Chapo Trap House - Time For My Stories - Gossip Girl

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

This is a bonus episode of my series with Matt, Time For My Stories. I improperly mixed the audio at the beginning so you can't hear the promo code but it's TIME for a free month at stitcher.com/premium. not my fault btw.

Hi, uh, this is Felix, uh, yeah, now, uh, you're about to hear a free episode of Monty Matz series on QD in the American Empire. Time for my stories, uh, that you get at picture.com slash premium. You can also get a free month, uh, if you're able to type it. If that is, your fingers won't be short, if you're not a baby, if you're able to do that. Thank you. In the course of doing this project, I've developed a mental category for three types of foundational TV dramas. One is the innovator. The innovator is something like Gunsmoke, uh, or Dallas. It is generally the first of its kind or a bridge series that links a genre of TV past to one that does not yet exist at the time of the show's creation. It is often shaky, incoherent, and awkward. It can be tough to watch, but nonetheless rewarding and interesting to see where so much of what we see now came from.

The second is analogous to Coca-Cola or McDonald's. It is the product of hyper-refinement, a writer's room that has since shed their pilot hymens decades ago. You can leave it on in the background of any task and retain pretty much everything or be reasonably engaged while directly viewing. This is something like Law and Order, something so consistent that it has gone on forever and become a cultural institution and therefore foundational. The third is the elite. It's a marriage of the former's novelty and invention and the latter's smoothness. This is the Sopranos, Deadwood, etc. I don't know where I'd put Gossip Girl. It's certainly not difficult to watch. I alternatively viewed episodes while doing dishes, responding to emails, but also directly with no other tasks. It goes down easy, and it doesn't sit with you heavy like Dallas does. It's not terribly innovative. It's mostly YA stock with outsiders working their way in, young characters dealing with worlds a billion times larger than themselves in order to

throughout very obvious and easy to understand character traits and development, and love triangles that mostly end happily. The argument can be made that it's the second category, because despite only going on for six seasons as opposed to the double digit numbers put up by similar shows, it has immense cultural purchase. Every woman ages 25 to 36, I know, was thrilled to know that I was watching this. Metscher today still gets a huge response as the show's absurd, soapy storylines and strong archetypical characters loom large in former viewers' memories. It is arguably a bridge between the late 2000s and early 2010s and the optimist explosion of YA media for aging childless millennials, showing a modern blueprint for how it can be done, how you can get 34 year olds to rave about watching simulated sex between rich high schoolers, as is common now. It is perhaps a greater accomplishment than it's about the idle rich of the Upper East Side and not the life or death struggles in post-apocalyptic world. After all, that means the strength of the characters' storylines have to hold people, right?

Gossip Girl was originally a novel by the daughter of German aristocracy living on the Upper East Side. Cecily von Zigzar did not attend Yale or NYU like her characters and in fact dropped out of ASCII, but owe it to the strength of lived experiences and standpoint theory that she could capture the insane lengths people go to in a mostly meaningless world. More than most other Upper East Side alumnus, Zigzar produced a cultural product that will last forever and something I consider more fucking demented and insane than most shock images I've viewed on a daily basis from the years 2001 to 2006 and possibly because the show is limited hangout or MKUltra, we will explain soon. So, I had seen some of this show before. If you're like a dating-age male in the early 2010s through the mid-2010s, really, you've seen this show. It's immensely, immensely popular. And viewing it, I kind of got what I expected.

Like, very watchable, very YA, nothing really incredibly well done, but nonetheless easy to take in. Like, how did you find it? Oh, yeah, it's very smooth. As you said, Dallas is just grueling because everyone just looks like a catcher's mitt and it's just a collection of relatively static close ups and there's just no like visual, not a lot of visual dynamism. Here, you've got the cameras zipping all over the place. You've got the post-Tarantino editing, frenzy editing. You've got glamorous teens instead of carbuncular old Texans with like a bunch of fucking sun moles on their faces. And the plot is much juicier and it comes fast and furious. Yeah, exactly. It's very much in the mold of Dallas, I would say. Oh, yeah, love and intrigue among a rich sat within like a subculture of rich people.

Yeah, but it has like, it has the gift in the curse of something made 30 years later in that it's very self aware like that it's like, oh, yeah, these are about this is about like completely idle, useless, rich children. And also, yeah, like every like the hot male protagonist on Dallas was Larry Hackman. Even like Patrick Duffy, it's like, you got the bifuroni curls. He looks like he's a solid like 35 years old. You got these just little porcelain dolls smooching each other. Yeah, just completely like spotless, like procedurally generated young adult actors. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, all of them are programs. Yeah, and like the plots, the plots are fun because it's like, oh, how fucking awful are these girls to each other? Like they're so they're sociopaths. Yeah, like it's kind of awesome. Like I love mean girls because I watched mean girls about the same time that I was reading master the Senate when I was a kid and I was like, oh, these are the same thing. Like it's really that's just the entire world is like just completely arbitrary made up shit like who gets to sit here.

