't sell you for a hotel? The time he didn't abuse you?"
Blair: "Yes, he's the worst. It's why I love him! But Chuck is one of us, whereas Dan --despite his years of trying -- never will be. Not that we weren't all rooting for him to pull it together eventually."
Dan, creepin', decides it's time to screw over Vanity Fair and give Nate his big Gossip Girl scoop: The Dan Chapter. He creeps away, Smeagolling over his hope that this big twist will interrupt the wedding, because God forbid anything ever happen that isn't about him.
THE MET
Nate: "Do I care what happened on that rooftop?"
Chuck: "No."
Nate: "Just checking."
Dan: "Nate, here is my best chapter. It is about me."
Nate: "I recognize this word that starts with G. This is about Gossip Girl."
Dan: "It is about both."
Nate: "Do I care about any of this?"
Dan: "You do not."
Nate: "Sage, go type this chapter into our website word for word. Can you do that?"
Sage: "Like I really care about this wedding. Come on."
GG girls, talking a foot away from Nate, decide they're bored with waiting for Gossip Girl to tell about the wedding, so they decide to tell the police instead. That way, the police will arrest Chuck for killing his father, and I guess that goes in the Win column. Nate seems flummoxed by this information he overhears, but not really that interested in following up on it.
BETHESDA TERRACE
Cyrus: "To quote The Princess Bride, marriage is what brings us here together..."
Chuck: "-- Man and wife! Say, man and wife!"
Cyrus: "Man and wife."
They kiss, the cops come and take them both away, and nobody has a problem with any of this. I guess Eleanor really is new money after all.
THE BIG REVEAL
Every lady who has ever been on this show -- Juliet, Agnes, Vanessa, Mayor Bloomberg -- is shocked to find out that Dan is Gossip Girl. Agnes is, of course, the best: Laughing about what a little bitch Dan Humphrey is. Tinsley Mortimer has heard it all before.
Kristen Bell: "Hey, Upper East Siders. Gossip Girl here, and I have the biggest news ever..."
Rachel Bilson: "Serena! You're back from boarding school..."
Kristen Bell: "Hang on, GG blast."
Rachel Bilson: "Have you seen the piece of crap TV show I'm on right now? This movie based on Inside/Inside Out is the only thing I've got going on. Focus."
Kristen Bell: "Holy shit, Dan is Gossip Girl."
Rachel Bilson: "Wait, GG is real?"
And Kristen Bell winks at the camera. I can see this being infuriating, but first of all there is no way Kristen Bell could ever do anything that would be infuriating because she is wonderful, and second of all go for it.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
"The Upper East Side was like something from Fitzgerald or Thackeray... Teenagers acting like adults, adults acting like teenagers, guarding secrets, spreading gossip, all with the trappings of truly opulent wealth. And membership in this community was so elite, you couldn't even buy your way in. It was a birthright... a birthright I didn't have and my greatest achievements would never earn me. All I had to compare to this world was what I'd read in books. But that gave me the idea. If I wasn't born into this world, maybe I could write myself into it. I'd overheard enough conversations to be able to mimic the language of the Constance girls, but every writer needs his muse. And it wasn't until that photo of Serena in the white dress that I knew I had something strong enough to actually create a legend... and launch a web site. Within weeks, I was getting dozens of e-mails with stories about Upper East Siders, so I posted them anonymously. And then I got more... Before long it was a monster, everyone was sending tips. And when Serena came back from boarding school, I wrote my first post about me... Lonelyboy, the outsider, the underdog. I might've been a joke, but at least people were talking about me."
Oh, honey. Oh, Dan. Of all the excellent things about this episode, the very most beautiful is the fact that he thinks Gossip Girl is what young ladies talk like, rather than what no person ever on earth has talked like. Maybe part of his hatred of women comes down to some kind of aphasic inability to understand words that they are saying. Trying to say "Jenny Humphrey is homeless because her father is a bitch who's jealous of her talent and all her clothes just got burnt up by Agnes," he thought, how would a teenage girl get that across in a straightforward way?
"Poor little orphan Jenny looks like she needs a Daddy Warbucks but Daddy Warbuckses don't grow on trees at least on a tree that grows in Brooklyn."
And he'd look at that, that undiagrammable jumble of words, that pressured speech of a person on bath salts, and Dan Humphrey's fist would pump the air, and he'd say to nobody at all: "Nailed it."
