Gossip Girl (2007-2012) - Did You Watch?

Why did these High School kids have so much time? And I know they were from rich families but they were out drinking alcohol daily. Fake IDs? Or family name pull?

I saw a handful of episodes. I remember enjoying one of the episodes - something about Thanksgiving where there were a bunch of flashbacks and I think maybe a "Ghost of Thanksgiving Past" thing with the brunette?

Ed Westwick fascinates and repulses me.

R3 I find him gross lol

Ed Westwick's way of talking was HILARIOUS to me.

Did he think he was Brando?

I feel Westwick was always trying to keep an American accent going.

Never found him good looking. He doesn’t need to be but I almost feel he does for his character but then again he’s crazy rich so I guess that’s all that matters.

Yes, I watched. It was like a guilty pleasure. And I feel pretty much the same about the characters as you do. (Really loathed Jenny.)

My biggest disappointment was that Damien Dalgaard didn't fuck Eric van der Woodsen.

Everyone I know hated Jenny lmaooo. I’m shocked they didn’t try writing her out with how unpopular the character was

The actress who played Jenny was a heroin addict, so they did have to write her out of many episodes because she couldn't film.

Loved it. Never missed an episode. Crushed majorly on Lonely Boy, Rufus, and Man Bangs. Kelly Rutherford is my favorite soap actress.

R9 that’s sad. She’s the little girl from Jim Carrey’s The Grinch.

I remember Kelly Rutherford having a bunch of money problems during the show.

Rufus is smoking hot. Way hotter than his son and I love Dan lol. His daughter can rot.

It was an excellent show when it started, but was insufferably bad in the last several seasons.

I first noticed Matthew Settle (Rufus) when he played rapist Alex Kelly on Lifetime's biopic, Crime in Connecticut: The Story of Alex Kelly.

I think Matthew Settle is from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

Chace Crawford must have let someone smash it to get cast. He has zero charm or charisma or presence. Jean just PRETTY.

Chace Crawford is very, very pretty.

R16 indeed. He’s like a prettier, softer looking Zac Efron.

But he lacks any presence or charm or charisma as an actor. There’s a reason he gets the least screen time of the main 6 teens on season 1 and he is always missing from episodes all together. I’m on season 2 and he was MIA from like 2 or 3 episodes in a row lol. It almost felt like they didn’t know what to do with the pretty boy from TX.

Who the fuck is writing these posts? Someone has been writing these posts where everything is phrased like a college news station reader

The best thing was The Soup making fun of it every week, especially Westwick.

I used to read the Vulture blog about GG every Tuesday.

Again, since the early aughts the marketing teams from various orgs and businesses are trying to hype up either their client(janet) or their products(tv shows).

Janet?

R2 Blair Waldorf Must Pie was one of my favourite episodes from season 1.

I miss Courtney Cox's "Dirt," anyone else remember that? She was the editor of a tabloid newspaper. It was really fun and the critics generally liked it, but it only lasted 2 seasons. I think it was an early "peak tv" show before its time (2007/8.) A writers strike at the time also hurt it.

Blair is a terrible character. I’m on season 2 and her jealousy of Serena is just too much and her constantly trying to sabotage her is too much.

So happy Serena isn’t holding back to satisfy Blair anymore.

Why did they cast someone that looked so young to be Penn Badgleys dad? I know sometimes parents stay looking young (my mom still gets confused for my sister, it’s annoying) but he looked super young

I did like that he was hotter than both his kids. Very realistic. I always feel gorgeous people’s kids are never as hot as their parents.

Settle did full frontal in a movie. I remember seeing the pic when the GG was on.

From the OMG page on Matthew Settle. Looks like a grower. Looks like a very nice grower.

It looks like an engorged clit

It’s clearly soft.

I enjoyed the first season but by the 2nd, i hated everyone. I barely made it through season 3 and gave up. My fave episode was the 80s flashback [italic]Valley Girls[/italic] with Brittany Snow and Krysten Ritter. I'm kind of bummed they didn't follow through on that spin-off.

I hate Blair. Barf.

[Quote] I think Matthew Settle is from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

He was hilarious in that movie. Especially towards the end.

OP, the first season was very promising. And then, like so many American tv shows, it just kept going and going and going. What's weird about that is its rating plummeted after the first 1.5 seasons--pretty much coinciding with the economic crash that happened in 2008. Around that time, television audiences developed a big distaste for tv shows that glorified the very very rich and spoiled (not including reality tv).

--------Spoiler OP----------- I loved the arc when that crazy stalker drugged and framed Selena and posted it online. If this had been a cable show, she would have been sexually assaulted as a hot young girl stumbling around sketchy NY neighborhoods at night. Anyway, her family and friends force her to go into rehab. Oddly, we see that Selena has paparazzi following her, so suddenly she is famous again. Blair, Dan, and "Gossip Girl" were the only ones willing to beleive Selena. They went to some podunk town in CT to follow the case. In the end, Selena breaks out of rehab, in a gorgeous grey gown, to confront her stalker at a charity event. I really liked that story line. The rest of the show never lived up to that season.

I'm still pissed that some other poor girl got to get the grandmother's money. I know Selena's mom got control of her dead husband's billions, and Selena/gay brother have large trust funds, but these people were only mildly upset about loosing a very large trust. You'd think it was a 20 dollar bill that blew away in the wind. We know that girl would have lawyers crawling up her ass t get that money back into the family's hands.

Last point, this show should have given the gay brother a real story line. Heck due to budgeting they should have sent Jenny ff to boarding school and brought the brother back. A strong gay story line would have boosted the ratings and made the show iconic. Glee came out a few years later with a gay character to a lot of fan fare. The writers were way to conservative given the potential of the show. They already veered from the source material throughout the show so it was the writers that decided to keep it hetero and boring as hell.

Blair was by far the best mean girl on any "teen show" ever. Leighton Meester was more attractive and a better actress than Blake Lively, it was funny to me that the show kept trying to push this idea of Serena being a charismatic beauty. I mean, she's good looking but Leighton was much better looking.

R37 they knew their audience so they catered to it. White straight teens was their main audience.