But as you get older and if you find yourself in more positions of power, who gets to sit here means like, oh, like will your state's unemployment system work? Yeah. But I do like I do like stuff like that. Like I think stuff about like very petty high tension social drama is really if it's done well and preferably done by someone like if it's about like rich teen girls. If it's done by a rich teen girl who were former rich teen girl who's like super self aware, it's like it's probably going to be pretty good. Yeah, it's basically it's like the Hunger Games, if it all took place in the capital, you know, yes, and it's it's it's in that same YA mold and with that same readability because the Hunger Games is very readable. And the movies are are are watchable for what they are. Not the last one, but everyone's always got a fucking cut those last entry into two movies and it's never works. You got to put too much sawdust in the fucking in the in the dough. Yeah, it's it's the bottom shelf summer sauce.

But it has but it's like what about people who like are at the top of a fucking monstrous exploitative hierarchy and have so little connection to the real material world that they have to invest their emotions entirely in the most psychotically frivolous pursuits and then pursue them with total blank sociopathy. That's what I love about the show, like, because it's very YA like it's filmed and presented to you like life or death, but the events are like, like in the first few episodes about who's going to go is Serena van der Woodson who's like the it girl. She's like the big, big looming large high school socialite that everyone gives a shit about like prettiest girl in school. And she's mysteriously disappeared and returned after a year and now her and her former best friend hate each other. Is she going to go to the kiss on the lips ball. And like even even her mother who's like, you know, like a fucking Billy God knows what evil shit she gets up to like probably every man in her family has run coke for the CIA. Are you talking to her fucking dumb ass daughter? She's like, are you going to go to the kiss on the lips ball? You fucking better go. Yeah, but you can see like how it's like a fractal like these kids because they're in school, they're totally frivolous. But at every level of that society, everyone is pursuing their goals with the same psychotic selfishness.

And I kind of like it in that way because it's like, oh, these people don't need for anything, but there's always some game they're running or most typically like a problem that they created that they kind of wanted to be. Yeah, just to give them something to do. And I, yeah, so it reminded me of Mean Girls in that way and also of Master of the Senate. But it's like they're the final prize for these characters is like you sit on the chair of some vanity charity in the Upper East Side that doesn't do anything. Yeah, that's it. But all the other all the other wives are jealous of you and that's what matters. Exactly like that is the thing I love about it is like very few characters seem to be friends because they like each other. No. Oh, I think this person is funny or they're interesting or they've always been there for me. No, no one likes each other. Everyone hates each other.

All friendships are totally contingent and based on like positioning, like triangulating a higher like arbitraging all human relationships to bid up your personal cloud stock. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that did sort of presage how we would all behave. Yes. No, this is a very, very prescient program because because like the whole premise of the show is like these people become like self aware because they're all being talked about on this gossip rag, right? The gossip girl who spills all the dirt and so they become self aware protagonists. Well, that's all of us now because that's the girl is just the Internet where we all operate all day in a virtual space of being observed and then create petty scandals and and clout hierarchy chases to occupy our time there. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I almost want to move this sort of towards that first category shows because this is actually like the deeper you dig. It's actually very prescient and like we Joe, like I was like with the first few episodes as much as laughing about it because it's like who would read this fucking website?

Like it's like, it's like, yeah, you live in like New Jersey and you're like, oh, I have to read the gossip blog about the one high school. Like you should be arrested. No, anyone who knows, yeah, like, oh God, I mean spoiler alert, but there's the last episode, the number of the people who are who are invested in who the gossip girl is. It's like you should all be in prison. Yeah, like the amount of adults who are like, oh, I have to know like imagine being like a 50 year old adult who's like a billionaire and you're like, all right, I need to know how gossip girl knew who the town slut was. Yeah. I've been in high school for 52 years. Who got the scoop on Serena Vanderwoodson being a hussy?

Yeah. Oh my God, the tea isn't spilled, but that's just it. The assumption there is never challenged that these people are worth caring about, which is the undergirding assumption of all social media that like any of our petty bullshit is worth caring about. We dress it up like these things have weight, but at the end it is gossip mostly. Right. And it's like we make fun of that, but at the same time, there are people who live, you know, in towns that have under 10,000 people and they know every intricacy of New York media. Yeah, it's crazy. Or just like the grown up versions of the gossip girl kids, except like not attractive.

