Leighton Meester - GG Season Two Discussion #1

**Lazy** · 05-24-2009, 06:41 AM

Gossip Girl Season 2 Discussion

Season 2 Episode List:

2x01 Summer, Kind of Wonderful
2x02 Never Been Marcused
2x03 The Dark Night
2x04 The Ex-Files
2x05 The Serena Also Rises
2x06 New Haven Can Wait
2x07 Chuck In Real Life
2x08 Pret-a-Poor-J
2x09 There Might be Blood
2x10 Bonfire of the Vanity
2x11 The Magnificent Archibalds
2x12 It's A Wonderful Lie
2x13 O Brother, Where Bart Thou?
2x14 In The Realm of the Basses
2x15 Gone with the Will
2x16 You've Got Yale
2x17 Carnal Knowledge
2x18 The Age of Dissonance
2x19 The Grandfather
2x20 Remains of the J
2x21 Seder Anything
2x22 Southern Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
2x23 The Wrath of Con
2x24 Valley Girls
2x25 The Goodbye Gossip Girl

Now that season two is over, I thought we could have a thread where we can discuss about season two; favorite and least favorite episodes, storylines etc. like we have a thread for season one discussion.

ElleGossip · 05-24-2009, 07:21 AM

Great idea, Laura

I have to say my least favourite storyline was the whole Chuck/Elle/Secret Society thing.
It was just so odd and random.

**crazycait714** · 05-24-2009, 09:12 AM

I'm glad you started this Laura. I had just been thinking of it the other day.

I agree about the Chuck/Elle storyline being my least favorite. It was so awful.

**Lazy** · 05-24-2009, 10:18 AM

We had some good discussion going on in the season one thread so I hope this is successful as well

I too hated the Chuck/Elle storyline. There was no point to it and it made the episodes worse.

I've mentioned this before but I also hated pretty much everything that had something to do with the Blair/Yale related storyline. It went back and forth and I hated how they wrote Blair during it

**crazycait714** · 05-24-2009, 10:24 AM

Ugh the Yale storyline was horrible. And I absolutely hated Dan/Rachel. It was gross.

I think my favorite storyline was Bart's death. O Brother Where Bart Thou was such a good episode, and it really showed off Leighton and Ed's acting skills.

silverjasmin · 05-24-2009, 10:39 AM

For me, the second half of the season was just a mess.

Jack/Blair - You know, for someone who slept together, JB interacted like nothing really happened. B acted just annoyed and there was no sleazy comment from J. Even C made some comments to B after the slept together!

Chuck/Elle - unnecessary and it went nowhere.

Blair/Yale s/ls - Sigh. Nothing in this s/l made sense. How could someone like Blair have trouble getting into Yale? And then they continued it with the Blair/Teacher s/l - Blair went from acting mature throughout the Chuck arc to all of sudden a 5 year old. And her "black ops" was a fail!

Chuck/Vanessa OMG moment - Yeah, how could Chuck go from fighting for Blair to all of the sudden sleeping with Vanessa. Didn't make sense.

Serena/Gab/Poppy s/l - I thought that this one had potential. But it failed miserably. Did they even mention what happened to Poppy and Gab?

The whole Prom episode that was converted to all about Lily. We only have one prom and it was dedicated to a spin-off that might be dead already.

Nate/Blair - this I thought would have worked given the history of the two characters had the writers given this s/l proper build up and proper closure.

Oh, and Serena's "whos GG s/l" was weak. Who cares about GG? They're graduating!!

Huh. So, yeah, the entire second half of the season was just a mess.

**crazycait714** · 05-24-2009, 10:41 AM

Oh god, I had just blocked Chuck/Vanessa from my memory.

Biggest fail moment in GG so far.

Even though I did like the flashbacks, I felt that should've been a separate episode. Prom is important, and it was really glossed over.

silverjasmin · 05-24-2009, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazycait714 (View Post)

Oh god, I had just blocked Chuck/Vanessa from my memory.

Biggest fail moment in GG so far.

Even though I did like the flashbacks, I felt that should've been a separate episode. Prom is important, and it was really glossed over.

That whole episode C/V and N/B was like an AU episode gone wrong.

B's dialogue - "Only my boyfriend touches my hair" - okaaaay...

BrighterThanSunshine · 05-24-2009, 10:50 AM

I think the point where Josh's shows start going downhill is when he starts getting a little too PG. I mean it started with OC - the show started with being about parties and all the crazy things the rich kids do. GG was the same way. We started off looking into a lifestyle that none of us had, and which was more interesting than our own (for the most part). And at first, you spend every episode saying "OMG, nobody would ever do that!" But as his shows progress, I think he looses some of that. We heard stories of the old Serena, but that was never explored. And if Blair's meltdown was supposed to make her like old Serena, then she should have been way more out of control. Its like he is trying to keep things toned down as time passes, but its not what draws people in to watching it, nor does that hold viewers. And its great that we all love the characters, but what drew us all in was the OMG factor, and its going...

Ciiisu · 05-24-2009, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrighterThanSunshine (View Post)

I think the point where Josh's shows start going downhill is when he starts getting a little too PG. I mean it started with OC - the show started with being about parties and all the crazy things the rich kids do. GG was the same way. We started off looking into a lifestyle that none of us had, and which was more interesting than our own (for the most part). And at first, you spend every episode saying "OMG, nobody would ever do that!" But as his shows progress, I think he looses some of that. We heard stories of the old Serena, but that was never explored. And if Blair's meltdown was supposed to make her like old Serena, then she should have been way more out of control. Its like he is trying to keep things toned down as time passes, but its not what draws people in to watching it, nor does that hold viewers. And its great that we all love the characters, but what drew us all in was the OMG factor, and its going...

