Josh Schwartz

I've read a number of oral histories of TV shows over the last few years. I've enjoyed them all, some more than others (like for "Modern Family" and "Big Bang Theory"), but this is my favorite, partly for the snarky, funny tone that author Alan Sepinwall brings. That the creators and showrunners, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, are listed as contributors, also helps--we really get inside scoops. (Many others involved in the show, from main cast to guest stars, crew and writers to network executives and musicians whose work was featured.) Another thing that makes this book stand out is that it's about a show that wasn't successful for a good part of its run--it was cancelled after 4 seasons. People are honest about what went well, and what failed. I appreciated the honesty and thoughtfulness.… (mehr)

Oh my god. This is perfect.

I didn’t feel educated like I sometimes do even by bad fiction and such, but oh my god, did I ENJOY it. It felt GOOD watching. It doesn’t have that masculine 5/8 thing like the aliens are coming/the Romans are conquerors/Hitler has a Heart of Iron/Karl Marx is god/white people are the problem…. But it’s better than “Mad Men”, you know.

It makes me HAPPY watching. I can’t write an Impressive Review this time, you know, like the intellectuals polishing their medals; and often I do try to transcend the whole foodie “tastes good” kind of review.

But this tastes good. 😋

…. And—yes!—it would have been better if the Asian girl had a //speaking part//, lol, but in terms of loving it the way it is or hating it and throwing it away: I mean, say you were my friend but you weren’t here and I got ice cream and then you showed up and you said you couldn’t get the ice cream you wanted but then I had started eating already (and it was vegan!) and it was a bar, so in the end it was like, eat it or throw it away: well, I’m not going to throw my ice cream away. 🍦

…. Although NON-vegan ice cream is made with eggs, and you do NOT know what happens to the chickens, you know.

You don’t know their pain. 😬 🥚 😞

…. I realize that if someone touches your sister you have to hit him in the moment, but I’d like to think that if we weren’t going to prosecute him, the next time I saw him I wouldn’t say something like, “That black eye looks a little lonely.” I mean, there’s ‘one love’, and there’s also, not getting prosecuted yourself, right. 😸

But in general, it’s just such a great show. I’ll have to move to the high rent district and start dating people so I have something worthwhile to say, you know; sometimes the only real response to a story is another story, it’s not like, Oh I’m going to write an essay contrasting Serena and Blair with Kirk and Khan, you know; it’s like…. Bitch we have our own show, we don’t need your charity. 😝

…. There are really only 6-8, maybe 10, main characters, I feel like there should be more like 12-30, you know. Because then the show would be more like itself: literally the only way, to make it better.

…. It’s too bad that Blair has to be a bitch so that there can be a show. She’s the one who Really took one for the team, right. 😸

“Interested parties are keeping them apart? Oh, do clear Them too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of Somebody.” 😹

….. It’s not that these things don’t happen, but I notice that I’m enjoying “Dare Devil” a lot less than most tracks by Serena van der Woodsen and the Waldorf Gang, you know. So much less escapist/visualize-y, you know…. (makes face) Mental illness, financial lack—God, this could be my current life! 🤢😸

…. I think it’s cute that GG evolved from racism to colorism, you know, with the half-Black actress with the Hungarian name. Not like they’re winning the woke awards, but I guess somebody needs to take care of the biracial kids! XO XO!

….. Dan and the mixed-race girl’s thing could really say a lot about Dan’s (presumably existing) other Brooklyn friends, who probably would have felt snubbed and indeed like he had “traded up”, and then afterwards possibly have decided to hang out occasionally anyway. Really, it would almost work better if they weren’t historically romantically involved—if it weren’t “Gossip Girl”, you know.

…. “I’m a priest, not a genie.”

This is SUCH a mean thing to say, I’m not going to lie: but maybe it’s almost a good thing that it’s the Catholics or whoever who are responsible for Blair Waldorf, you know. (IS someone responsible for Blair Waldorf?)

Mother Serena van der Woodsen, Priestess of Isis: (sigh) I know I don’t want to be responsible for her.

…. (Gossip Girl VO) Turns out the musician’s wife just wanted to act like a musician for a change. XOXO.

…. Wow, the Thanksgiving episode was ROUGH! It was just like Thanksgiving—holy shit! I felt like I was gonna die, and I wasn’t even there! Wow: I hate the holidays!…. I also hope that after getting a girl to be with me I don’t run her over and gut her heart, although I suppose I probably will, you know.

