Tuesday 17 May 2011

Gossip Girl - S4 E22 - The Wrong Goodbye

Chuck and co. race to rescue Blair. Serena confronts crazy Charlie and Vanessa is upset with Dan.


Spoilers after the jump.

OK, the last third or so of that season finale made absolutely no sense whatsoever. By the same cue I'm not sure whether it was genius or just a mess. Let's start from the top. The whole gang, even Vanessa gets together at the reunion  (even though Vanessa never went to Constance Billard) and all start talking over one another. What a mess! Everyone agrees there's something wrong with Charlie but everyone is so busy being argumentative that they have no idea what to do. Eventually Serena goes and talks her out of jumping from a window which is nice I suppose.

We then however after that get a rehash of one of the awful storylines from last year that made me want to bang my head against the wall with Serena being forced to choose between Dan and Nate even though it's over for a goddamn year. What's worse is that even though she gathers them to apologise for being wishy washy and what not she comes to the exact same goddamned conclusion! She chooses herself apparently - who does she think she is, Kelly Taylor? What a pointless thread that apparently existed solely to give something for... No, it was just entirely useless actually.

Before all that was going on we had Chuck getting a phone call from... who was holding the phone? Blair? Thorpe? I wasn't paying attention because I was already bored with it. None of that made sense either. I mean, Thorpe has Blair locked in a room presumably his captive but he has his back turned to her the ENTIRE FREAKING TIME THEY'RE TOGETHER! He is in his late forties at least, when she ran for the door he didn't even budge - what if she had just come straight for him and knocked him out? Makes no sense.

Anyway, Chuck, Nate and Raina come to bust open the door and rescue her. Awfully convenient that, and also incredibly anti-climactic because there was never any kind of danger, the coot was just talking and crying. Blah. Raina plays nice with her father for a moment to get him to say something nice but then flips her stance again declaring "OMG YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL". That's the end of him, remarkably quickly and presumably he confessed considering most of the evidence gathered by the investigator was circumstancial.

Rather than hook up with Louis as she is supposed to, Blair goes to some random club with Chuck and they have some bizarre party that ends with the two of them getting hoisted in the air like royalty. W. T. F. Being saved is apparently a nice aphrodisiac and Chuck is able to sweet talk her into sex in a backroom. But then Blair he decides that he is too unstable for that relationship to happen and Louis is a better option for her. He deliver her back to him, she and Chuck have a tearful goodbye with Louis seemingly understanding and then off to their happy ending go the Prince and the future Princess. Too bad she's pregnant with someone's baby. Well it's not for sure Blair's pregnancy test, but she at least is the most obvious choice. Looks like the long national nightmare of Chair will continue on and on and on and zZzZzZz...

Did Nate do anything in this episode? Has he done anything since his father was around? He is far more useless than Vanessa who gave Dan what for. She is completely right about him though. He has sold out. Being accepted by the moneyed elite has changed him from an imaginative individual to just another snooty critic. She flits off to Spain having made off with his semi-biographical manuscript, selling it to the highest bidder. Looks like an interesting plot for next season so I'm sure it will get ruined or forgotten about entirely.

The craziest twist of the night was the revelation that Charlie was not Charlie but actually an actress named Ivy who pretended to be Charlie (Crazy Charlie) who is actually dead so that Charlie's mother Carol could get her hands on the trust fund. Huh. This is the part that really, really made no sense. I don't understand trust funds period but how is acting like a crazy person supposed to unlock it? Shouldn't that make it harder to access? I don't get it! Ivy is heading back to New York presumably expecting to be hired by Georgina (back for the finale to set up next season) for some devious plot. Presumably Carol will get hooked for fraud before long. Shouldn't she stipulate that Ivy not go back to New York and be super-suspicious? The whole thing makes no sense.

The author of the original books Cecily von Ziegesar (sounds like a made up name) made a cameo as a Constance Billard alum in this episode. The books ended once the characters graduated from high school and I'm not sure the writers for this show know where to take it next because let's be clear, college students are less like Serena randomly getting hired in California to be a writer and more like Nate, hanging around his apartment smoking weed and playing video games all day. They will inevitably rush into storylines with these characters that realistically wouldn't happen until they were in their late 20s, but since they have their established universe they would find themselves awfully limited if they did not. It's increasingly tough to swallow and endlessly confusing twists and turns are not the answer.


"Gossip Girl" airs Mondays on The CW at 9:00 pm EST.

No comments:

Post a Comment