Glee attracted all types of people

R38 the hot long legged blonde always gets ahead, even if the brunette is prettier.

R40, true. It seems to go double if the blond is bland and has blue eyes.

I remember when they were doing ads for the show they kept talking about how much flack it was getting from parents for being "too risque" lol.

R41 signs of Aryan ancestry always gives them advantages (light hair, light eyes etc.)

R42 it was. It seems tame now but at the time it was considered risqué cause it had teens always out getting drunk and sleeping around and was promoted to teens.

Dawson’s Creek had a lot of controversy also when it debuted and that ones super tame by today’s standards

I think Blake Lively was the hottest one on the show. She carried herself with confidence and her boob job made the clothes look great. Selena and Blair were both filthy rich and smart. All things considered what man wouldn't want the hot easy-going blonde on their arm instead of the uptight brunette?

I don’t like Blair. I think she’s terrible, i don’t care how pretty she may be. She’s uptight, obsessive, paranoid and really evil at times.

[Quote] it was. It seems tame now but at the time it was considered risqué cause it had teens always out getting drunk and sleeping around and was promoted to teens.

No, it wasn't. Even their "sex scenes" were tame. Have you ever seen Skins??

[Quote] She carried herself with confidence and her boob job made the clothes look great.

The nose job helped too.

Skins, the UK series? This wasnt in the UK sweetheart.

R48 there was a US version too.

The US version was terrible and flopped bad. And was not any more crazy than GG.

Idk what “crazy sex scenes” you were seeing on the US version, or the UK version for that matter. There weren’t many sex scenes, there was some nudity, however. Also they weren’t rich kids getting drunk every day. They were realistic teens dealing with teen issues, and yes sometimes alcohol and partying is a part of that but it’s not like GG. GG teens were living life like alcoholic adults, not teens struggling with family life, personal issues etc.

Not that GG didn’t have some family issues, but not like Skins.

May I also point out that Skins USA wasn’t even USA, but Canada.

r50 i think that was only season 1. After the first season which followed the books, the kids had a drink here and there but it wasn't like getting blacked out was really a part of the plot points. Only Jenny had a wild side. Again, they could have done so much more with a story about rich kids with an endless supply of money.

I remember one other episode that I saw that I enjoyed. It had to do with Blair setting up that chick from Buffy. All the regulars worked together to trap her in the Park or something so that her parents found her and sent her back to rehab.

Season 2 and on had more sex than season 1 but less alcohol to appease parents upset how much the kids drank season 1, and GG was a big hit season 1.

Season 2 had stuff like Blair using her body and sexuality to convince Chuck to do what she asked of him and his reward was him getting to fuck her. Blair cheating on her British boyfriend with Chuck then using how the Brit doesn’t SHOW her he wants her enough to get him to stay. Nate (a minor) having a sexual relationship with a married woman in her 40s in exchange for money (being a male prostitute) then that same woman is caught having sex with her stepson who she’s been banging since he was young.

Parents had right to see issue with what was happening. I think you’re confusing risqué with graphic and grotesque.

One reason they didn't go deeper gay with Eric Van Der Woodsen is that Conor Paolo hated playing a gay role.

Skins the british show is VERY extreme in terms of sexual content and other things. I watched two seasons of it and I was kind of blown away by how graphic it was compared to American teen shows. Yes, Blair is the chick people love to hate, because she WAS evil and power hungry.

Skins had a lot of nudity.

R57, and a ton of disturbing violence. One of the main characters on the second season even gets killed in a psychopath's house (but it's hidden which actually makes it more disturbing). And in the first season, one of the main characters breaks his ex girlfriend and her current boyfriend up. The boyfriend finds out, and somehow drugs the main character's sister and attempts to force the main character to have sex with his own sister.

I watched a season or so. Like Riverdale, I loved it and then suddenly it got really old and seemed way over the top adult and fantastical for a show set in high school and I lost interest.

I saw SKINS “series” 1 and that’s it. Never watched after.

I liked it. Loved specific episode, like Cassie’s episode and I think his name was Danny? It was episode 4 I believe.

R60, you should watch the second season as well.

R61 I think I saw the premiere to season 2. I should give it a watch. I didn’t like how the show changed casts after and everyone claims the later casts were better.

OP Dan is not sweet. Lonely boy = gossip girl. Georgina isn't around long enough to be an "ICON".

R63, Dan being gossip girl made no sense, despite how the creators of the show tried to justify that choice.

Who is Gossip Girl in the books?

[quote] I think Blake Lively was the hottest one on the show. She carried herself with confidence and her boob job made the clothes look great.

Speaking of clothes, it was crazy that this show never won an Emmy for costume design. I don't even think it earned a nomination. Did they not submit? .. Anyway, fashion, both women's and men's, was a big draw for me.

Nice 10th Anniversary retrospective with costume designer, Eric Daman, at Fashionista:

r66 what the heck was that's school's uniform code? The guys looked like clones while the girls look like it's 'Baby One More Time' spirit week. Over the course of the show the clothes were a mix of Forever 21 cheap with a few expensive items mixed in. It helped because girls could emulate 90% of the clothes on a middle class allowance. To me, a lot of things looked so cheap.

Looked up Georgina after reading this thread. She's changed.

I watched the first three seasons, and loved it. Suddenly I could not stand to watch anymore, and never did again. Same thing happened to me with Riverdale too, like the person above.

no show has infuriated me more. the elevation of rapist chuck to romantic ideal, the whitewashing of blair's bullying, the relentless elitism of the show and the fandon: UGH

R70 yet some people don’t get how the show was controversial and why some parents hated it.

R71, I think it was mainly controversial for the sex aspect. It's funny that the show became FAR more distasteful after the first season.

One of the biggest bits of controversy came from the ads pasted on the sides of NYC buses that simply said "OMFG" over pics of the cast. It may have said "Gossip Girl/CW" in smaller type, but it was the "OMFG" that caught your attention, and perhaps your ire.

Oh shut up, R70. You are trying to apply the present day zeitgeist to 2007, what is the point?

We only survived for the first two seasons.

Lmao word. The black and Asian girls were dropped.