WALDORF
Everybody: "Well, it is by far the most interesting thing you've ever done."
Georgina: "Yeah, but I hacked it and stole it, that makes me way more awesome. Transitive property."
Dan: "Uh yeah, after I got bored and shut it down. And eventually I stole it back anyway, from Serena, which is hardly a caper."
Nate: "I should have known it was you on that sex-circus security tape... You were the only one that wasn't with us at that sex party."
Georgina: "And the only one that owns a hoodie."
[Much of this happens, where they raise objections and then dismiss them, but I respect us more than the show does, because I'm not going to play that game. You can explain away the inconsistencies all day long, it doesn't mean it's going to make sense. Just don't worry about it. It's cool, the last three years basically sucked, we're ending in a happy place, why shit on that.]
Rufus shows up to bitch at Dan, to claw Gen X-ly at this circumstance in search of a thing to bitch about so he can feel like a hero, and everybody immediately starts drinking.
MY HUMPHS
Rufus: "Dan, I want to thank you for doing something so reprehensible that it gave me an orgasm."
Dan: "Or am I a hero, after all?"
Rufus: "You chased Jenny out of the country..."
Dan: "You were ruining her at every turn. Also, she totally knew what was going on the whole time, so..."
Rufus: "...I guess you're right. Gossip Girl was you being a hero, all along."
Dan: "I should have known this is the one thing that would make you proud."
WEDDING RECEPTION
Serena, still selling: "Dan was as hard on himself as he was any of us, is one lie I'm telling myself. And he was only acting on tips, which we've all submitted..."
Nate: "Except me."
Everybody: "Fuck you, we know. God. And Dan kept his mitts off you, too."
Chuck: "I officially don't care about any of this. Also, Dan likes us the most and even gave a speech last week about how gay he is for me, so it all works out. This is just outrage in search of a reason to yell. Think of it as a rape spree that never happened."
Everybody: "Wait, why are you not in jail?"
Chuck & Blair: "Do you really care? Honestly?"
Everybody: "Not even a little bit."
Blair: "Well I, for one, cannot wait to be a huge ass-ache about this."
Dan: "There's a fuckin' shocker."
Serena: "Blair, come on. Just give in to the champagne haze of not giving a fuck. He stopped posting after you lost your baby, and even helped you have secret God meetings about it. If you're going to be mad at him, be mad at him for his horrible behavior of late."
Serena: "I always thought it was Dorota, and then I thought it was Eric for a little bit, and then I thought it was Rufus."
Dan: "Like my dad could ever be this awesome."
Uncle Jack: "Wait, it wasn't Jenny?"
Everybody laughs, drunk and oblivious and entitled. If you're never really alive, you can never really die. Vile bodies sprawled across the salon, chirruping and chuckling at the six years of mental torture Dan has put them through. One might wish that this, this final shitty piece of revenge on them for being born, would fix him. Perhaps it has. Or perhaps in trying to make himself over in their image, he has provided a dark mirror to us all. All I know is, these people were pretty cool before Dan got ahold of 'em.
Serena: "Blair, I think you're just mad because Dan was the one who was pulling the strings all along."
Dan: "This whole time, I had more power than you!"
Blair pulls out a gun and shoots him thirty-six times in the abdomen. Each more deserved than the last.
Serena: "But what he did with that power was write a love letter. Not just to me, but to all of us. Mostly Chuck."
Nobody: "If this is your idea of love, then you deserve every fucking thing he's ever done to you."
I remember prior to watching the pilot of Apt 23 I thought, "How neat would it be, if this show were about the Bitch in Apartment 23 doing something that seemed really horrible, until the end of the episode the other girl realizes she has learned something?" And that's kind of how that show has gone. Gossip Girl healed them, saved them, changed them into adults. But not because Dan is a good guy, because he's not: It's because bad things are how you get awesome.
A lot of the smarter comic books, and comic book movies, have set that up too, of late: The reveal at the end is that the bad guy did it all so that you would become a better hero. And you know, I was quite taken with this idea in the '90s, the idea that if I only learn about myself through the darker moments, maybe that's true of everybody, and so there's something to the idea of supervillains.
And then too, you may remember a show several years ago in which people would be hooked up to lie detectors and asked more and more personal questions. I remember seeing universal horror in response, and being so confused by it: That doesn't sound like torture to me, it sounds like church. You're only as sick as your secrets, right? It sounds like the most beautiful thing imaginable, just being given the opportunity to come clean.
