Follow Up – Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl – The CW – 9:00/8:00pm Monday – USA / GO! – 9:30pm Thursday – AUS / FOX8 – 8:30pm Tuesday – AUS

Enough is enough. I haven’t suffered through two and a half seasons of Gossip Girl just to watch it destroy itself with its own stupidity. I have to say something.

Yes, I watch Gossip Girl. Yes, I’ve watched more Gossip Girl than I’m proud of but let’s get to the important point: Gossip Girl sucks. Majorly. All the bullshit of the first two seasons was fun and easy to digest mainly because it was set in a high school and that made everything okay, but this ‘in the real world’ third season rubbish is just plain straight up and down bullshit.

Gossip Girl has devolved into nothing more than a nonsense soap opera for the ADD generation. You could argue that Gossip Girl never was anything more than a nonsense soap opera to begin with and therefore didn’t have far to fall from grace but I would counter that argument by saying that there were times during those first two seasons where the show managed to create the perfect mixture of frothy soap opera excess with a self aware wit that made all the ridiculous storylines and ever changing romantic pairings bearable.

Season three however has done away with most of the humour and given itself over to the dark side of completely spastic storytelling. To get into what’s wrong with Gossip Girl would be nothing more than a list of characters:

The continuing drain on humanity Serana
That other drain on humanity Vanessa
The bi-polar Little J
The king of bad sweaters Rufus
The fifty year old with the emotional range of a fifteen year old Lily
The most unbelievable congressman of all time Trip
His even more unbelievable wife Maureen
The nice guy who turned into a massive douche for no reason Eric
The barely present Chuck
The barely Blair-like Blair

The only characters who escape this season of yawn are Dan & Nate who have turned into some kind of bro-mance comedy double team with Dan being all angsty and Nate hilariously telling him what’s what in the ways of women. I never thought I’d say this but thank God for Nate Archibald.

Not one of the characters have a consistent personality. It’s not even week to week that they change their complete worldview; it’s from scene to scene. Serena will be in love with Nate one minute, then Trip, then Nate, then Trip, then the sound of her own voice, then Trip again. I think we can all come forward and admit that when Serena was in that car accident we were secretly hoping she was dead. I say ‘secretly’ but I actually said out loud “please be dead.”

Gossip Girl has thrown so many nonsensical storylines at us over the years that it’s storylines have become harder to keep track of than Heroes. The whole show needs to take a collective breath, slow down, send some characters off into the netherworld (*cough* Serena and Vanessa *cough*) and refocus the show’s attention on the high school. We can deal with Little J’s absurd reign as queen as long as we don’t have to put up with any more blank stares from the uber-pathetic Rufus. Here’s hoping Gossip Girl can return to a state where it becomes a fond Dawson’s Creek style memory and less of a One Tree Hill style train wreck.