Forget Chace's stiff acting, I wanted to suck his stiff cock and then have his ass afterwards.

R77 I bet it’s small. He looks like your typical southern white Boy.

R78 Could be, but his ass would be quite the party.

I liked the show and watched every episode, but i hated every character. Except for Rufus, each person was worse than the next.

While it's possible Taylor Momsen left the show due to a drug problem, she was also starting a rock band, releasing an album and touring at age 16/17. Her music is played pretty frequently on my local rock station.

[quote]Except for Rufus, each person was worse than the next.

I liked Lily. I can't remember: did she and Rufus end up together in the end?

[Quote] yet some people don’t get how the show was controversial and why some parents hated it.

I thought Ed was "rapey" in the post-Gossip Girl era.

[Quote] One of the biggest bits of controversy came from the ads pasted on the sides of NYC buses that simply said "OMFG" over pics of the cast.

I remember that but my favourite was this ad for The Vampire Diaries.

Perhaps r70 can tell us what is going to happen in the 2020s.

That is funny, R84. I could never watch that show, though: vampires.

R84 AKA, Two Vamps and a Beard.

Same with me, R86. Vampires have always struck me as completly stupid—same with werewolves and zombies. (I love witch stuff, though, oddly.)

I was tempted to try to watch Vampire Diaries only because I was ***so in lust*** with Ian Somerhalder when I was young. He played a gay character in Rules of Attraction, and I fantasized about him all the time. I watched Lost to see him, and I stopped watching when his character was killed. But his face transformed to a different face around the time of Vampire Diaries, and the perfect face of his youth was just gone and suddenly I wasn’t at all attracted to him anymore. I thought that was so weird. Here he is in his prime.

I do not believe Ian S. is gay.

Look at this face. 😍😍😍

R88 Playing ageless characters has always been problematic. I recall Ian playing crazy evil very well on SVU, where he played a brother-raping, father-beating serial killer. It's the eyes, of course.

Lol R86 well it was all the rage thanks to Twilight.

I didn't say I don't think he's pretty, r90.

I really don't like him. IIRC, he's said some salacious antigay shit. At the time, I did not take him to be a self-hater, just a hater.

[Quote] Two Vamps and a Beard.

Someone should notify Nikki Reed then. Does Paul have any gay rumours??

[Quote] Same with me, [R86]. Vampires have always struck me as completly stupid—same with werewolves and zombies. (I love witch stuff, though, oddly.)

I think there should be more werewolf shows.....for reasons.

R92 Talk about not getting things. I never understood why anyone would want to have sex with a cold marble statue, no matter how pretty he is. Guy probably jizzes sand and glitter.

I have never seen a Twilight, either, r92.

Anytime a show does that eye-meld thing, I change the channel. I've never accidentally gone to a vampire film.

[quote]Does Paul have any gay rumours??

I used to watch him on Another World in his Wasilewski days. He did not strike me as being gay.

R94 I was thinking more the characters than the actors. I'd guess both actors are breeders.

[Quote] Guy probably jizzes sand and glitter.

Lol

[Quote] I have never seen a Twilight, either, [R92].

I read the books and was a fan of the movies.......at the time.

Is that Ian or Paul in r94?

Why can't you stop those animated POS?

[quote]I read the books

I did not read the Twilight books, either. Vampires. I didn't read the Gossip Girl books, either, though. The only time I've ever read any of these multi-volume, multi-season original source material books was Pretty Little Liars, maybe halfway through the TV series. It so confused me when I watched the next season, I had to stop watching.

I watched Twilight because it was SO popular and I thought, OK, it has to have redeeming qualities to be this good—get over your vampires-are-stupid prejudice. The movie wasn’t only dumber than I imagined, but so boring I barely finished it.

I do have serious prejudices about these genres. I don’t care how standard-issue “hot” any of the actors is; werewolves are a no-go for me. I can’t get over the lameness of the concept. Zombies...well, I feel like a strong intellectual case has been made for them via contemporary interpretations, but even the Walking Dead—I tried to care, but all I saw was stupidity.

And yet, from Bewitched to The Craft to Sabrina, I am a sucker for witchy magic. It makes no sense, really, except that I kind of believe in mysticism and want witchy magic to be real.

I never heard that Somerhalder ever allegedly said anything homophobic. He seems to be a humanitarian in real life. I recall that he did something impressive after a natural disaster, but I am too lazy to look it up.

But I’m not too lazy to look up photos! I agree that his eyes (and eyebrows) always were transfixing, but his red lips and rosy cheeks also used to do it for me. As he has aged, he has some sort of Milo Yiannopoulos Frankenstein-long-bony-head type of thing going on, though, and he went seemingly overnight from being my ideal to not turning me on at all, even if he is still objectively close to a perfect 10.

[quote]I don’t care how standard-issue “hot” any of the actors is

I can't even watch Matthew Goode in some kind of vampire series. He's doing one next, and I think I've seen him in everything he's ever done. Interview with a Vampire was the first time I didn't see a Tom Cruise movie, post-Risky Business.

R100 that's Tyler Hoechlin from Teen Wolf.

R102 i take it you stopped after the first Twilight??

R105 Uh, yeah. I would never spend any further time on another Twilight movie. Unlike a lot of people, I do find Robert Pattinson attractive—but that is no justification for staring senselessly at a terrible movie for 90 minutes. Neither is shirtless werewolf (ugh) Taylor Lautner. Those are the types of movies that telegraph directly to the viewer, “the producers know you only came here to see teenagers get it on and lots of shirtless teen boys, so fuck the rest, here’s your money’s worth.” And shirtless teen boys do not motivate me to watch movies.

R106 fair enough

I feel a bit sorry for Taylor. After getting famous for having that body, any degree of letting himself go is going to be just that much more painful.

Al I see when I look at Lautner is a developmental disorder.

R108 i take it you haven't read the Taylor Lautner threads on here??

Lautner has let his body go. If he gets another movie role, he will hire a trainer and get it back. It’s not hard for someone like him.

