* The first thing you should do is go read Ben Morse’s thoughts on the finale. Seriously, go. I’ll wait.

* Waiting.

* Back? Good. Now you know how flattered I must be that Ben claimed my goofy posts as an inspiration and model for that sucker. He wrote it with the episode much fresher in his mind than it currently is in mine–I watched it last night and then quickly switched over to have my heart destroyed by American Idol and I still haven’t quite recovered from the trauma–so it’s just going to be much, much better than what I’m gonna write. Plus it’s just legitimately excellent, and I hope he makes a regular thing of it next season. Fair warning.

* Anyway, can you believe the stuff with Nate and Madchen Amick, and the fake boyfriend out in the Hamptons, happened this season? It feels like it was on another show! Obviously the breakneck pace of this show has been a running theme in these posts, and I think that in this episode it was clearer than ever. To use the finale’s central storyline as an example, how many times have Blair and Chuck had heart to hearts just in the past few episodes? Hell, they had two or three in the finale alone, with different results each time! To swipe a term from Grant Morrison, Gossip Girl is supercompressed television.

* As I’ve said, this pace has some drawbacks. For one thing, the stories can get repetitive, with the same characters doing the same things with diminishing returns. For another, it can grind up supporting players–their stories move so fast that none of them seem to last longer than a three-episode arc. And of course the latter problem is a major contributor to the former.

* That’s why I’m glad to see the show potentially setting up Georgina, Carter, The Missing Brother, and Eric (finally!) as main characters next season, even though I’m not wild about Georgina or Carter. The show just needs some new blood! And as Ben points out, having Georgina and Carter around will either help soften the loss of perpetually scheming Chuck and Blair to their romance, or force them out of retirement.

* Speaking of Chuck and Blair, Chuck and Blair! Yay! That said, it was spoiled for me by the damn internet, so it lost a little impact. I will say that I thought Blair’s big speech to Chuck when he turned her down was very well written, though–over-the-top and epic in the way that a particularly articulate teenager might actually be, and moving.

* Ben was also right to note that this episode was SEXXXAY, the hottest we’ve had in quite some time. Loved Blair’s striptease, loved the Serena Sideboob Showcase on graduation day and the Serena Cleavage Spectacular on graduation night. Here’s the thing though: Aren’t the ladies and gays in the audience getting royally gypped on the eye-candy front, just in terms of the flesh on display? Penn Badgely, Ed Westwick, and Chase Crawford are all lovely-looking guys, but how ’bout they take their tops off once in a while, huh? Hey Chuck Bass, put ’em on the glass!

* Back to the pace question, I think it was kind of hilarious what this episode allowed to go down off-screen. Nate getting hit on by the deputy mayor could have been a whole storyline! And I suppose they’re saving whatever Georgina did to Poppy for later–perhaps keeping Poppy in reserve as an archenemy, like the role Olivia D’Abo plays for Vincent D’Onofrio on Law & Order: Criminal Intent–but you’d think that might have merited depiction.

* Ben gets at this in his excellent observation about Dan’s peripheral role lately, but I do feel like the episode dropped the ball by not keeping Dan and Serena at least within striking distance of its emotional center. I know that Chuck and Blair are really special characters, but Dan and Serena are Our Hero and Our Heroine, and I think the show really has to watch its step in terms of keeping them interesting, involved, and central to the story. Chuck and Blair are a bit like Ben and Locke on Lost: breakout characters who are actually closer to the central appeal of the show than the leads (the mysteries and mythology in Ben and Locke’s case, sleazy scheming decadence in Chuck and Blair’s case). Gossip Girl will ultimately have to work just as hard to make Dan and Serena matter as Lost does with Jack and Kate.

* NYU: the affordable alternative to Yale! LOL

* In much the same way that Ben wonders if the soft-pedaled, weed-enabled rapprochement between Lily and Rufus (whose music is truly a turtleneck in music form) was done that way because of expectations for the Lily flashback spinoff that’s now not happening (thank god), I’m curious as to whether the sudden season-ending interest in Daddy Van Der Woodsen stems from the character’s apparent role as a villain in the spinoff. As it stood it was a bit random and kind of threw off the balance of the very end of the episode.

* I loved the Nelly Yuki quasi-reveal. I actually think Dan/Nelly would be kind of hot. Fuck it, I’m shippin’ it. Delly is my OTP.

* I really liked that this was a high-school graduation episode, and that so much of it revolved around who would be Queen Bee of the Mean Girls next year. Part of the allure of the show is that it’s about kids who can afford to act like grown-ups, but they’re not actually grown-ups, and all these storylines about corporate intrigue and marriages in Spain and Junior Varsity Eyes Wide Shut and so on kind of obscure that. Letting them drink in ritzy bars without getting carded is one thing, but it all works much much better when the show reminds us that they’re 17 and 18 years old. I mean, that’s why Cruel Intentions is such a fucking scream, you know?

* Maybe having Vanessa go to school with these clowns will make her feel a little less like an afterthought. Don’t forget she’s still a little bit infected with interestingitis courtesy of Chuck’s junk, so maybe they’ll actually pick up on that instead of just throwing it out there alongside Blair being an unclefucker and how our homework was never quite like Dan’s.

* I have to say I had beef with the way the ep handled the Gossip Girl/Serena grudge match. First of all I had The Missus sitting next to me the whole time complaining that what GG did to them during graduation wasn’t actually all that bad, and that normal kids would probably be like “Fuck it, I’m graduating, high school’s over, I don’t have to care about this shit anymore, and I’m never gonna see half these people again anyway.” But mainly, I feel like the show should have shat or gotten off the pot. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they’d continue to use the character and the conceit (and Kristen Bell’s voice) after outing him or her, but I definitely wanted them to out him or her. But of course they couldn’t, so they didn’t, and they ended up having to resolve the storyline in a way that didn’t really make sense. (Serena threatened to out GG unless GG showed up at the bar. Serena didn’t actually know who GG was, but GG didn’t know that–that was the whole point. So why was GG confident enough not only not to show up, but to drive every single other person in the class to the bar instead?) I suppose we won’t find out who GG is until the final episode, and perhaps not even then, but that’s really the only time they could do it–so that should have been the only time they brought it up. This just felt like wasted time.

* That said, I loved how the only people GG mentioned in her graduation-day blast were the main characters. Are we sure Gossip Girl isn’t Jacob, and that text wasn’t another one of his lists?

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