Let me start by saying that
this episode was a truly terrible episode, and there’s almost nothing that I like
enough about it to give it a rating that’s higher than an F. Therefore, I’ll be
using this post to talk about some of things that I think made this such a
terrible episode.
One of the only things that
I liked about this episode is the way Blair, Chuck, Serena and Ivy teamed up to
take down Bart. Later on in the episode Blair, Serena, Ivy, Georgina and Sage
once again all teamed up to take down Bart Bass. I thought that was kind of
funny, especially Ivy’s confusion about everything they were saying about
Byzantine Warfare. Unfortunately, this brings me right to one of the things
that made this episode so bad, in my opinion. It seems beyond ridiculous that
Blair, Serena, Ivy, Georgina and Sage would be able to scare Bart given how
ruthless of a man he is. That just seemed like rather ridiculous writing, if
you ask me.
At one point in the episode
Bart had Nate arrested for fraud because he’s been falsifying the financial
records for The Spectator. When Chuck confronted Bart about that, he told Chuck
that he has the court system in his pocket so the only way Nate would be able
to get out of jail if Chuck agreed to move to Russia and never come back. While
Nate was in jail his father came to visit him, they talked and Nate told him
about the financial problems that he had been having with The Spectator, saying
that he’s spent almost all of his trust fund trying to fix the website’s
financial problems. As terrible as this season has been, I have to say that it
was nice to see the writers acknowledge that trust funds don’t have an
unlimited amount of money in them like the writers of 90210 have with Naomi and
her trust fund ever since she gained access to her trust fund in season three.
That’s something that’s always bothered me about the writing for Naomi on 90210,
especially given how freely she spends large amounts of money, but I digress.
Nate’s father pleaded with
Bart to drop the charges against Nate and tried to get Bart to agree to take
his name off the loan documents for The Spectator, but he refused. I have to
say it’s going to see how the series ends for Nate given his current
predicament. One of the very few things that I’ve liked about the final season
is the fact that Nate running The Spectator has been a major part of his
storylines for the season like it was last season. Although, I hate that Sage’s
father, Steven, has allowed Nate to continue to date Sage considering the fact
that she’s underage. Although, given the fact that the writers have treated
Chuck and Blair’s sick and abusive relationship as if it’s an epic fairytale
romance, having Nate engage in a relationship that’s basically statutory rape
without going to jail for it is par for the course with Gossip Girl at this
point.
One thing that’s always
bugged me about the show is the fact that most of Nate and Serena’s storylines
have revolved around their love lives, at least that’s how it always seemed to
me. Although, I have to admit that I’ve always had a higher tolerance for
Nate’s love interests, because there has often been a twist to those
storylines. Out of all of Nate’s love interests, my favorite is definitely
Juliet Sharp from season four because I loved the whole storyline with Juliet
trying to get revenge on Serena because she mistakenly thought that Serena had
her brother sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. With Serena, it’s like
the writers constantly decided to give her a love interest for the sake of
giving her a love interest. Although, to be fair Serena didn’t really date
anybody last season, which was a great change of pace in my opinion.
Bart hijacked Blair’s limo
at one point in the episode and then he just randomly let her go….for some
reason. That whole thing just seemed incredibly stupid to me, especially since
most of it took place off-screen.
Serena has always annoyed
the hell out of me, but I found her especially obnoxious in this episode,
especially the way she was treating Dan. I know that Dan had done some rather
despicable things this season, namely writing his profiles of all his friends
and publishing them, but it sounds like he made some very good points about
Serena’s past in the profile that was published, which painted her in bad
light. I don’t really have any sympathy for Serena with her whole “Poor me”
routine because Serena still seems like the same shallow, self-absorbed girl
that Dan made her out to be in his profile on her that he had published. Serena
is making plans to move back to California and go back to working on production
crews for movies like she did last season. I have to say that as much as I hate
Serena, I did enjoy watching her focus on something other than her love life last
season. It was a lot more interesting than watching Serena’s revolving door of
love interests.
Dan used to be one of the
best characters on the show in my personal opinion, but not only did the
writers single handedly ruin season five with the season five finale, they also
pretty much completely assassinated Dan as a character with just that episode
alone. Dan has continued to be rather unlikable this season, but I do think
he’s given both Blair and Serena a good dose of brutal honesty this season,
which I think they both desperately need. Although, I don’t think it did any
good. As questionable as Dan’s behavior has been this season, I have say that
I’ve really enjoyed watching him spend so much time with Georgina. It’s been
great to just see a lot of Georgina in general this season, because I’ve always
loved her as a character.
Dan did seem to display a
certain level of morality in this episode. At the beginning of the episode Dan
decided to buy a fancy apartment, but he apparently needs someone from the
building Co-Op board to write him a letter of recommendation, so he asked Bart
if he would write him a letter of recommendation. Bart agreed to write Dan a
letter of recommendation if he wrote an article on him being named New York
Real Estate’s man of the year and give a speech at the event. When it came time
for Dan to give his speech and introduce Bart at the event, he ended up
bringing Chuck up on stage to tell everyone that his father had just tried to
have him killed by blowing up the plane that he was flying on to Moscow. It
looks like Dan still has a shred of morality left in him, but I still think
that the writers have really ruined him as a character.