(cue for the Backstreet Boys: I’ll never break your heart, I’ll never make you cry….
(35-40 yr old Blair) Stop it goose boy.
(35-40 yr old Serena) Yeah goosecap; just stop.
But we’re having a great time! The more the merrier! It’s like we’re the Three of Cups! What could be better! We’re celebrating! 🥳

…. Nate is also a great character. He’s like the traditional upright Frank Capra rich person who believes in honesty, truth and the American Dream—but his parents don’t act like that, you know.

…. I couldn’t remember everyone’s last names to be grossed out, but I’m glad that the adults are part of the show.

…. I think it would be funny to get a ride out of the Marxists by pointing out that they almost make big points—Jenny almost gets raped; Blair almost develops an eating disorder—and then they just laff and forget.

Hermes wrote it like that, just to get a reaction. 😸

…. On the one hand, it is kinda rich how Sonnet Man Shakespeare can be all like, Your beauty, my little rose, hath no monies, but I love you for the art, for the religion, for the poetry…. oh, and can you ask your rich father to lend me his (censored) slave next Tuesday?

The money is part of the lifestyle, and the life-styles of long-term partners should be compatible.

But it is also kinda rich how you can give the all-pentacles-no-cups person an inch, and from then on, they own you, right. 😸….

I mean, it isn’t ACTUALLY a perfect show, lol: it’s easy to be soft on the mother-of-America character and hard not to unleash that old-woman-hate on the class enemy; but I will say that these things are hard to unravel and not that they’re simple/idiot faults, you know. A mother does have some custody over a child of sixteen or whatever, and it would be—very—naive to imagine that all rich people are like Richard Branson, right….

You’d think a rich person would be free, but if they didn’t actually make the money, they are likely to be troth to tradition—a thing of many manacles.

…. And, I guess you could say the, I don’t know, directing, of the scene with the old-woman-hate-of-the-class-enemy, was bad. Women, even undesirable old women, can be predatory, but I don’t think anybody operates on a light switch system, you know: polite//evil. Right? There would have been half a line in that (rightfully) awful monologue that would have been at least Mostly true, or Mostly sympathetic. “Every word out of your mouth since I met you has mocked my way of life, and now you want my permission to date my granddaughter?” “I’m sorry—your permission?” “(old-woman-hate naked threat lol).”

…. ‘Hi, Society’ is just so problematic. I’m glad both halves are over now lol. (20+20= 40 lol, yes I am weird.) I can’t put my finger on what they’re doing wrong with the entangled generations, but it’s so…. It’s off, you know.

And it’s a really poor choice to make fun of the Black supermodel in the episode without really any Black girls at all, you know. It’s not ethical.

And I understand that this rich sort of traditionalism does involve entangled generations, and all that, and I can’t think of what they should have done or shouldn’t have done, but, wow…. It was like Gossip Girl was dating Adam Sandler or something. It was bad. If Adam Sandler went after some girl his dad didn’t get, you know. Or her daughter, I mean. 🤭🤢

…. “Roman Holiday” is miles and miles better than “Hi, Society”—and that’s good. For a moment there, I was worried. 😸

…. It’s certainly true that wealthy youth have the same instincts that would probably land them in jail in our society if they weren’t rich, and it’s certainly not an easy problem to fix, but the whole ‘what the hell is wrong with you’ angle does seem to do remarkably little to reform them. ‘I don’t like you, dammit—at least, I have to pretend not to like you.’ ~And then I saw the light…. They should have them do community service or something if they get in trouble, some good thing for people who have less that you wouldn’t force them to do in ordinary circumstances. Forcing them to write a little dissertation about how them don’t like themselves from now on is remarkably vain and useless. But it’s not an easy thing. The other obvious instinct for an adult would just be to tell them to forget it, and that obviously wouldn’t serve them or the community, either. Youth doesn’t believe in boundaries, and wealth dissolves boundaries; putting them together can be a little dicey at times.

…. Wow, it’s almost enough to make you feel bad for singers/manifestations of modern chaos/Taylor Swift, because although some people aren’t really kind, or stable, or emotionally healthy, and hell maybe B is one of those people—but some things only happen to girls, you know. In quite that way, only to girls…. Isn’t it true that in our system if you rob someone but the police breaks the law by obtaining evidence illegally, they just call it a wash, basically?

…. “Blair Bitch Project” is a curious episode, although I feel like I’m not its intended audience, you know—in a special way. It’s not “romantic”, or whatever! It’s like an extended meditation on female transgression….

…. “I’ll fix you a drink.”

Chuck isn’t always the problem, (although sometimes he can be quite problematic), although it would be funny if he could at least pretend to be civilized or calm or whatever.

