This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ah, "Gossip Girl." Your 121-episode run is over.
And, looking back at it, it's clear the main entertainment value of the show was how ridiculous it was. Ludicrous writing, hilarious acting — a parody of itself for most of its six-season run.
Keeping that in mind, Monday's finale was pretty good. Entertaining. Silly in the extreme, with the requisite sudden, nonsensical twists the show became infamous for.
If you haven't watched the finale yet, spoilers ahead:
Bart is dead. Nobody cares. His death is a monumentally insane plot device to get Chuck and Blair married so that she wouldn't have to testify against him. Although Chuck didn't actually kill his father.
Turns out that — as pretty much everybody expected — Dan was "Gossip Girl." The flashback explanation was good, but I'm betting if we go back and watch the series from the beginning we'll find inconsistencies in that story.
William dumped Ivy and got back together with Lily. Kind of gross, but they deserve each other.
When we flash forward five years — what we'll call "The O.C." Maneuver" — we see Chuck, Blair and their son; we see William and Lily together; we see Rupert with Lisa Loeb (which was REALLY weird); and we see, as expected, Dan and Serena getting married.
Happy ending. Good enough.
The highlights of the show was a brief scene in which Rachel Bilson (of "The O.C.") and Kristin Bell (who did the Gossip Girl voiceovers for all 121 episodes) — as themselves — got the text blast revealing Dan's identity as Gossip Girl. It's was wacky and sort of wonderful.
It was better than the show itself.