Not at all. Oh God, that's definitely a step down. It's like they are obsessed with the lives of like Brooklyn and Manhattan elite and are like, oh, I hear, you know, fucking, you know, this Politico writer. Something out of the interest that like fucking gives a shit. Well, whatever a Greenwald thing drops, it's like, oh God, everybody just turns it's like the court of Versailles. Everyone's just muttering over their tea cups like who fucking cares? Yeah. No.

Yeah, Glenn Greenwald. And this isn't an attack on Glenn because I love Glenn. But yeah, anytime there's a Glenn thing, it's just like I see 50 posts from like 35 year old adults where it's like, this is the most high school. Yeah. Just wildly high school. Yeah. It's like all media now, all journalists are just ugly fucking overgrown high schoolers. And it's like the worst part is that we all participate because it's like, yeah, you have nothing to do.

There's no community left. You can't go anywhere now. You can't do anything. So it's like you relentlessly gossip about like which two hideous Cretans are fucking dating or who got fired from a shitty magazine. You should never read in the first place. Yeah. But yeah, but yeah, just going back a bit. Yeah.

So apparently watchable, I do think this is one of those cases where I think there is some sort of artistic degeneration between gossip girl and gossip girl successors. Because gossip girl, I don't know, like gossip girl seems it on the joke in a little. Yeah. Oh no, definitely. There's supposed to be a awareness that this is kind of awful and that everyone is kind of evil. But you know, if hell is empty and all the devils are here, we might as well dance. The interesting you say hell is empty and the devils are here because that's what this show reminded me of. It reminded me of the problem of eternity as a theological problem.

You get to heaven. It's never ending pleasure, but that sounds like shit. No misery. Like even a hundred million years of anything is. Can't work. Cannot exist. But you're also fundamentally afraid of eternity of nothingness, consciousness sapped out of existence. And you're particularly afraid of a hundred million or eternity of suffering.

So it's like, you know, eternity fundamentally, maybe it does fundamentally exist. But how, how do you deal with the problem of heaven? I mean, if you talk to a Christian, they'll go, oh, well, there's, you don't get, you know, overfilled on. Yeah, it's like, you just go to the buffet. You never again. You never again. Yeah. Yeah.

But you just like, you just wouldn't notice. There isn't like this huge human sense of like longing for conclusion. I mean, presumably what they're talking about is just a circle. Like you're just eating a piece of pie for eternity and you just forget that you just ate it. Yeah. Yeah. But then you get into the problem of like, well, how many things would have to be stripped away for me not to notice?

Would I even be myself anymore? Yeah, exactly. You get like whittled to a fucking nub. All our anxieties and everything are kind of what makes us human. It's the relief you get when you, you know, when you're a husky boy and you take off your tight jeans, red shade around your waist. But yeah, no, that's like what makes you human. So it's, you know, it's an eternity that you're like a dog.

You behave like you're just always like the dog whose owner has just come home and pouring your little meat cereal into your bowl. Maybe. But that's what this show reminds you of. It's like, this is how you would have to do it. Yeah. You would all have to be with people you simultaneously like lust for and hate and love. Yep.

Yep. And just continuing like, okay, now we're together. All right. Now we're, okay, we're done. Now it's me and them. Okay. All right. And just creating like new fractal combinations to just spark new narratives to play out with

people and getting no pleasure from it at any point. That's what it, yeah, that's what I felt like. It felt like this was like the dying DMD dream of someone or like, this is like some perverse idea of heaven or this is some 2001 space Odyssey thing that it's like, I have to figure out my eternity and my eternity is that I'm just creating these problems forever so I can experience the small relief of solving them. And you see that in the right, especially as the show goes on, like, because the later seasons are insane.

The problems that it's a case that the writers running out of ideas a lot of time because a lot of characters are like, it's the Dallas thing where it's like, oh, I'm your secret cousin. Oh, actually, I'm a con woman. Yep. All right. Actually, but like, do you give a shit? Oh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm heard.

I'm his daughter. Okay. I'm, hey, what's up? I'm just like a completely, completely antagonistic for no reason psycho who hates you, like the character of Georgina sparks, but it's like, hey, Lee, thank you for creating some friction, some problems. So I'm not just going to and forth between balls and things and I'm not just going to marry this, you know, whatever girl I was, I was supposed to marry as what is essentially

an arranged marriage as we see, which is alluded to when they, you know, the characters Nate and Blair, when they're initially dating in the first part of the show. Yeah. It's a dynastic relationship. They're like, there's a funny scene in that first part where Nate, who's like the sort of non rapist rich kid, there, there, there is the characters of this are hilarious because it's very like pre me too, because one of the characters is just straight up a serial array.

Yeah. No, absolutely. Like it's established very early. Like he's just a serial rapist and the way the characters talk about it or like, oh, he can be rich. Yeah. That's our Chuck. Chuck base.