The one thing that has left
me thinking “WTF?” all week long was the conversation between Chuck and Blair
where Chuck was telling her that he had to move to Russia and never come back
because it was pretty much the only way to keep her safe from his father
hurting her. The part of the conversation that has made think “WTF?” and shrug
at the shear ridiculousness of it would be when Blair told Chuck that she
didn’t want to be safe. If Blair doesn’t want to safe, then I guess Chuck is
the perfect man for her. I used to be a major Chair shipper when the show
started, but once Chuck tried to pimp Blair out to his Uncle Jack to get his hotel
back in season three their relationship became downright sick and abusive, and
I stopped being a Chair shipper. It sickens me that the writers have continued
to act like Chuck and Blair’s relationship is some epic fairytale romance. They
are basically trying to romanticize abusive relationships with those two, which
is just extremely messed up to think about.
The whole confrontation
between Bart and Chuck on roof of a building at the end of the episode was
beyond ridiculous thanks to the fact that they were playing music that felt
very reminiscent of the music that people used to score old action movies with.
It’s like the writers just said, “Oh, screw it. The show is already complete
and utter crap. Let’s just stop trying to do a good job even less then we’ve
been trying and just make the show campy for the hell of it.”, when they were
writing this episode.
At one point in the scene
Blair found them, and Bart fell off the edge of roof. Bart was able to get a
tenuous grip on the edge of the roof. Bart begged Chuck to grab his hand and
pull him up onto the roof, but Chuck decided not to and let Bart to fall to his
death and promptly fled the scene with Blair. I’m not sure what to make of
Chuck letting Bart fall off the roof. On the one hand, I think the humane thing
to do would have been to save Bart’s life despite all of the horrible things
he’s done. On the other hand, Bart did threaten both Blair and Chuck’s lives in
this episode, and he had even gone as far as trying to kill Chuck by blowing up
the plane that he was sending Chuck to Moscow on earlier in the episode.
There’s definitely no guarantee that Bart wouldn’t have tried to hurt him or
Blair again if they had saved him. Plus, Bart could have easily thrown Chuck
off the roof with him if they had tried to save him. Regardless, the whole
incident is very messy and it does leave me thinking that Chuck and Blair are
both horrible people to a certain extent for letting someone fall to their
death, even if it was Bart Bass.
I have to say that I think
it was really idiotic on the writers’ part to bring Bart back from the dead,
saying that he had faked his death when we were originally led to believe that
he had been killed only to kill him off the show again. It’s like the writers
felt the need to give Chuck and Blair one more reason why they couldn’t get
back together when they wanted to. If the writers wanted to keep Chuck and
Blair apart for a while longer, I think they could have come up with some much
better ideas to create obstacles for Chuck and Blair to overcome if they had
actually put some effort into it. The whole thing with bringing Bart back from
the dead was just beyond idiotic from the very beginning, if you ask me.
One last thing that I hated
about this episode is the fact that I feel like a lot of very important plot
developments happened off-screen, such as Bart hijacking Blair’s car and then
letting her go off-screen. Plus, there’s the whole thing with Bart blowing up
the plane that he was sending Chuck to Moscow on. I personally found that whole
thing extremely confusing in terms of how Chuck managed to get off the plane
before it blew up since we didn’t see all of that take place. I know that I’ve
mentioned that I love 90210 more than Gossip Girl many times in the past, but
one of the few things that I think the writers of Gossip Girl have typically
done a better job of would be developing storylines fairly well with a nice
buildup to them and the viewers usually get to see major plot developments
happen onscreen.
Sure, the writers of Gossip
Girl have occasionally had certain plot twists happen off-screen in the past,
which I thought should have been shown, but they’ve never done that nearly as
much as the writers of 90210 have throughout its run. Given the fact that this
is the second to last episode of the entire series and technically part one of
the series finale, this is definitely not a good episode to be having a lot of
major plot developments take place off-screen. Considering the fact that the
final season only has ten episodes, maybe the writers bit off more than they
could chew with the amount of storylines they planned for the final season and
that’s why a lot of things happened off-screen in this episode and were
extremely rushed. Regardless, I feel like this episode was way too rushed and
had too many things happen off-screen when the writers should have shown them.
All in all, this really was
a terrible episode. The scene where Bart fell off the roof and died was
horribly done thanks to the weird action movie music that they played in the
background and was definitely one of the worst scenes from the episode, if not
the entire series. I know they’ve done scenes that are styled after old movies
in the past, but that definitely wasn’t a good time to do that. Like I
mentioned earlier, this episode was way too rushed. The writing for this episode
featured a lot of truly bad dialogue, and the episode as a whole was horribly
written, if you ask me. At this point the only things about the series finale
that I’m looking forward to are the return of Katie Cassidy as Juliet Sharp,
Kristen Bell’s appearance in the episode, and of course, the reveal of who is
Gossip Girl. Although, given how bad this episode was I’ve lowered my
expectations for the series finale even lower than they were before, and they
were already extremely low.
That being said, as I
mentioned earlier my rating for this episode is an F.
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