* I can’t help but feel like giving the ’80s flashback episode of Gossip Girl/backdoor pilot of Lily a hard time makes me Kurt Vonnegut’s proverbial fully-armored person attacking the metaphorical hot fudge sundae, but: This very much did not work. Not because it was an ’80s period piece, but because it was a poorly observed one.
* For example, in regular Gossip Girl you get maybe one big recognizable pop hit on the soundtrack per episode; the rest is comparatively obscure indie pop/rock. By contrast, the flashback material consisted almost entirely of songs that got their own segments on I Love the ’80s. I’ve seen some people complain about the presence of over-obvious ’80s props like the Rubik’s Cube and Jane Fonda workout video, but none of that bothered me nearly as much as the easy-peasy soundtracking.
* The writing was also much, much weaker–hokier–than normal. It feels churlish to complain that “nobody talks like that” on a show that normally features the wit and wisdom of Chuck Bass, but seriously, nobody does those self-aware “this is the moment where you fall in love with me” things, let alone does them again later on in the evening as a callback. The dialogue and behavior of the villainous Van Der Woodsen character (dun-dun-DUN!) was similarly canned, right down to yelling “Get him!” at a pack of undifferentiated preppy ’80s villain types. There was a noticeably forced infodump early on when Lily described her sister to her father and us in the audience. And so on and so forth.
* And at times the weak dialogue went beyond making the characters sound silly right into undermining the whole emotional premise of the story. The whole business about Lily trying to find her own way despite the well-meaning conformist meddling of her parents was presented in as cliched a fashion as possible in that closing “one phone call” scene, but it seemed to me the writers thought they could get away with it because of the irony that Lily will go on to do exactly everything her mother wanted her to. The problem is that that irony is just as obvious and cliched as what it’s purporting to subvert. I’m bored with this character and her sister and her bad-boy boyfriend already. (Like Lily’s mom, I too would take an army of Dan Humphreys over that pouting greaser.)
* Back in 2009, the prom stuff was all pretty cute. It was fun to see the mean girls fail one last time, and even though it felt like the latest off-again from Nate and Blair kinda happened because it had to, it was still well done and reflective of the fact that that whole relationship really has run its course. If I were Nate I would have responded to her request to “hold me” with a counteroffer to play a game of Hide and Go Fuck Yourself, but hey.
* Inasmuch as the Lily/Lily’s Mom business was really just a continuation of the flashback material, it didn’t work for me, especially that final conversation–one second Lily’s really giving mom the business about having wanted to choose her own destiny, the next second she’s demanding a hug?
* However, I walked away from this episode feeling great. Why? Because of the one big exception to the flashback’s “Obvious ’80s Smash Hits Only” rule: They ended the episode with “Doot Doot” by Freur! (That’s Underworld before they were Underworld.) All is forgiven, Gossip Girl, all is forgiven.
It was a really subpar episode, which was kinda a shame in so much as at least a couple of the kids from the flashback segments are actually really talented. I wish they had just waited and casted them in present day (I’m thinking of Brittany Snow and Ryan Hansen).
That greaser dude was seriously awful.
I did not catch that the prep kid was named Van Der Woodsen AT ALL. Geez, the episode really lost me.
Very glad this wasn’t the season finale and somewhat relieved the spin-off likely isn’t getting picked up. Focus your attention on this show, writers.
Speaking of the season finale, how very Gossip Girl that they have already resolved all the major plots they spent the last month or so building (Poppy, Serena vs her mom, even the Blair-Nate relationship) a week early. What’s left for next time? I guess Chuck/Blair resolution (ha!) and maybe some Lilu/Rufus business as well.
And did you get the sense that they really can’t pair Serena and Dan up any more, like ever? He really did seem like her brother.
I hate to be the guy who brings everything back to superhero comics, but damn did this episode of Gossip Girl remind me of a really bland, middle of the road superhero comic. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I haven’t seen the past two episodes, but the thing about this show that can be equally rewarding and frustrating is that the characters will eventually rotate back into their “correct” roles no matter what crazy shit goes on.
It’s like me picking up an issue of Batman after a year away and being all, “What? Commissioner Gordon is in a wheelchair and teaching night classes at the local community college?” but then another four months later he’s back as the top cop in Gotham and no one ever mentions that sassy T.A. he was all flirty with for a while.
This time the characters all fell back to where they’re supposed to be, but we got none of the fun of watching their personalities brush up against each other as they worked their way there because all the real focus was on Lily’s boring ass back story. I agree with all of what you’ve said, but here’s really why I don’t want to see the spin off get picked up:
Prequels like that don’t work. I know in general there’s no dramatic tension in a setup like that, but at least in Wolverine, the central question had people wondering how in the hell they were going to erase his memory amongst other things (I’ll leave a discussion on how they ended up doing it for another day). No matter how much you complicate things like Star Wars did by making parts of Attack of the Clones totally fucking confusing for no reason (seriously, what the hell was up with Christopher Lee and the Trade Federation or whatever?), in the end you just want to know how you got to the original. A lightsaber battle on a volcano planet was worth it. Getting hitched to a preppy coke head is not.