I met the guy who played Chuck base, by the way. Bastard. I met him. Chuck base. Rob base's son. Chuck base. I met Ed Westwick outside the TPM party in 2015, he was, there are these like two really hot girls who asked me for a light and then Ed Westwick just like walked by incredibly

fucked up and they're like, oh my God, this is like, I'm not getting anything done tonight. Yeah. Anyway, he got me too. Oh, he did. Like me for big time. His character should have gotten me too in the show. He kind of does at one point, but it's like, he's just like, he attempts to rape two central characters in the first episode.

Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. And it's like, oh, no, that guy, like that was one that just got me like three episodes, like maybe less this season after one character comes to the rescue of his sister who is being raped or is like an attempted rape is being performed and he stops it and punches Chuck. He asked to hang out with him so he can inspire his writing and it's like, yeah, would you ever, ever talk to someone who did that that way?

Would you ever just be like, I guess we're, I guess we're in the same clique. So I might as well find out what makes you tick, Chuck. Well, that's, we're going to get to my theory on this entire show. Yes. I'm very eager to hear it. It's pretty insane, but this is insane program and it requires insane solutions. Yeah. Yeah.

But the characters are, yeah, so you have the rapist Chuck base. Uh, you have, um, uh, Nate, Nate Archibald, who I think that's another self word joke. He's named under the basketball player, like, come on. And I, Nate Archibald is just like, is like the put upon prettiest boy in school who like, you know, it has a sort of like wanderlust and yearning love and his dad, my favorite character on the show is his dad. I love his fail. Oh my God.

That's so cool. Yeah. He's trying so hard to stay above water. Captain Archibald, Nate's dad is like, when you first see him, he's like, yeah, you know me, I'm just the most respected, the best, the bigger, the uppery side. And then like 10 episodes in, he's like, all right, yeah, so I do coke every day, but I'm not a dick. Yeah.

You know, it just helps me focus. It helps me, it helps me trade. It helps me be a better trader for my clients, for the clients I need. By the way, I really need her mom as a client. So you got to marry her daughter. Yeah. He's like this stuff he makes Nate do for him. Not just like you can't break up with your girlfriend because I need, I need like this

girl's mom's like Nazi gold. Yeah. It's also like, it's also like when he gets caught with cocaine, he's like, yeah, you have to say it. And he does it. Yeah, of course. Nate is such a cock. Nate is wildly cocked.

He goes to rehab for his shitty failed dad, who we later find out is like totally broke. Yeah. Totally mad off. Out of money. What an awesome character. That was like, I think like, yeah, I, I loved him. Like I, um, I would love a show just about him. The captain.

Yeah. No, I have like a guy in those upper, upper circles, like spending way above his means and trying to keep afloat. That's a very interesting idea. Just this guy constantly trying to like pay Peter, Rob Peter to pay Paul and like embezzle and like move money around to stay, uh, just one step ahead. Uh, that could be very interesting. Like every, all these other kids are just flouncing about in their Roman or G ask high

school experience. And this guy's out here just break it a fucking sweat. Yeah, and like just making your kid go to rehab for you is so funny. Yeah. That's amazing. I'd go, but I have all these accounts to watch out for, you know, I have to keep, I have to keep, I have to keep not, uh, putting food on the table. Yeah.

He's not even doing, I look break out character of the show. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, uh, with Chuck base, they, uh, they give him pathos by making his dad mean. Yeah. His dad, he didn't love him. So it's, it's not his fault that he just is compulsively raping women. Yeah.

With Chuck, they like redeem him by making him get shot in Prague. And then he's like, I, I've lost the desire to write before he even got shot at the dick. It's like, I just can't do it anymore. So ladies relax. Yeah. So, but he, you know, spoiler alert, Chuck ends up with Blair, uh, Nate ends up, I love what they did with Nate, Nate's character because it's very true to life. What does he end up doing?

He ends up running some shady news. Oh God. Yeah. Yes. Oh, that ruled. That scene was great cause he showed him with his, it's with his private jet for his like website. And I did the math for when Boswell went off the air.

And I think that, uh, that it would have, that it was five years later, I think it's like a right around now, which means that there is no way and fuck that that, uh, website did not completely, uh, implode and get sold off to creditors within, with like two years ago. That website would be like one of those websites I wrote for in 2015 and then never heard from again and like never had a physical address. Like that like, yeah. No one's reading the spectator.

Like what a shitty, like who the, like that company could not afford it. Well, they just thought it's, it's, it's, they anticipated, I think that, you know, the social media format of everybody being on each other's hot gas, taking their days up as their new form of entertainment. That was the future, but they just didn't anticipate how fast it would accelerate and how that those like website, those gatekeeping websites that have content were going to be eventually in much faster than they could have perceived and anyone could have anticipated totally subsumed by, uh, social media, by Twitter and Facebook and shit.