I really don’t understand (I really don’t.) how people like him become superstars because of their bodies when it seems a good 40 percent of boys and men from age 16 through 42 have used Instagram to show that they have equally worked out, Men’s Fitness-type bodies. What is the big deal? Any high school wrestler and most college frat dudes and nearly all gay guys on Grindr under 40 have that body nowadays.

[Quote] I really don’t understand (I really don’t.) how people like him become superstars because of their bodies

I think in Lautner's case, it was less to do with his body and more because of the Twilight craze. He had his chance with the movie Abduction and it bombed. His ship has sailed.

R112 Nah, pretty sure the appeal was “teen boy with hard adult abs in the woods.” That’s one of three reasons people bought tickets. The others were 2) nerdy girls and boys mooning over Pattinson’s ugly-pretty face; and 3) girls with latent lesbian tendencies ogling Kristen Stewart and wishing they could be with such a cold, uncharismatic young lady.

R113 I meant as in why he was booking [italic]other[/italic] roles, not Twilight.

Fair points all, I think every 3rd guy under 30 in LA is a personal trainer these days.

[Quote] I think every 3rd guy under 30 in LA is a personal trainer these days.

And if you're lucky, maybe you'll get to date Britney Spears!

R116 Looks like someone just found the man in the boat.

I seem to remember the actress who played Jenny wanted off the show and did her best to piss them off until they finally did? As someone mentioned, she was starting a music career and thought it was going to take off and thought the show was hampering her success.

R118 Jessica Biel did the same with Seventh Heaven. She wanted off, they wouldn’t break her contract, UNTIL she did that topless shoot at 17.

R119 I remember David Gallagher got hit hard with the Puberty Acne wand at one point, though otherwise he aged reasonably well.

[Quote] I remember David Gallagher got hit hard with the Puberty Acne wand at one point, though otherwise he aged reasonably well.

Simon was my fave.....or maybe i should most tolerable of the Camden clan. But he wasn't the only one to age well from 7th Heaven.

I found Simon annoying. Maybe I would appreciate him more now? I haven’t seen that show in years.

I loved Lucy.

[Quote] I loved Lucy.

I liked Lucy until she got older and then she just became insufferable. Much like Annie and Ruthie. I don't know what Kevin saw in her.

I had stopped watching by the time Lucy got married. Never saw the entire series although I’ve always planned to.

R124 I'm not sure why they bothered with a season 11. Season 10 was a decent send off.

[quote]Georgina isn't around long enough to be an "ICON".

But the season when she found Jesus was GOLD.

DL faves Sebastian Stan and Aaron Tveit had recurring roles in later seasons.

I love season 2. It’s FUN. Season one I found a bit bland

[Quote] DL faves Sebastian Stan and Aaron Tveit had recurring roles in later seasons.

Also Armie Hammer.

Armie was a bad guy

Armie was fun to hate in Reaper.

Lily became irredeemable after she had an innocent man sent to prison just to save Serena’s already shitty reputation. She was horrible.

Remember when Blair married the mean Prince from Monaco?

[quote]DL faves Sebastian Stan and Aaron Tveit

I believe I am the only one to "fave" Aaron.

Aaron is cute boring vanilla. He’s not a fav.

Sebastian has that "gonna fuck you into the floor" thing going on.

^ See what I mean, r130?

[QUOTE]Lily became irredeemable after she had an innocent man sent to prison just to save Serena’s already shitty reputation.

Who was that? I thought I'd seen all of GG, and that is something I would HATE a character for doing. I seem to have conveniently misremembered that.

Didn't Seb and Leighton date for a while??

R136 It was Serena’s teacher from boarding school. Kate Cassidy played Juliet, his sister who dated Nate to get to Serena. She teamed up with Vanessa and Jenny and was the reason Blair banished Jenny.

Didn't Brian J. Smith play the one who got in prison for a crime he didn't commit or was he just some random blackmailer?

R139 Brian played the ex boyfriend of Ivy, the girl who was hired to play Serena’s cousin Charlotte. He began having a romance with Serena while blackmailing Ivy

It hasn’t even been off air long enough for a reboot. They need to chill

OMFG. As much as I would like to see Chace given the opportunity to work again, WTF would they even call it?

If they make Aaron Tveit (Tripp Van Der Bilt) the star, I'm in.

Why would they make a character that popped in and out here and there the star?

Because I love him, and he would be just the right age for a father figure character, maybe a father of a next-generation character. And because I love him.

Again, it’s been 7 years since the show ended. 7. Not 20.

Ergo, r147?

[Quote] Pedowitz said, "I don't know what it would be," but it all comes down to the involvement of original EPs Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. "'Cause you don't want to do anything without them."

Of course you can. And i loved The OC but Josh isn't exactly great.

I never liked Blair. I found her to be an awful character and annoying beyond belief.

There are so many hookups that annoyed me and I can not stand that they always seemed to fuck each other within their circle. I loved Dan and Serena together, hated her with Nate. Never believed Blair and Chuck as a couple, and didn't like her with Nate either. Vanessa and Dan ending up together is ridiculous.

For the reboot they should do a Lily Van Der Woodsen prequel or The Carlyles or an It Girl series and recast Jenny.

Jenny is an awful character. No thanks.

Lily prequel was supposed to happen starring Brittany Snow big was scrapped

[Quote] Jenny is an awful character. No thanks.

She was ok.......before season 2 lol

[Quote] Lily prequel was supposed to happen starring Brittany Snow big was scrapped

Yeah i know. They can just recast Brittany and Krysten.

R74

I didn't realize "rapists are not romantic" is a "now" concept. There was plenty of backlash to Chuck's abusive behaviour even then. Sepinwall and fienberg led the charge on that.

CW didn’t even wanna cast Westwick as Chuck cause he looked more like a murderer and rapist than a love interest. I think that’s why they made him very rapey 😂

Chuck was this sinister alpha douche people are supposed to love to hate and yet be impressed how he manages to get himself out of the drama the show throws at him. I think Westwick did a good job with the role. The whispery threatening voice was ridiculous though. And I will never forget that hilarious big, furry coat he wore in one scene.

[Quote] And I will never forget that hilarious big, furry coat he wore in one scene.

A lot of Chuck's outfits were ridiculous.

