The original 'Gossip Girl' series is 15 today

I liked the first few seasons.

Always thought Chuck Bass was so disgustingly ugly. Like teen girls would give give up their pussy to him.

Nate on the other hand....

I liked Lonely Boy, and wished he and Nate would date.

R2 that was the weird thing, the show did a strange 180 on Chuck.

In the first season, as in most of the books (with the exception of the last two), Chuck is presented as a disgusting, sweaty, amoral, rapist pig, whose only redeeming qualities are money and snappy dress sense. It seems that after that first season, though, CW took stock, realised there was money in marketing a Blair/Chuck slowburn romance arc, that does not happen in the books--Chuck's main love interests in the novels are, in order: 1. Himself, 2. Serena--unrequited, and 3. Greg the hipster colleague of Dan. So, the head writers of the show decided to try and reform the Chuck character from a villain into an antihero. This process took a lot of trick lighting, tailoring, heavy-handed script alterations, and entirely invented subplots (i.e. the Paris farrago). And somehow, it worked.

R4 - the writers saw the smoking chemistry between Blair and Chuck in the pilot and the rest, as they say, is history.

The show would have been deadly boring without them.

R2 - because Nate was pretty but empty and sexless, like a Ken doll.

I found Chuck's way of speaking endlessly annoying. It was like a little boy trying to sound like his dad by lowering his voice very self-consciously.

R1 yes, the first two seasons were the best.

Actually, season one feels like a totally different show, more like a mature black comedy instead of the glitzy childish soap into which it devolved.

A DLer a few years back commented on a Blake Lively movie thread that she looks just like comedian Dan Soder, facially, and I've never been able to unsee it.

They could be twins.

15? Pfft, too old

The first season was the best.

The second was good.

But by the end it was unwatchable.

Do they cut the writing budget on shows as the go along?

I don’t know why TV shows get bad. I think people who made it good, leave (as in producers). I don’t think they ran out of ideas.

The original show was great. Leighton Meester was my favorite from the main cast, but Michelle Trachtenberg was my favorite of the guest stars (as Georgina Sparks).

The reboot sucked. I only made it through 4 episodes.

R13 if they needed ideas, the dozen or more novels were full of unused ones. Really, the show diverges wildly from the original source material, and has never gone back to it (not even with the reboot).

It would be interesting to see a show or movie that followed the style, characterisation and plots of one of the books closely. Though I suspected it would be cancelled in a heartbeat for showing too much unabashed privilege (when that's literally the satirical point).

My favorite was Chuck Bass, the actor was so cute to me. I love exotic yet cute looking guys.

Same, R16.

They should've changed casts after two years, like "Skins" did.

How long did Skins run?

In Season 4, I so wanted Damien Dalgaard to fuck Eric van der Woodsen.

After that didn't happen, I only watched for the fashion.

R16 eggs-O-ick? Ain't Ed Westwick from Essex....

R13 - The way I've always heard it explained is that Hollywood is constantly cannibalizing itself. You have a hit show. The best writers start getting wooed after the first season -- "why write a hit for that guy when we'll give you a deal for your own show!" So the second tier writers remain, moving up, and new writers come on. The show continues to do well, so next in line get poached and on and on it goes until you wind up with your typically crappy long-in-the-tooth TV show. There are variations, and it's not always a given (some shows stay great for years), but that's one way a show dies.

Isn't Chuck an alleged pig rapist in real life too R4 ?

R23 over the last five years, four different women have accused Westwick of sexual assault, but he's not been charged or brought to trial due to 'insufficient evidence'.

I always assumed he was gay.

R20 it speaks to how minimal and tokenistic the writing was for gay characters on GG that I forgot Erik van der Woodsen even existed in the show, let alone that he was gay. He's actually not gay nor is he Serena's sweet vulnerable younger brother in the original story, rather a largely-absent mysterious older straight brother with creepy designs on Blair.

Sorry to keep going on about the books, but they were a little better for gay content. In them, Chuck & Dan are both openly bisexual rivals and happy to pursue men as romantic/sexual partners (occasionally, the same man); the core group has secondary-character gay friends in their rich-bitch clique; and even Blair & Serena would flirt quite a lot and make occasional good-natured hints to each other about ditching the men who kept coming between them and becoming a F/F couple instead (sadly they never quite sealed that deal, though they did end up single and driving away into the sunset at the end).

[quote] I always assumed he was gay.

No one said he was a competent rapist.

In the novels, Vanessa was not a biracial girl with a Boho style.

She was a crazy White goth chick with a shaved head and always wore black

They should have kept it that way

Vanessa was boring and I’m not sure making her a goth would’ve added anything to the show.

I stuck through GG until the end, but man did it get laughably bad in its final years. The Ivy/Charlie storyline…Bart (supposedly one of the richest men in the world) faking his death…the introduction of Sage…

Not to mention Dan being GG meant he went out of his way to cruelly humiliate his sister and girlfriend.

Did anyone bother reading the spin-off series It Girl?

R30 - Was it about me?

R30 nah, I downloaded the first one online but it wasn’t about any of the OG characters I liked, so I gave up a couple of chapters in. Plus the writing, narration and plot style had changed to fall more in line with the show, which felt inauthentic and lame. The first books that came out before the show have some bite and campiness to them that’s missing in later ones.