Yeah. It completely, uh, they hit on most of their points, but they missed on sort of the neoliberal aspect that not only would gossip replace all news and information and, uh, information be controlled by a deluge, not a, uh, not a spigot. They missed the aspect of it that we all have to make it ourselves. Yep. It's all user-generated content. Yeah.

And there's, yeah, but yeah, you have to make your own shitty crap at every own pace and you're going to love it. You're going to use it 20 hours a fucking day. You're going to say LaHell site while you're on LaHell site all day, every day. 100% of people who say hell site would pay to be on Twitter. Oh, absolutely. Oh my God. If they put a paywall in there, who's the people who, the actual dedicated user base,

who is walking away? What they're going to go to, they're going to go to mast it on. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to go to a mast it on. I mean, I got conservatives do nothing other than complain about being shadowbammed on Facebook and they created like four different versions, the Gav and Parler. And it's like, no, yours, you go there because everyone's there. Yeah.

No, that's the point. There's no point in pulling your pants down and showing your cock to everyone if no one's in the room. Yep. And the thing is, it's like, even if you, even if you're like a completely like black peeled epic griper, like, you don't want to do that on a site where no one is, you want to freak out the most people. And that means that like, they could just say, Hey, yeah, we're paying, we're making

you pay. And there would be no huge defection. I mean, obviously people who just, you know, scroll are going to probably say, fuck it. But the dedicated users, they're not going anywhere. And those are the ones that people want to watch. And if you get, and that'll be enough because they'll pay to make their own content for each other. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. But, um, we have rounding out the characters. We have Serena VanderWoodson, who's the AdGirl and Blake Lively, fascinating acting choices. I mean, if you want to call it that, wow, she is not good at acting. I love her, just every scene of hers is supposed to be emotional. She's just like, she, I mean, accurately, I guess, you know, for who, if that character is a real person, always sounds like she's off like 40% of his annex.

Oh, absolutely. Her, her, her, her like, her face is just slack. She doesn't seem to be able to actually manufacture expressions with her. Like she's just very heavy-litted in a way that feels, it feels like she's almost wearing a mask. Yeah. She's always just like, it's always just like, I really have to tell you something, but I have to go.

It's like, and it's like, yeah, she probably got paid $800 billion to do this. Oh, she, yeah. And that's what I, another thing, I love, the similarities of the show, the emptiness of it all. She's the AdGirl, the one everyone cares about. There's nothing there. There's no content whatsoever. Nothing.

She, she has nothing. She has no personality at all. At least Blair is defined by her, you know, curdled ambition and paranoia and desire and her, because she is not so like effortlessly, like self-possessed. At least there's like, that makes her somewhat, you know, have texture. She has no neuroses. She's just, she just reacts. Yeah.

It's like, she's like Philip K. Dick's golden man. Yes. Like other people's neuroses bouncing off of her because she's the transcended being. She's the Bodhisattva who emerged. She had her. She hit bottom and she transcended. And now she is, she is an enlightened being amongst the, the heathens. Yeah.

It doesn't matter that she thinks she killed somebody, she's an awesome blood point. But yeah, there's the character of Blair Waldorf, who's sort of the final, one of the final central characters, as Matt said, pure unbridled ambition and resentment, wants power just for the sake of power, a great, completely cruel character. Monster. Yeah. Very fitting that she ended up with Chuck, the serial ripist. Yeah.

No. And that, like, that's Bill and Hillary. One hundred percent. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we have Dan Archibald, who, uh, Dan Humphrey. Dan Humphrey.

Dan Humphrey. Very interesting character. I have a lot on this later. I have a lot on this. Dan Humphrey, he's an outsider. His dad is like, uh, he's the former singer of a once popular band. He's presented as poor because like his dad owns probably what, what in reality would be like a 1.7 million dollar place in Park Slope versus a 300 million dollar place.

It's Dumbo. It's, it's, it's in the, uh, it's in like a loft Dumbo yet, which yes, that is a seven figure home. The guy owns an art gallery, but yes, I think they're trying to make the point that he's well, but you know, like he was a rock star. He was from, he, he just got paid, you know, he didn't pay, you know, there's two types of, well, as you get, you get at the end of the day, even if it's a lot of money, you're drawing a paycheck, uh, at least for part of it.