I have the dvd box set and tonight i am starting season 5.

Rewatching and just wrapped up Arnie Hammer’s arc. Can’t stand him, feel like it might be that has the voice of a giant, an overgrown person. Only liked him as the Winklevoss twins.

The writing of the show is actually very quick, clever, and literary, but e themes are ugly and lopsided.

[Quote] Can’t stand him, feel like it might be that has the voice of a giant, an overgrown person.

Lol well he can't really help that.

Armie Hammer sucked on this. Very wooden.

Leighton Meester is a natural blonde while Blake Lively a natural brunette (although she denies it). They forced Leighton to go brunette so Blake wouldn't have to.

No wonder by season 5 they weren't on speaking terms.

Chase Crawford was awful on this.

[quote]Chace Crawford must have let someone smash it to get cast. He has zero charm or charisma or presence. Jean just PRETTY.

Probably the same guy that James Vander whatever let fuck him for the role of Dawson.

James Van Der Beek got outshone by all 3 of his co-stars. Katie Holmes is a big highlight for that show, cause while not being a good actress, she was incredibly charming and charismatic, on top of pretty, same for Joshua Jackson.

Michelle Williams was great at the dramatic stuff, which is why she always got so much to do until the final season or two... and Dawson was there speaking long ridiculous lines.

[quote]Michelle Williams was great at the dramatic stuff,

I was pretty great at the dramatic stuff too.

[Quote] Leighton Meester is a natural blonde while Blake Lively a natural brunette (although she denies it).

Lol what a stupid thing to deny!

[Quote] No wonder by season 5 they weren't on speaking terms.

Lol some fans actually think they were fucking at one stage.

[Quote] Katie Holmes is a big highlight for that show, cause while not being a good actress, she was incredibly charming and charismatic

Which sucks because i can't stand Joey.

Too bad the show didn't include some parts from the books like Dan having a relationship with another man and if they were to ever reboot this show they should include this.

R168 i knew i should have kept on reading those books lol. I bet if it were made now they wouldn't have changed Vanessa's appearance so much.

R167, are Leighton and Blake really not on speaking terms?

R170 when was the last time they even interacted?? I just don't think they were close. Or that Leighton is a big fan of GG in general. She did some interview with Adam and GG got brought up, she looked awkward lol

Leighton probably feels about GG what many feel about their teen soaps after they end and they struggle to break away from that image.

I wish they would re-do the show, but let another network take over like Netflix (not a network) or HBO. If any of you have seen Elite, you know the potential that Gossip Girl could have on a proper channel.

BTW: Elite is on Netflix, WATCH IT!

One more.

R172 just one more thing she has in common with Adam lol

Taylor Momsen's character (Jenny) was written horribly on the show, but she is quite entertaining as a band frontwoman with a raspy/growly voice. They've had moderate success, including 4 #1's on the rock chart. I always found it amusing when she was onstage in her late teens with only but black electrical tape over her nipples and the rest of the band (all male) much older than her. I caught a guitar pic she threw out at one of their shows.

Here she is at 18, not too long after the debut album came out..

Jenny was fine in the first season. But by the third I wanted to kill her lol. I do like The Pretty Reckless though and Taylor has a decent voice. It's a shame if those rumours about her being into heroin are true because she seems like a nice person.

Kristen Bell will be returning as narrator.

I love the high school years, but after that the show died a slow painful death. My idea of torture would be to watch the final season again.

R168 the sexuality-confusion plot was a hilight in the novels, though it was a C-plot that only lasted one book (Volume 10/13 from 2006, one of the ghostwritten ones) and seemed to have no lasting consequences. Dan & Chuck get into this convoluted bitchy psychological war of the Roses over this hipster middle-class bookshop-bottom named Greg, and hilariously the minor antagonist in Chuck is the one who wins and poor sad nice-guy Dan is really broken up about it (and the girls do not get it, at all). Then to convolute matters Dan’s absentee mother catches wind of this drama through the grapevine, and decides to show her support by almost outting her bi son at a shindig. FWIW Book!Dan never decides whether he prefers guys and ends up forgetting all about Greg happy choosing Vanessa in the last novel, while Book!Chuck gets packed off to military-school and mysteriously comes back with his sex addiction and his predilection for cock totally cured (in hindsight very eerie and disturbing).

There is a bizarre little Easter egg in a later season of the show, where Dan & Chuck get into a verbal tiff and Chuck jeeringly asks if Dan is gay. This would not fly today, though it was entirely in-character for rude douche Chuck to say and in fairness it barely elicited audience titters or nods in 2008 either.

R65 the identity of the blogger Gossip Girl remains unknown in the books, and there is no move to unmask her either (as in the final season of the show). It is even implied that the narrative asides and tips in the books are not an in-universe character but the narrative device of the author, breaking the frame. Dan Humphrey is emphatically not Gossip Girl in the canon of the books.

For the purposes of the conventions of a tv show adaptation, however, there had to be a character source for the blogger’s intel and this was initially intended to be Serena’s brother Eric - if you watch the first season assuming that the Gossip Girl is Eric, it hangs together better. This reveal was leaked to press sometime during the shooting for the second season, though, so this idea was scrapped in favor of keeping it up in the air until writers could make a different choice (which they did in Dan, a few seasons later). It helped that the actor playing Eric was reported to be unhappy in his role, because it was gay part and also because it had been hugely underwritten and oversold to him.

Meester should be proud of GG since she hasn't done shit since.

[quote] no show has infuriated me more. the elevation of rapist chuck to romantic ideal, the whitewashing of blair's bullying and the relentless elitism

True. The show was more believable, dramatic and fun in the first two seasons, when it wasn’t trying to defend its own main characters and how sleazy, selfish, entitled and greedy they all are.

Chuck is the prime example. In the light novels and in the first season of the show, he was to the exclusion of all else a lecherous narcissistic scheming antagonist that you want to see punched or arrested or humiliated repeatedly I.e., the Heel character that every basic serial ensemble drama requires. After about 20-25 episodes, Chuck was something altogether different - almost a muted, neutered, apologetic PG-version of what he had been introduced to us as. It made no sense, and insulted the audience.

