Nostalgia remembers the phenomenon, erases later-lesser years.
This was a final ludicrous plot turn, so obviously unplanned.
But weirdly, Dan-as-Gossip-Girl retroactively gives the show a timely quality that it never really had.
Credit: THE CW
Wasnt Gossip Girl his Mr.
I dont read Gossip Girl, Dan tells his little sister, Thats forchicks.
But ifGossip Girlstill has a real, urgent pulse, its the total inversion of that plot.
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Was he the modern puppetmaster, destroying lives with a keystroke?
Did he win Serenas love, or trap her?
You imagine dead movie stars turning on a radio, hearing ItsHedda Hopperhere!
at the just-right plot moment.
This is maybe a relic of something particular to New York culture circa-2000s, the era ofSocialite Rank.
But Socialite Rank and Gawker had a perspective and an agenda.
OnGossip Girl, Gossip Girl is a plotline facilitator, an information provider.
Its old media, omnipresent and essential.
(Us here in the medialovedthis show.)
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Its also the only essential plot element that time-locksGossip Girlanywhere past the millennium.
And Serena and Dans random meet-cute immediately achieves Skywalker-sequel levels of destiny.
All this has happened before, all this will happen again!
These arent even rom-com contrivances; they suggest some long-ago courtly romance.
The shows best moment happens early, when Serena arrives back in New York at Grand Central Station.
She thinks her return is a secret, but there are no more secrets.
She pauses for a moment, dappled in windowlight, and some casual paparazzo (Melanie91!)
The shows timely enough to clock some paranoia everyone is watching!
Its decadent, with a lily-white main cast.
But the noisearoundthe show was uniquely modern.
It had a few million viewers on a brand-new connection.
It cycled the cable revolutions mature content into teen drama.
High school dramas had always played with this stuff, butGossip Girlcut loose all moral context.
The Chuck Bass stuff is disturbing, really.
Heres Chuck on Serena: Theres something wrong with that level of perfection.
It needs to be…violated.
But even the purposefully disturbing parts of the pilot have a helpless glamour.
Its as disturbing and hallucinatory as any image of New York, perfection violated.
But that youth is an illusion.
OnGossip Girl, nobodys ever been innocent.
The show begins with a Prodigal Returning, Serena back from boarding school.
Theres a brilliant miscasting here.
Blake Lively in no way suggests a New York kid; theres a Tarzana glow, a California chill.
So it feels like Serenas been gone a lifetime, witness-protected in some distant civilization.
When she talks to her old friend Blair, theres a distance to their memories.
I just want things to go back to the way they used to be!
Walking to school together.
Dancing on tables at Bungalow.
Nights when we were at your moms country house.
Maybe a prescription drug problem.
But happiness does not seem to be on the menu.
(Rememberthe Ward twins?)
Ive never read Cecily von ZiegesarsGossip Girlnovels, but I gather that theyre much wilder than the show.
(Broadcast TV has its limits: In the pilot, Chuck uses the word effing.)
And theres a cynicism pulsing through the pilot, a cockeyed appreciation of how the rich do play.
But the cynicism gave way to indulgence and indifference.
Fashion people and political people wanted to be on the show, and who could say no?
(Somehow, unfairly, I trace the Sonic Youth break-up to theirhorrible, horrible, horribleguest appearance.)
So the part of theGossip Girlpilot I remember isnt Serena at Grand Central.
But Lively doesnt do nervous, and why would you want her to?
And for the briefest and most teenaged of moments, she looks genuinelybored.
You imagine her staring ahead toward endless cycling main-cast flirtations, to phony cousins and a Congressman named Tripp.
Hasnt she seen this show before?
Isnt there more than this?