And then there's like where the, you, the money just is there and they, for that, for your rent collector, for them, they're just pure renter rentee areas. They have no, they've never worked for anything and that, that, that does breed a social distinction, but it is funny coming, you know, living in this country with its radical, uh, um, uh, income inequality to be asked to care about that social division. Right. Yeah. This guy's dad, like he's, it's like the Wall Street Journal income, like income graph

where it's like, look, he can only, he can barely afford this, what, 120 kids in private school. Between the hundred thousand dollars for the private school and, uh, you know, the ski trips and, uh, and vintage guitars, uh, they're, they're only saving like $15,000 after taxes a month. Yeah. Yeah. Like is, I do love him as a failed dad character because like he's just fucking up his kids

and everything, like no wonder his son's the way he is because, um, he, uh, just every time they're alone, he's like, yeah, your mom's probably going to come back. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, is your mom still up? Hey, uh, so what's going on? What's up, man? You want to check it out?

What's up, man? There's Jenny Humphrey, who's, uh, played by Taylor Mumson, who, uh, she, I think just like left acting to become a, uh, like punk. Yeah. She was, I remember when this show was on, I didn't watch it, but I was certainly aware of the phenomena. And I remember her as the breakout, uh, tabloid star of the gossip star of gossip girl was her.

She was like in a punk band. She would take her top off. She was very rowdy. I don't know what she's doing now. I don't know either. She's probably sitting on the board of a fixed charity and like married to, I don't know, the, the, the rightful owner of the German art since selfish. Yes.

Yeah. She's probably got the room party, boys. She's married. Uh, uh, Baird von Wurzenberger, five boys, get the room, uh, but she's, she's an interesting character because she's the striver. Like she just desperately wants to get in and she kind of does it before fucking her own plans up. But she is also someone who wants to work, who is ambitious and creative, which does

mark her as, as socially inferior in some ways. Yeah. No, the highest level in the social hierarchy of gossip world, the highest level is to just be an animal appearance to reacts like Serena, like, yeah, and like, maybe you, maybe you design handbags, but that's like, as like your fifth idea of something to do with your time after you get married, got married, she's, she's trying to like be a fashion designer. She's on that. Yeah.

Yeah. So the big question throughout the entire show is who is gossip girl? Yes. Who is it? Who is secretly writing a incredibly popular scandal sheet about the specific group of kids in this, uh, class in this private high school on the Upper West Side. And you know, just to clarify, gossip girl greatly affects people's lives. Like it really fucks things up.

Oh no. Not like it's, it's kind of clever and self aware because the gossip girl, uh, copy, which is read by Kristen Bell, uh, is, um, it serves as exposition for the, for the viewer, but then it's also something that the audience, that the, uh, cast members that the people in the show read and respond to. And people find out things about their, uh, other, the significant others and family members from reading the site, it changes their decisions and, and people getting, uh, like can shake people's lives because I mean, having your secrets exposed, especially as a hormonal

teenager, that is a catastrophically traumatic. And the, the gossip girl world is one where at any moment anyone could just find out your deepest secret and then your work life is ripped open. That's the world these kids have created for themselves. The gossip girl is like the, the, this like punishing grim reaper in real life, like at least a one kid would have committed suicide. Oh, for sure. Oh my God.

Can you imagine, can you imagine having that like, yeah, uh, we have, we have people who are there to see any kind of infidelity or, or vulnerability that is even remotely public and many that are thought to be private. You people would have nervous breakdowns. So it turns out the gossip girl all along was Dan Humphrey because it was the only way he could get with Sabrina or Serena. And this is where I started thinking, because originally I was thinking like, you know, this is about the archetypes of the American rich.

You know, you have the idle media publisher, the serial rapist, the it girl, blah, blah, blah. Who's Dan Humphrey? Who's Dan Humphrey? Hmm. Let me think. Sort of middle classy from Brooklyn ends up in elite Manhattan circles because of his incredible, credible manipulation and control of blackmailing information.

Who, who, who, who? Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, shit. This is about, this entire show is about Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. Yes. This is limited hangout or MKL. Both.

Cecily Bubsy Zizar, her family was, they were, they ran Bow & Company, which was a boutique investment bank. Her husband is that of a judge, the Judd Foundation, some bullshit upper, he said nonprofit. She's very well acquainted with this world. The show is entirely about Epstein, the way that the characters abuse each other. It mirrors what people on the upper, he said, really do. Glenn Gubin was ready to sell his fucking daughter to Jeffrey Epstein. That's true.

Glenn Gubin met his wife. He bought his fucking wife from Jeffrey Epstein, allegedly parody. This is about how what they, what they do to each other in a background is like chips that are social hierarchy torturing each other because they have nothing else to do. And Dan, Dan Humphrey, I was sheer ambition, how Jeffrey Epstein went from being a fucking college dropout to a tutor in a, how did he get in at an elite board? No college, no college degree. That's how Dan Humphrey gets in.

