* 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.

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