And so do I ... definitely re: GG. I was posting re: OTH on TWoP (back in the days!) - sad that the forums weren't archived, at least the hilarious recaps were archived.

We were "lucky" in a way that we did manage to get nearly 2 full seasons of quality content, whether simple interactions, budding friendship, and even love. To be honest, those two characters becoming at least cordial to one another should have been a foregone conclusion given that they hung out among the same group of people for years. And personality-wise they are probably the most alike of all (loyalty, honesty, hard working, smart, love of art/cinema, etc.). Them eventually bridging the gap on some their differences (i.e., being judgmental towards poor/rich people, Blair being a schemer, Dan self-righteous, etc.) was just a sign of character development on their part - which other characters on the show have sorely lacked - in fact I'd argue most characters regressed from their Season 1 selves.

What was truly painful wasn't that they didn't end up together at the end of the show, it was how their relationship ended, without as much as a phone call... nothing. Seasons of carefully planned (whether purposely or not) build-up all nuked in the matter of a 40-min episode.

IIRC, wasn't there a last-minute script change for the S5 finale? I presume Stephanie Savage may have altered the ending of the S5 finale given that the show had only received a partial episode pick-up for S6, and therefore wanted to tie up all loose ends (i.e., DB) in S5 so as to not waste screen time on it in S6.

So true

They definitely had that rom-com, that's one of the things that I loved about them, they were just so much fun to watch together