Dan Humphrey gets in through an elite private Manhattan learning institution, just like Jeffrey Epstein did. And like Jeffrey Epstein, Dan Humphrey realizes his only way in is to find out everything, that they want to keep a secret. And then more importantly, to do what Epstein did, because Epstein was not just a blackmailer. Epstein sold a lifestyle to these people. And just like, because they can't depict actual child prostitution, Odyssey W, what they have to show is that Dan Humphrey does fulfill the surface for all these people.

He gives them what they want in which they are all a star in their own show about their lives. That's what gossip girl is. It's giving them the chaos they want. It gives Blair the fucking, the impetus for drama and enmity that she wants. It gives Serena enough impulses to fucking react off of. And how, like, how does Serena respond to this? How does it, you manipulated all these events for the last six years of my life, you like,

you made everyone, you know, think I got fucking pregnant and like killed a guy and all this shit. Oh my God, I love you so much. They get back together. They get married because of it. And that mirrors who Serena. Serena is fucking Gillette, who is also a fucking it girl with a mysterious father who disappeared.

Yes. Oh my God. Oh shit. God damn it. That's so. Yeah. He's like the sociopathic climber who grabs on to someone from high society who helps, who againstly gets subordined into his, into his dark, uh, uh, service.

Yeah, like, like as the Mephistophelian figure of like indulgence for idle, wealthy sadists. That is why Serena actually falls from. Not because, oh, you would go through so many, so many lengths to show that you love me. No, it's because it's like we both have this taste. We can't show it, you know, we can't literally show the consumption. The adrenaline of human flesh. But it's Francis Wolcott.

I listen to the earth, it tells me there is no sin. What I do, there is no sin. I can cause whatever chaos, whatever, whatever in my life, I could cause mayhem and destruction and misery. And it's all fine. Everything is allowed. There is no sin for me. I'm just increased your pure reaction, self-possessed.

I, I just want this to thrive off of and you want the same thing. You did the same thing. We're perfect for each other. Just like Ghislaine and Jeffrey were, you know, there was probably sexual attraction there, but really, what was it really? We both want, we both believe there is no sin. Yeah, we both have no limits. And let's find the outer reaches of human depravity together.

Sail the wine dark sea of human excess and see how far we can go. So yeah, I only figured this out. I had to like sleep on watching the last episode because like Michael Bloomberg, oh God, oh, it's amazing. I thought it was the ranking. Yeah, that's right. This disgusting gnome billionaire mayor is fascinated by the goings on at a fucking high school, normal and cool, real, realistic, realistic, actually realistic and horrifying.

Yeah. Michael Bloomberg would, if Gossip Girl was a real website, Michael Bloomberg was re-enjacking all of every day. He would be, he would go in every day of the first like his shakeup meeting with his staff and be like, oh my God, did you hear about what Blair Ward of the charity ball? Yeah, he would. He would look at the Gossip Girl website like it was a fucking landsmack. Also, Donald Trump would do that.

Donald Trump would also religiously read it. Oh my God. That would be very unfair to Serena, treated it like garbage. That would be his favorite. He would love it. Are you kidding me? No. Yeah.

Bloomberg, my mind started rolling because initially I thought the point of the Dan character was this shows a role in upper middle-class to middle-class drivers who work their way into wealth as sort of stenographers for the rich, which is what Dan does in the show. Like he's an author who writes about the lives of the upperclassmen and his experiences with the rich Manhattanites. And they try to, you know, the people who aren't ready for the Epstein pill, they lead them the other direction because they have things like Jay McInerney, the author of Bright Lights, Big City, which is a great book about like sort of rich upper East Siders like this

show is in there. And they're like, oh no, you see, he's one of them. Like he represents the role of the media and its relation to the ruling class. But no, this is MK Ultra. This is a signal. This was like presaging the Epstein drops 10 years before they happened. And like, okay, do you remember the episode? It's the end of season three, where Gossip Girl releases all the tips because Serena

provoked it. And Dan, everyone's pissed, but Dan's like, well, whatever. Oh, that's okay, let me find me. Because just like like Epstein can't be blackmailed by Epstein, like Epstein doesn't care if you say he's a blackmail, he's like, I don't give a shit, like, yeah, I'm evil. That's my whole deal. Yeah, you want to, you know, here's my card, I'm untouchable. That's what's so amazing about that last, the last episode is when it's revealed, not

just like it's one thing that Serena gets like her kinky thrills realizing she's found an evil soulmate, but everyone else, all of the people whose lives were really traumatized by Gossip Girl, just one by one, just go like, you know, I guess it was all for the best and whatever, you know what, you're all right. Just shrugs it off like, yeah, oh, we're all just completely depraved. We have absolutely no moral core at all. And like maybe like there was some anxiety because they thought maybe one of them did and maybe they thought it was Dan and now they're just like, oh, you are just as disgusting

as the rest of us. This is great. Yeah. And Dan, what does Dan do during the periods where him and Serena are broken up? He fucks every girl in the world. He has sex with everyone. He fucks everyone. He's insane.