IA. This show is supposed to be racy but its actually like 7th Heaven. And then they start coming up with contrived OMFG moments to "spice things up" and everything gets ****ed basically. Perfect example, Chuck sleeping with Vanessa and Blair hooking up with Jack. I really have no words for this ****ery. I can only hope that whatever weed Stephanie was smoking when she came up with those, she has thrown away by now, because it makes me scared for her mental health.

S2 started very well, 2.01 was an amazing eppie, and it continued pretty good and had some amazing eppies imo, like 2.08, 2.13, 2.14. But 2.15 is when writing went completely insane and I think its safe to say GG commited suicide with 2.20.

ElleGossip · 05-24-2009, 01:17 PM

I felt as if season 2 lost the New York feel that GG had in the first season.

Ciiisu · 05-24-2009, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElleGossip (View Post)

I felt as if season 2 lost the New York feel that GG had in the first season.

IA. Something was lost, I dont even know if I can explain what it was. Like the depth and tragicness of characters, that was imo lost in S1 already after the strike when they rushed everything. And when S2 started it felt like its back, but then they lost track again.

**crazycait714** · 05-24-2009, 02:02 PM

I feel like GG starts their seasons off rather well, and then it just falls flat. I think they should carefully plot out the whole season at one time.

silverjasmin · 05-24-2009, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazycait714 (View Post)

I feel like GG starts their seasons off rather well, and then it just falls flat. I think they should carefully plot out the whole season at one time.

ICA. It's like with that with their s/ls too. It starts out with great potential and then they rush through things and then the ending falls flat. Some s/ls require more than their 3 episode format. And I think they should also work with their consistencies. Because it feels like one s/l arc doesn't relate to the next s/l arc.

Quote:

Something was lost, I dont even know if I can explain what it was. Like the depth and tragicness of characters, that was imo lost in S1 already after the strike when they rushed everything. And when S2 started it felt like its back, but then they lost track again.

I think they got lost when they focused on the OMFG driven s/ls rather than character driven s/ls. S1 pre-strike, they were establishing these characters...what makes them tick. So you got to know these characters and you fell in love with them. This season, it felt like here's an OMFG moment - watch how the character reacts to it. It didn't feel organic anymore especially because sometimes the character got soooo OOC or their reactions became caricatures of their personality.

Ciiisu · 05-24-2009, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silverjasmin (View Post)

I think they got lost when they focused on the OMFG driven s/ls rather than character driven s/ls. S1 pre-strike, they were establishing these characters...what makes them tick. So you got to know these characters and you fell in love with them. This season, it felt like here's an OMFG moment - watch how the character reacts to it. It didn't feel organic anymore especially because sometimes the character got soooo OOC or their reactions became caricatures of their personality.

ICAM. They are so obsessed with those OMG moments, they fail to see that thats not what we want. We want depth and insight to characters. You can have a racy show and still have the SLs flow naturally and give insight to chars. Perfect example is imo Skins. Those kids do crazy shocking shyt and yet you can see deep bonds between friends and see what makes every char tick.

Imo this season we kind of lost the UES vibe that was there pre strike. That and the tragicness of chars, like Blair with her bulimia and always being the underdog and falling apart when something bad happened, its like they took that quality and overdid it in S2 until it was basically a joke. I dont know if im making sense though.

I guess the good side of S2 was how SB's friendship got balanced. I really love them now and I didnt in S1, because it seemed to me that SB is very onesided. But this season they seemed equal and it was clear how they really are sisters. Downside is that while Sb got balanced, writers ****ed CN up beyond repair.

And of course bc Im a CBer I loved how they took CB to a new level. In S1 one could still argue that what they had was just lust, after S2 its clear that those two deeply love each other. But again, I didnt like how it was handled. Firstly it annoyed me how they barely gave us Blairs POV at the beginning of the season. We saw it in 2.01, but then I couldnt see it anymore, specially in 2.03, where she was written like a robot. And then suddenly in 2.07 it seemed that her feelings for Chuck came out of nowhere. They shouldve given more hints from early on. Another thing that bothered me how they made Chuck chase Blair like crazy until BAM as soon as we saw Blairs feelings, Chuck stopped and roles got reversed. It was still good up until 2.14 though, after that GG just jumped the shark with shytty writing. One thing that writers always did before was make CB equals, so I always assumed that after Blair was there for Chuck and fought for him, they would make him do the same. But they did not. Finale was amazing def, but it did not compensate for the shyt I got dragged through as a CBer, and I know many who feel this way. I loved the ILy scene, but again it bugged me how Blair made this speech when she said her ILY, but Chuck simply said "ILY too". They really ~~effed up~~ changed CBs dynamic and something very beautiful got destroyed in the process.

And I still cant believe they made CV and JB happen. It shows imo how SS has no respect for CB fans, shed make Chuck boink Eleanor and expect us to be happy. It specially pissed me off, bc its clear that DS would never be treated this way. Even RM didnt get such sloppy writing til season 3 where they made it clear that Marissa is def sleeping with Volchock, in comparison when Summer was dating Zach it was such a big deal that Summer didnt sleep with Zach, because she still loved Seth. And Seth was going insane thinking how SZ are having sex, he didnt even shower and eat for days. And yet what to we get? Just some comment how Blair sleeped with Jack, Chucks UNCLE. No explanation and it was so clear how it was just used for OMFG moment. I can only imagine what ****ery will be thrown at CB in S3.