“Just relax. We’ll do a meditation. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“Chuck….”
“Bourbon or whiskey, is what I meant.”
“Right.”

…. The education system is jack off material, you know. Is the best way to run a business really to have it be this war-of-all-against-all competition, and to think that the people who work for you could have been you but they failed, because they didn’t temporarily stuff their trauma until after SATs and only act out after they had credentials?

And then if you’re the smart guy who’s a good guy, or the decent rich guy, then people don’t like you, just because you’re the system’s apology for itself—just because you survived without being completely corrupted, you know.

Testing and grading in schools is total jack off material, you know.

…. It’s not that Jenny has no right to prefer a guy who earns something substantial, or even that you can’t accept a girl who turns you down the first time, but it is literally kinda funny how Little J is wrong with pretty much all of her decisions, you know. It’s not, Hey, let me investigated this new guy (possible income stream), see if he has serious earning potential—shit, maybe he even has money already! (Taylor Swift Surprised Face). ~No, it’s like: You look poor; I’m done with you…. Maybe I flatter myself, but I feel like I’d be turned off not so much by the conclusion as the faulty analysis process, you know—the negative assumptions, “bad decisions”, etc. (shrugs) So yeah. There’s that…. Although yeah: I’ve read “Persuasion”, watched the movie, written reviews.

…. The bravado of the draconian laws for most people, where you can’t even start the hour or whatever test five minutes late, you get locked out, and the corruption of the elite, where they can’t even verify people’s identity if the bribe is sweet, right.

…. The system demanded a lie of Asher.

…. Wow.

And, you know, aside from the gay self-rejection/self-acceptance/homophobia/struggling to be non-homophobic thing, there’s that thing where the two girls have a good conversation, what, two, three times, in one half-episode….

And yeah: wow. I’ll watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season Two before I continue with Gossip Girl Season Two, but yeah…. Maybe, eventually. Now, it’s in my future.

…. It’s so different when Blair is nice, like, a real person, even.

I suppose I should show more respect when Serena’s life is falling apart, but I can think to say is that the Gossip Girl girl would make an excellent spymaster/intelligence service ringmaster, you know.

😎

…. Who wants to bet that Chuck and Blair get married in the end?

… I like Nate better than Dan. I would add to our net worth, not judge girlie for her money…. OR her sexual stuff. (His girlfriend AND his sister!) Although a lot of people in Brooklyn are like Rufus, you know: he’s a great character. I don’t EXACTLY support his trying to break up the wedding, but I get that that’s what musicians do, you know. And I like him as a person.

And Nate is just great, you know. Home run.

Anyway, when the season started I liked Serena better than Blair because Serena was like a priestess and Blair was a bee; but now at the end of the season and Serena is all hating on herself, like a true Christian almost, and Blair is saving her from Georgina and being a boss, I like Blair better because Blair is a bee—and a queen!

And I get that Chuck probably would have ended up in (a nice-looking) jail and that he would have been guilty and it would have been his own fault, you know. But I don’t hate him….

Oh: and I wish I had understood ideas like this when I was young (young-young): I tried at one point, but I had a lot of ingrained anti-love ideas at that point and I couldn’t even identify all of them…. And didn’t always want to change…. But yeah: there’s always somebody else’s wedding which comes before yours, you know. Which makes sense, because how could your wedding have been first, in the whole history of forever?

…. I mean, the Humphreys—Dan and Jenny—certainly show that it’s easier for a man to marry (or date) up, even though the girl needs it more; it’s that awful song thing, ‘West End Girls’, you know…. But yeah: Brooklyn judges the Upper East Side. (Dan/Serena).

Although, Chuck, I hate to do spoilers, but…. Yeah, sometimes an upper class man isn’t Nate (and even Nate is a young guy who doesn’t know where he’s going; he’s just kind along the way); sometimes an upper class man is just lower class instincts, upper class access, you know.

It’s a crazy world, so what can one say….

Except this: it’s a TV show that’s every bit as good as one of those old Victorian multi-volume novels; it’s not “TV” like “Charmed”, or “Doctor Who”, or say some Disney sitcom, you know….

I mean, TV can lend itself to passivity, but if watched actively—and, if I may borrow from the prescriptive old Victorians, and say, “correctly”—there is something to be said for physical intelligence, for watching it end, the “Yeah…. I guess”, at the end, just seeing what it’s really like, rather than watch some (admittedly intelligent) writer struggle to wrestle that into some metaphor that she chooses for you, you know.… (mehr)