He's, when Jeffrey Epstein gathered all those MIT scientists around and he would like ask them dumb questions and then go, what does this have to do with Pussy? Yeah. Because that's all he cared about was Pussy and the pursuit of evil and power and that's all Dan cares about. That's it. Just give it to me. And he's supposed to be, and he's, he is supposed to be the one who has some sort of

remove from this whole world and instead he is so single hindedly fixated on entering it that he will just shed any human sense and the show at no point seems to recognize that as a sacrifice or as some sort of like a human declension. It's, if anything, it's him becoming the best version of himself. Yeah. No, because he got in. The most important thing is that you get in and it doesn't matter what you do to anyone because like so many just explicit like characters that existed just be evil like Ivy, Ivy Dickens

or, or Georgina Sparks, they're also in it. Yeah. Like everyone, yeah. Like they're part of everyone's happy ending. There can be no real like transgression that can ever not be forgiven, which is the case when you're at that level of lack of accountability. It's like if Donald Trump lives another 10 years, he will be at some wedding with the 100% picture.

They will, they will do anything to anybody, including sometimes each other, but they always realize they're on the same team. It's why, you know, these people, including Donald Trump, including Bill Clinton, could have known about Epstein and Maxwell's proclivities and been like, yeah, here's my daughter. Isn't it great to meet my young daughter? Like Glenn Dubin and Glenn Dubin, by the way, is, uh, he's, um, Bart Bass, that's, Oh, yes. Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah. Total business psychopath willing to just auction off family members for business purposes. Yeah. That's, that's Dubin, uh, but at the end of the day, it's like they have an easier time forgiving each other because it's like, oh, we both have this taste for human flesh. Yeah. We understand.

We understand. We understand it's fighting each other. If a normal person harms them, they will go to the edge of the earth to ruin them. But each other at the end of the day, we're all on the same team. Yep. Exo gossip. Yep. And then, uh, how, then there's a showdown over the course of season between Bart and

his son, Chuck, for control of the company. And at one point, uh, Chuck is attempted to be murdered by his father in a, in a plane crash, a engineered plane crash. He appears at a function that his father is at to accuse him of the, of the attempted murder. They go to the roof and Bart falls off while trying to attack his son and is holding on and Chuck and Blair, just, just watch him, just watch him. And he just falls off and then he's dead.

And at no point is the fact that they just cold-bloodedly stood there and watched the guy as the fucking fingers fell off is just absolutely never even addressed. It's just taken for granted. Well, he was trying to kill you. What do you, what do you want? You got it. You save his life. Then you still have to what?

Like wrap him up and take him to the police or something. That's the big hassle. Just the easiest thing to do is just let nature take its course. That makes sense. Right. And everyone just, that is the assumed logic, moral logic of that situation. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just, it is a show of people at their basest behavior. Like it's like, it's like monster of Florence. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. But yeah, that's, I mean, I gotta say, just as a straight-up piece of YA drama from 2010, I liked it. I thought it was easy to watch, it was fun.

But now realizing it as a parable, a dead drop about Jeffrey Epstein, now I think it's fucking genius. Now it's in the third category. Now this is fucking elite. Honestly, yes. Like, I mean, the same way as like viewing, you know, the shining through the lens of the fucking moon landing or something, it just makes it sparkle. There's so many dimensions to be pulled out of it.

And it really is an instructive document. It was, it was, it was an effort either through just the market expressing itself or a government intervention or just a touch from the muse. It fully articulated the relationship of the moral reality of the living at like the, this point of decadence in our empire, and that the people who would negotiate that space would be just sort of over time and friction turned into just shark teeth, just absolute monsters. That there's a man named Jeffrey Epstein out there, and that it's the future for all of

us because we'll all be absorbed into this, the gossip girl world will all become these decadent subjects of, of like self amusement that will destroy all of us eventually. Yes. And we'll be wondering who the gossip girl is while the toxic saltwater rises to our eyeballs and drowns us all. Michael Bloomberg will fly away to the Mars colony that turned out to be a grift all along. There's no oxygen there. The rich share one last insane orgy before their heads explode from space pressure.

Humanity is gone. Octopuses take over. They do this whole thing. They make this show featuring other cephalopods. Yep. Happens until the sun blows up. Happens in another galaxy. Yeah.

We all get to heaven. We all get to heaven. We're all Dan Humphrey or Serena VanderWoodson. Everything done will be done again under the sun unto death. So gossip girl. All this has happened before all this will happen again. I'm Felix Spiderman. I'm Matt Crispin.

See you next time on the show. Thanks for watching guys.