The scene in the pilot where he tries to force himself on Serena - his school friend, soon-to-be stepsister, and secret long-held love interest of his best friend Nate - is absolutely compelling in its awfulness even 13 years on. It is a repulsive contemptible action you don’t want to watch, but at the same time you do want to see where that thread is going to lead and what the comeuppance or redress will be. There was a fascinating relationship set up between these two characters with this one scene, that sadly just became inert and pointless later on. It’s all about tension. But as both Chuck & Serena were gradually repainted as misguided blameless victims of their own pasts/families/mistakes, we lost such interesting dark dynamics & twists.

Reaching desperately not to offend by cleaning up or bowdlerising or glossing over real-life ugliness in storylines has been a big problem with contemporary tv drama, and will constitute one for the GG reboot.

R182 well at least she's not alone. I don't think Adam likes talking about his OC days despite how iconic the show (and Seth) is.

R182 since GG ended Leighton has won a Williamsburg Best Actress award, booked a sitcom, and made a whole album. Where were you the last seven years, sis?

I loved Dan's hairy armpits and chest hair. ♥️❣️❤️♥️

^^please, keep him. Dan’s dad was so much hotter. The jawline, the smile, the body..

The actor who played him was only fifteen years or so older than Badgeley, which is sort of hilarious and weird in hindsight.

Well, 185, she has nothing in the works now, no one watched her sitcom and no one listened to her album.

Team Serena all the way, but you have to admit Blair was fierce. The bitch had rage.

But then I also wanted endgame Danessa & Cherena so I’m probably darksided. The other OTPs are of course Blair x Yale, Nate x 10-strip VoidRealms, and Georgina x God. Jenny is better off alone, homeschooled.

Georgina x God 😆

It’s easy to forget but there was a time long ago when Ed Westwick was the most embarrassing & upsetting posterboy Brit.

Watch the fantastic first two seasons, then stop. The show died a slow creative death and the final season was a root canal without painkillers

That ugly French girl from Harry Potter, the one that nursed Chuck when he was MIA in Paris, that was the absolute worst.

The Asian girl in the Black girl ended up going to Med school and becoming a nutritionist, respectively.

R193 that arc made no sense dramatically, and the writers had to twist themselves in knots to get it to basically work r.e. villainising Blair & making Chuck sympathetic while also introducing yet another con-woman into the mix. Clémence Poésy is pleasant to watch, but she wasn’t a tonal fit for GG in the least. Season Four would have been more interesting with Chuck (and/or Serena) mostly absent rather than shoehorning a new character in.

Plus it never looks right pairing an English actor with a French in an American show. You can sense the inherent disdain from both sides, for the material and each other.

R194 those two characters have way more lines and prominence in the books, though still all they really do is stand around and make bitchy remarks as asides. Good on the actresses for doing something more productive and respectable for work.

[quote] Westwick is hideous and has no business being portrayed as good looking.

Bothered me, too, OP. That was a problem casting ran in to hard, especially given that the writers changed his character orientation midway through. They needed an actor who could simultaneously project allure & repulsiveness, polish & grime, something conventionally attractive that is grotesquely tarnished by pure unadulterated covetousness yet could still be rescued and show a golden side. It’s quite a tough ask, and while Westwick is rather oily he did halfway meet those criteria.

It would surprise many to learn that Chuck in the source material is meant to be more attractive than Nate, “aftershave commercial-handsome” enough to model for a Drakkar commercial (really) and lure literally any girl (and some boys) to bed with minimal effort to be decent or charming on his part. In the eyes of the author this does not redeem his unctuousness or his greed, however, and he is also described by turns as a “pig”. Were the writing on the tv show stronger, clearer and more consistent then a pretty or beautiful model-type with solid acting chops could have shown us the porcine ugliness that is in the soul of Chuck Bass, but alas this was lazy confused overcooked television in which a gross character must telegraph exactly who he is by the way he innately looks. When the creative team turned Chuck to the side of good, you could tell that put the onus on the stylists and crewmen to brush up and light Westwick as nicely as they could to completely obscure the sleaze and repellent characteristics that drip off him naturally.

Even taking aside this difficulty and the whole sexuality-whitewash issue, Chuck as most know him is also written as much more deep, clever & literate a man than was originally intended in the first draft of the series and than detailed in the books. In the novels he is fairly shallow a thinker, ineloquent, and it’s said that “he could barely spell, had never read a book in its entirety, and thought Beowulf was a type of fur used for lining coats” (amazing and disturbing that I still remember that one line - read these books a decade ago as a bored teen on a lot of flights, and have forgotten much of the rest).

I’m not sure who I’d cast as a more apt Chuck, then or now, but in fairness it’s clear Westwick was hamstrung from the get by the vacillating script and production and network so he could only do half a job (he’s still disgusting and one-note, dgmw).

[Quote] hard, especially given that the writers changed his character orientation midway through.

Some fans bring up the attempted rape with Jenny in the pilot. And I forget who it was that said Chuck wasn't supposed to be a big character on the show (like in the books). They said they wouldn't have written that if they knew how popular Chair was going to be. Although it doesn't make sense why they still had Jenny lose her virginity to him 🤢

[Quote] Were the writing on the tv show stronger, clearer and more consistent then a pretty or beautiful model-type with solid acting chops could have shown us the porcine ugliness that is in the soul of Chuck Bass,

Yeah....that doesn't typically happen with any CW show.

Once I realised Blake looks just like Dan Soder even in character glammed out as Serena, it totally killed the fantasy for me.

Easy to forget how big this franchise was for a second. As I remember c.2007-9 there were all sorts of projects & products released globally that were based on the series; mixtape CDs, perfumes & cosmetics, pornos, manga etc.. The book series was also extended by 3 or 4 ghostwritten volumes off the back of the tv show’s success, and the writer Cecily von Ziegesar bagged two new series deals off the back of GG.

Interestingly though the show has never been successfully syndicated or sold for any decent sum to another market since it finished airing. The show hit hard when it dropped and was popular, but that was it. The definition of ‘flash-in-the-pan’.

