Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl

Episode 9: The Revengers

By: Carlos Uribe

Gossip Girl is a show about some wealthy people in New York City.

Spoiler Alert!

The Revengers is the penultimate episode of Gossip Girl but it acts like a normal episode until the very, crazy end. Let's talk about that ending: Chuck and Blair are on a roof with Bart. Bart is fighting his son after having tried to kill him. Bart happens to get in a posistion where he's dangling from the roof. He begs his son to save him but Chuck doesn't listen. Chuck and Blair just stand there as Bart loses his grip and falls down to his death. It's a ridiculously awesome scene on it's own. With the style that it was shot in and the musical score it actually became even more ridiculous. I remember watching it and going like “What is happening? What is up with the music and the camera? This is actually kind of awesome.” I even half-expected Bart to rise up with a hoverboard like some kind of cartoon supvervillain. That final scene simply seemed like the show was so close to the end that the producers simply decided to go crazy. Oh, and you know the best part about the death? The characters had practically spent the entire episode trying to take him down. They conocted basically the same scheme over and over again in an attempt to get him to confess. They constantly failed like clockwork and Bart got one step closer to just killing them all. This entire season has practically been about him being a villain because he conducted the least interesting crime possible. Now the show has put all of this behind them as Blair and Chuck go on the run because he has been defeated. Bart came back from the dead, made an enemy of his son, and is now dead for real.

So what led to that final scene? The final episode to try and take down Bart! Chuck gets the numbers from Lily's amazing memory but she didn't bother to remember the pin numbers. This makes her information useless but it might be possible to use the little information they have to try and get Bart to confess. They attempt to do this multiple times throughout the episode but it just gets Bart more determined to get rid of Chuck once and for all. He imprisons Nate, threatens to kill Blair, and warns Chuck that he'll ruin Lily's happy marriage with him. The third warning shows that Bart isn't aware that Lily is now working Chuck but the other two are very real. Bart's demands is that Chuck is exiled to Moscow by himself. Bart insists that Chuck flies by himself which makes sense only if he's trying to kill him. Chuck doesn't like to think that his father wouldn't kill his own son but is quickly proven wrong when the plane he's supposed to be in explodes. How he got out of the plain before the accident is a large question that the writers probably don't know the answer to. While Chuck is on a plane heading to his new life of Moscow real estate, Blair gets all of the current female schemers on the show and tries to take down Bart at his Man of the Year event. This involved trying to haunt him with pieces of evidence that the show had laid out throughout the season but this doesn't work. There's a small part where Blair thinks she lost Chuck but he shows up at the Man of the Year event somehow and accuses his father of trying to kill him. This leads to the roof scene where the composer goes nuts and mixes up Gossip Girl for a mix between Star Wars and film noir.

While that's all going on there are some sub-plots as well. Serena wants to leave New York City because of Dan. She plans to go to Los Angeles because she just remembered that she had a film career at some point. When Dan learns that Serena is planning to leave, he keeps trying to convince her that he loves her and they can have a chance of being happy together. He even bought an apartment in her building. She doesn't listen to him because he's a terrible person but he does sneak in the nice chapter about her that he wrote. It looks like the show is pushing for the two to get together in next week's finale but it's kind of hard to care when I stopped rooting for them as a couple all the way back in the second season. Actually, I'm still rooting for Blair to ditch Chuck and get with Dan even though I know the series sadly isn't going to go there.

Nate spends the entire episode reuniting with his dad. The two manage to bond over Nate's fudging the numbers of the Spectator. Bart refuses to release the business (or something) so he basically owns the newspaper. Sage decides that the only way to get rid of Bart is to launch the Spectator with a major story that saves the paper. Kind of like Nate has been trying to do all season. She believes that the best way to do that is to find out who Gossip Girl is. Just like that, the series picks up a plot that it's left on the table since the season premiere.

The Revengers is a fun episode of Gossip Girl that builds towards the series finale. It was entertaining throughout but that last scene was just crazy. It did build the narrative momentum towards the next epsiode but not in the way the series probably intended. I couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes straight after the episode had ended but it made me want to see where the writers plan to us next. The final season is just about to draw to a close and it'll be interesting to see what the writers have in store as we say goodbye to these characters.

Other Notes:

I can't stress how awesome and (un)intentionally hilarious that final scene was. Like seriously, what was up with that?

The finale will apparently feature some kind of wedding, Chuck being in legal problems, finding out who Gossip Girl is, Kristen Bell, and the return of Jenny, Juliet, and Eric. The only person not returning is Vanessa.