Because what I figured out, once I decided that supervillains are necessary, is that actually they totally are not. Life is going to do that anyway. Regardless of whether or not you're doing it for somebody else's betterment, you are still being an asshole. We are not put here to help in that way. You are doing yourself more damage than you are helping the other person. The sum total is still negative, for the world, because of what you've done. So if Dan's intention was to strengthen them, that would be problematic. Except he's way too selfish for that; his intention was negative, not even fake-positive.
They're all adjusting to the horrible cataclysm of Dan's obsession with them the only way you can, after the fact: By looking at the good parts. What we've learned. Over the first season of the show, Serena did the same thing with the natural disaster that is Blair Waldorf: Blair did the worst shit to her, out of no purer motive than a hate born of crazy love, and it did make Serena better. But it didn't make Blair better. Only being loved by Serena did that. Only by taking all that damage and violence and saying, "I can take it, because I love you." That's how she tamed Blair. And maybe that's what she's doing now.
It's nothing we haven't talked about before, but it's the end of the story and the episode and the season and the series, so maybe it's worth thinking about again: The people who love you shine what was already there, and the people who hurt you burn off what's not working. Within yourself, you can be grateful for the experience, and compassionate toward them for being driven that far. That's very different from accepting them for what they did. There's kindness and then there is stupidity.
It's not all that different from what Chuck did to Blair, over the years: He provided a continual reminder that the world wasn't about her. That her behavior had consequences, and that it was possible for her to want things she couldn't have, and work for them. That her lot -- to want and strive and need, to see Serena get everything for free -- was true only as long as she allowed it to be.
5 YEARS LATER
Nathaniel Archibald, stepping off the Spectator jet -- which maybe the Spectator is itself just a jet now, you can never tell what shape it will assume -- tells a reporter he'll probably be running for Youngest Mayor Ever, one of these days. He throws the reporter in the river and then hauls him out again. He is no longer defined by women or relationships; he flies this jet alone. He has not yet found a person who will put up with the weird sex shit he is into. Not since...
Charles Bass and his lovely wife, Blair Waldorf, make the drive up to VITAMIN WATER estates with their young son, Henry. So-named for the son who overcame his father, and loved his child so much the war was ended forever. Eleanor showers the boy with love, limitless unconditional love without judgment, but Blair's not jealous. She's too busy violating trade embargoes with China, who by 2017 will own your ass anyway.
Eric has grown a little goatee.
So has Jenny.
William and Lily van der Woodsen giggle with the other couples. Who among us has not designed complex schemes to fool us into taking unnecessary cancer medications that gave us migraines that scared us into taking more unnecessary cancer medications? Rufus monitored her alcohol intake, in his woman sweater; Bart often threatened to throw her in the fire like so much broken kindling. It was only William, the father of her children, who never really gave a shit one way or the other.
Rufus and Lisa Loeb, wearing matching glasses, regale the grownups with tales of their artisanal something something. Later, they will take the jitney and it will drive off the road and Lisa Loeb will be stuck in a life, tending to wheelchair-bound Rufus Humphrey. She will grow resentful, over time, grinding glass into his waffle batter, putting his guitar on shelves just out of reach. Waiting until he puts on his rollneck lady sweater, then turning the heat back up. And should he ever forget himself and complain she'll smile, and lean down, tugging with one nail at his choker, and whisper-hiss, "Scream all you want. But I only hear what I want to."
Lola Rhodes and Olivia Burke are starring in a movie called Ivy League, billed as "The Twisted Tale Of The Female Con Artist Who Took Manhattan For Millions." Sometimes it's the little things.
If only Ivy Dickens could enjoy this final non-victory, but sadly she took her own life after a breakdown in negotiations between the Swamp People and the Crocodile People dissolved her unhappy, treaty-driven marriage to the King of the Crocodile People. She is survived by a single, croak-throated daughter, the half-crocodile heiress to two thrones, Princess Charlie Peepers. And who is the wormtongued consiglieri lurking just behind her throne, awaiting her majority, tending to her regency? Why, it's Carol Rhodes in disguise. She worships a crocodile god now. His gleaming teeth, His false tears.
Uncle Jack: "Serena looks so lovely in that dress, my sweet. Does she not?"
Georgina: "I used to roofie her, like, all the time. It seems so long ago."