[quote]The actor who played him was only fifteen years or so older than Badgeley, which is sort of hilarious and weird in hindsight.

Hollywood has done this with actors playing mothers all the time, might as well do the same for Dads r187.

They want young and sexy even when it doesn't make sense.

[Quote] They want young and sexy even when it doesn't make sense.

They don't even have to be sexy. Dylan Walsh is going to be playing a dad on a CW show and there's a 17 year age difference lol

Still miss this glamorous trainwreck of a show.

Somehow I don't think a reboot will recapture the trashy, glitzy, vapid deliciousness of it all.

Has Chace found the right girl yet?

Who has more charisma: Chace or Colton?

R205 neither. They’re both terrible actors.

But Chace has the edge. He can at least play arrogant well. Colton always looks like he’s trying too hard.

Colton seems to have more verve.

It’s such a strange experience rewatching this show in the 2020s. You notice different things, and not just the outdated slang and technology.

Like the set dressing. It’s all so cluttered and distracting! Blair is having a breakdown or whatever, and all I can look at is her dresser/vanity groaning with Chanel products, Diptique candles, and fresh flowers, because that’s what the camera wants me to focus on.

And that brings me to way it’s filmed. Some of the shots and the setups just don’t look right or make any sense. Past season One I don’t think it was filmed for economy, so there’s no explanation for these choices.

The character development is janky, too. Watching beyond the first twenty or thirty episodes, everyone’s personalities seem to do a 180. By the finale it’s like watching a totally different group of people, and not because they’ve matured.

[Quote] The character development is janky, too. Watching beyond the first twenty or thirty episodes, everyone’s personalities seem to do a 180. By the finale it’s like watching a totally different group of people, and not because they’ve matured.

That's a problem i find with most CW shows.

[Quote] Colton always looks like he’s trying too hard.

Funny that the most attractive people in the OP pic are Momsen, Szohr, and Westwick. All reviled or forgotten now.

Lively does have a certain magnetism, though.

[quote] Dan - he is just so sweet and humble and NORMAL. He and Serena make the perfect couple.

In both the books and the show, Dan was essentially stalking Serena and conspiring to make her life hellish.

Ummmm not everyone changes for the better or matures r208

R212 maybe I wasn’t clear enough.

My meaning was, that between the first season and the last all the characters completely renege on all their essential recognisable traits. The Chuck Bass of season One physically looks and sounds like the Chuck Bass of season Six, but beyond that there’s almost no similarity. It’s like they aren’t the same people in the same story on the same show, though the actors and the names are unchanged.

I didn’t mean that the characters simply didn’t develop or grow; that wouldn’t have been quite so egregious, though then we would have been watching a stagnant, depressing, realist drama unfit for the CW. Maybe the writers and showrunners were switched midway through the show, or several times.

Here’s another funny thought; in a month’s time, it will be eight years gone since the show’s final season. It seems like far longer than that.

Ignoring episode one and pretending that scene in the hotel kitchen never went down? Honestly still Churena ride or die.

Chuck & Serena were the only two mains without a toxic relationship, and the only ones who looked out for one another without ulterior motives (again disregarding episode one which is AU to the rest of the show anyways). They understood one another without histrionics and negative feelings creeping in, plus they were very close and they worked easily together - the fact that they were different as chalk and cheese didn't matter at all. They didn't play mind-games, or get into petty fights, and unlike all the rest they actually listened actively to one another (underrated hallmark of a good solid decent relationship). There is a healthy respect and mutual independence between them, but also affection and a good amount of sparks.

There's no reason they couldn't have been a twist ending slowburn late-in-the-game couple, maybe a last season swerve or something. They aren't blood-related and it's not like Lily & Bart went the distance; it's not even incest. In the books Chuck doesn't end up with Blair, either (he isn't even with her), so it's not sacrilege to slavish fans of the plotline either.

[Quote] Ignoring episode one and pretending that scene in the hotel kitchen never went down? Honestly still Churena ride or die.

Chuck also tried to rape Jenny.

no one wants to watch this get rebooted, 100% not with the incompetent show runner they brought back

R216 Josh Schwartz??

It would be tone-deaf to reboot it now. Half the population of the Western world is struggling with money and work because of the pandemic and the economy, and the rich have become the hated enemy. Now is not the time.

R218 it’s already being rebooted though and will now be on HBO.

First pic

Ed Westwick just hasn't aged very well. Perhaps we really do get the face we deserve.

The inconsistency of the OG show continuity and the datedness makes it an amusing watch here in our time.

Thanks to sponsorship whole cast have cheap Verizon dumbphones start to finish, even by 2012. There’s not even a BlackBerry in sight. Even Chuck Bass, who is richer than God and gaudier than the Pope, apparently doesn't own a single item of high-end tech, using a $300 Dell laptop he leaves lying around his penthouse without a password. The entire cast use free email services, and Serena even has a MySpace she actively checks and uses in Season Two.

There’s also the matter of major character/plot details changed, dropped, and forgotten from the early to the later Seasons. One is Serena’s university choices and Alma Mater; at the start of Season One she says that her parents went to Harvard and she is keen to follow in their footsteps yet unlike Blair she does nothing about this school plan and doesn’t mention it again for two Seasons, then at the end of Season Three she becomes vocally adamant she is going to Brown for reasons undisclosed, then in Season Four she transfers from Brown to Columbia because she gets homesick and because apparently her father went there (though she initially told us he was a Harvard alum)? And this is just one example of dozens of continuity errors.

It’s clear the writers and show runners were completely different people each half, and that they didn’t correspond or share notes. They also didn’t seem to refer to the times in which the show was set and taking place. Because of this, I treat the first three Seasons like a separate, better, different show to the remainder of it.

I saw every episode of GG and loved it at the time. However, after seeing Sebastian Stan in a movie (Logan Lucky), I decided to watch a few clips of his character (Carter Baizen) on YouTube, and it was excruciating. Blake Lively truly is a horrible actress...becoming a baby machine was definitely a good career move. Chace Crawford was pretty horrible too.

I liked Leighten Meester as Blair, but Michelle Trachtenberg popping up as Georgina was ALWAYS a treat.

Is Taylor Momsen still a crackhead? It's sad how she completely sabatoged a promising career.

[Quote] Is Taylor Momsen still a crackhead? It's sad how she completely sabatoged a promising career.

I think so. Her music is good. Shame about the heroin.

It's so uncomfortable rewatching, because Chuck Bass is always the most entertaining dynamic one of the core characters on-screen and even has a kind of sexy charisma in spite of his looks, but this conflicts with the uncomfortable frame-breaking awareness that Ed Westwick is a douchebag and a creep irl, and so the allure is besmirched.

Yeah, I liked Chuck, but the revelations about Ed made his character seen even sleazier. I revisit the show every now and then and it would've been so much better without Blake Lively.

I never got Chuck's appeal. He forced himself on Serena and Jenny. And that's not getting into all of the gross shit he pulled on Blair.

Love this goth man trying to make sense of the disparity between the pilot & the finale.

The show should have allowed Chuck and Dan to explore their attractions to men.

[quote] That French girl from Harry Potter, the one that nursed Chuck when he was MIA in Paris, that was the absolute worst.

Realistically, in that situation Chuck would have gone to ground with a guy. Someone like Louis Garrel would have been magnifique.

The obsessive stalker getting the girl was so fucked up even back then.

I couldn't take Chuck serious with that ridiculous whispery voice like he's the godfather himself.

Blair was the show for me. The spunky NY princess bossing everybody around.

RIP Greg the Literary Twink, honestly. Too bad he wasn’t in the OG show, maybe he’ll make it to the reboot.

The best thing about Greg is how he foils Dan’s shitty sexbet with Chuck over him, by spiking Dan with absinthe at their pretentious poetry salon/orgy/sleepover, then hooking up with Dan while he’s totally out of it so he spirals into a sexuality crisis. Yes, it’s arguably dubcon and an awful thing to do, but given how Dan is a stalker of women, a sex pest, a self-confessed homophobe, and someone who came close to daterape himself in past books, he probably had it coming.

From WOULD I LIE TO YOU? (2006), GG Book#10:

[quote] "How about another?" Greg pointed at the silver tray set with a tiny bottle of pale green liquid and a bowl of sugar cubes. Then he took off his glasses, and Dan noticed for the first time that Greg had millions of tiny freckles all over his face. "You need to calm down." Greg gently pried the sterling spoon from Dan's hand and balanced it on the rim of the glass. He deposited a sugar cube on the spoon and poured a thin stream of the potent green liquor over it.

[quote] Greg reached out and cupped Dan's chin gently with his hand. "We're all passionate people, passionate about books, passionate about life." Squeezing Dan's chin playfully, Greg pulled Dan's face close to his and kissed him, softly, on the lips. Greg smiled and kissed Dan again, this time letting his warm tongue slip over Dan's lips. Dan was about to pull away again, but his hand involuntarily ran up the back of Greg's neck and into his short, prickly hair. There was something so totally familiar and comforting about kissing someone with short, spiky hair.

[quote] How far had he [Dan] gone with Greg, exactly? How had he gotten back home? He had almost no memory of putting himself to bed. And he’d woken up in just his favorite pair of red Gap boxer shorts—had he been wearing them yesterday? He couldn’t remember.

[quote] Greg agreed, leaning in closer to Dan. He smelled like popcorn and laundry detergent. He smelled delicious. In a nongay way.

R232 tumblr would have a field day with that storyline.

R233 it would be carnage.

Greg is an awesome character, though. He held up a mirror to the nasty cunty main characters. He & Chuck made a good couple, and deserved each other.

I wonder if the time is right for a show to have such a sordid gay love triangle where two guys have a bet over who manages to fuck the hot new guy first? Well, Showtime's Queer as Folk had such a storyline for one episode. But, you know what I mean.

[quote] One reason they didn’t go deeper gay with Eric Van Der Woodsen is that Conor Paolo hated playing a gay role.

Then he should have been passed over in favor of casting an actor who didn’t. Did they learn nothing from Kerr Smith on Dawson’s Creek?

I always thought of Chace Crawford as a block of wood, but he’s actually charismatic and funny playing an incompetent douchebag superhero on Amazon Prime’s [italic]The Boys[/italic]. Maybe his talent was for dark comedy all along, and he was just never given the chance?

[Quote] Maybe his talent was for dark comedy all along, and he was just never given the chance?

He did get a chance with DL fave The Covenant.

Interesting that this has escaped the dreaded Cancellation(TM) so far.

R238 i thought it already was thanks to Chuck.

In the OP's pic, they certainly don't look like teenagers.

Woke Gossip Girl 2.0 but I have hope. Serena is the shaved head chick, Blair is the trans girl behind the black chick,

Woke Gossip Girl....still no Blacks, Mexicans or Asians.

There are - you need to open the photo.. The other girls in the "Blair" character's group are a black girl, and a trans latina,

Ed Westwick did indeed chew the scenery and absolutely lampoon the entire production, but he had to, because he was given a bunch cardboard cutout Americans for fellow players and nothing else to work with.

Ed Westwick was great and so was Leighton Meister - they had good chemistry.

R245 back in the day when GG was still on, I remember hearing that Westwick, though he ‘dated’ Szohr, actually had a crush on Meester and got a bit carried away with his feelings, to the point it made her uncomfortable and freaked out (I don’t blame her). It was all on LiveJournal, probably deleted now.

He really seems like a messy, rude, mentally-unstable bisexual.

The greatest part about watching this show when it aired was the Reality Index in NYMag the next morning.

It was a lot of fun for the first two seasons and then it became unwatchable.

[quote]Ed Westwick was great

I HATED the way he talked. It was so fake. It was like the nelliest queen trying to sound like Marlon Brando.

The gay/British mannerisms couldn’t be contained no matter how hard Ed tried (and he gave up trying after three seasons).

I loved the bromance between Dan and Nate this first few seasons. Nate was the first person, aside from Serena, to give Dan a chance. Chase and Penn had good chemistry as well.

Bump for the OG since the revival has started. No cameos in season 1 (per the producer) but I bet Kelly Rutherford is the first to show up