Uncle Jack: "Is that right? I used to rape her mother at the opera."
Of Pilot Inspektor and Vanessa Abrams, of the Thousand Mothers of Chuck Bass and the Thousand Ex-Husbands of Lily Rhodes, we may never hear tell. The impotent Lord Marcus and Duchess Catherine sent flowers that wilted before they arrived. Stephen and Sage Spence are still in jail, for crimes whose records remain sealed. Poppy and Gabriel went down in just a hail of bullets, it was really something.
Juliet Sharp and Carter Baizen, wherever you are: Thank you. You are here, as you've always been, in spirit.
Serena dons her golden wedding armor, a sartorially confused Valkyrie to the end. Dan's hair has basically worked its shit out; he wears a tuxedo whose tailoring can best be described as "futuristic." Everything is right with the world. They are getting married, at an appropriate age. Their children will be masters of the universe, thanks to Rhodes money; they will be healthy in body and mind, raised by parents whose self-interest never impeded their growth. The Loneliest Boy, and the Ittest Girl.
CONSTANCE/ST. JUDE'S
"You may be rid of Dan Humphrey," Gossip Girl intones, "But you'll never be rid of me. There will always be someone on the outside, wanting to get in." A boy with a man-purse, his face occluded, takes in the polymorphous perversity of a boy with a scarf, the kind-eyed oblivion of his first mate; walks past the hateful eyes of a girl with a headband and straight through the cloud of a blonde girl's It Factor. He wants them, and he hates them; he wants to be one of them but defines himself in opposition to them. He thinks he is poor, but has no idea what poverty actually is. He knows only hate. His is the snow-globe, and they will be his dominion. So it goes.
It was good. The show started good and ended well, and somewhere along the way it was no longer necessary to give a shit about them. But that old feeling, that welling feeling behind the eyes that gave these kids their power once upon a time, that will always exist. There is gratitude for the experience, but that's it. Hopefully the show made us better, even as it got worse and worse. Maybe that's all we can ever hope for. But I will tell you this, and it goes for us all -- for the horrible batshit shippers who aren't done growing and the obnoxious hate-watchers that stopped in the middle, for everybody in-between -- it goes for me and it goes for you. I don't know who Wayne Chase is, but he said this:
"If a work of art reaches you emotionally, it teaches you something about survival. You may not be able to put it into words, but you remember it."
XO. Survival is definitely the word. From the outside, from this singular situation I've been in, I would say "something about survival" is probably the best way you could say it. The show was looked down on for being about teenage girls, because the only people we're allowed to shit on are women and young people. And then just as it was proving itself, on the global stage, to be a lot more about that, it changed. And changed again. But whether or not any particular iteration of the show was something that impressed me, it did continue to teach about that. About survival.
When they asked me six years ago what these books were about, I would always say the same thing: "It's about two girls that love each other so much, they have to hold tight to each other, no matter how many times the one gets screwed over and the other is rewarded for no reason. And this is riveting, because you are always one or the other." And that ultimately the point is that you will always be one or the other, in every circumstance, so get over it. What you have a choice about is whether or not to feel shame about it. Whether or not any secret is worth the burden of having one.
And now I would say it's about how you want to watch rich people, but you also want to see them fucked, and that is a lot to ask of yourself, and of a show. It is about whether or not you can look at someone else and what they have, and find it in your heart to remember who you are, independent from your jealousy. That privilege is something to be aware of, not ashamed of. That your only shot in this life of becoming a real person is to move away from whatever's been handed to you, be that intelligence or beauty or money, and into the places that scare you, because that is how we were designed.
The things that are handed to you are worthless. They do not describe you accurately, because your reputation is your behavior and your behavior is about the things you strive for, not the things you just are. You were put in Ravenclaw, if you're reading this, at birth: You will spend your entire life trying to get into Hufflepuff, because that is how you win the game. By using the gifts you were given, instead of confusing them for the point; by using art and the people who hurt you to rise above mere survival and into life.
Because the things you get for free when you start the game are merely tools, to help you get to the rest of yourself. Your soul is located elsewhere, out there in the dark -- outside the comfy house of your best accomplishments, your greatest gifts -- and you have to go and find it. It is in the people you hate, and the people you hurt, and the places that gross you out, and the people who've done you wrong, and it's going to take you the rest of your life. So you should probably get started.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars and Deception for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, his novel The Urges, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.