Hello guys and ghouls—it’s me, GG. If you thought this Halloween episode would feature anything remotely spooky, you’re in for a trick. Everyone knows celebrities only dress up as other celebrities on this hallowed occasion, and that the scariest thing you’ll find at Hulaween 2020 is an ill-advised Chuck Bass costume. Read on and discover what continues to haunt us from the latest episode of HBO Max’s Gossip Girl.

Kelli: This is an interesting episode, because I actually got a lot of the things I asked for. For one thing, it’s a Halloween episode with a Halloween party, and you know I love nothing more than that combo. For another, the show did a hard 180 with Rafa the Predatory Teacher, and our fears of having to accept his relationship with Max as a “love story” were quickly assuaged. What more could I possibly ask for? Well… a lot, actually.

Emily: Yeah, I think I can safely say things didn’t get worse in this episode. But they certainly didn’t get better either.

Kelli: Let’s start, I guess, with Julien and Zoya. This episode, Julien is very focused on getting her followers to think that she and Zoya are really friends now, and that her performance at Zoya’s birthday party is a thing of the past. Monet and Luna are still trying to steer Julien in the direction they see for her social media presence, but she’s pretty much ignoring their advice completely at this point. 

Emily: I really did think for a minute that Julien was going to like, stop caring about what people on social media thought about her. But that was so short lived. Julien is one of our main characters, and I’m finding it so hard to identify with her or even empathize with her “plight” in any way. The obvious answer seems to be to just fucking be friends with the people you want to be friends with. But we’re not going to examine this in any way. We’re just going to let Julien be this way, I guess. Anyway, yeah, Julien wants to “look” like she’s “friends” with her sister, rather than actually being friends with her sister.

Kelli: They realize that everyone is going to be at Hulaween, a real party thrown annually in NYC by “one of the witches from Hocus Pocus,” AKA Bette Midler. Shout out to the writers room for that hilarious line. I’ll also take this opportunity to share with you that the cheapest tickets to this party come in at $750 a pop. It is, at the very least, a benefit for the New York Restoration Project.

Emily: It’s good to know that the youths are still watching Hocus Pocus. 

Kelli: ANYWAY, Zoya and Julien decide to do a sisters-couples-costume, and their best idea is to be Solange and Beyonce—specifically from the night Solange tried to beat Jay-Z up in an elevator. But when they arrive at the party, there are Beyonces and Solanges EVERYWHERE! Someone betrayed them! Who could it be! (It was Monet.)

Did this costume/party/betrayal plot do anything for you at all? 

Emily: No, I fucking hated this. When they said they were doing the Solange/Beyonce elevator moment, I was secretly hoping someone would show up as the elevator. But it was not to be.

But what really pissed me off? So like, after they realize that everyone else has the same costume as them, they decide to swap clothes with their guy friends so they can be Dan Humphrey and Chuck Bass. Like, first of all, Chuck Bass and Dan Humphrey are probably not actually that famous. Sorry. Secondly, you’re just wearing suits now. There’s nothing else about you that would signify that you’re Chuck and Dan and not just some random girls in menswear. Thirdly, how are these suits fitting you so well? I hated this. 

Kelli: We are in complete agreement on this. Like, there is a moment where someone asks Zoya, “are you Chuck Bass?” She’s literally just wearing a suit and a wig. Absolutely not. Also, I would kind of like for us to collectively pretend Chuck Bass does not exist considering he was established as a rapist in the pilot episode and also in real life, but that’s a tall order, I know.

Zoya also has her own plot capsule this episode. I refer to it this way because it’s pretty much one and done. She meets a guy on the bus who supposedly goes to a competing school, he seems cool and down to earth because he has a flip phone, and after running into him again she agrees to be his friend. By the end of the episode we find out that he’s actually a reporter who is posing as a student in order to get close to Zoya in the hopes of discovering that SHE is Gossip Girl. 

Emily: I was really hoping that he’d secretly be the school shooter that was brought up earlier in the episode. Are we seeing a pattern here? There’s an alternate version of this show in my mind where people dress up as elevators and accidentally befriend school shooters on busses. Yes, it’s an edgier world and perhaps a little more surreal, but wouldn’t it be better? Because this storyline was so dumb.

Kelli: I would have enjoyed that more. As it stands, this seemed like it happened way too fast. Like, they could have at least dragged it out for two episodes so that the “actually a reporter” reveal would have been a little bit more surprising. At the same time, I didn’t really care about the storyline anyway because they were trying to lean into a will-they-or-won’t-they thing, and since I have zero investment in Zoya and Obie’s relationship, I really don’t care what happens. I just want Zoya to find someone cooler to date.

Emily: Right, and also, Obie and Zoya have zero chemistry. Like, we don’t like Obie at all, but even if we did, I don’t believe this romance in the slightest. And they seem to be setting it up to fail, right? I would guess this love story would be over in the next episode or two. 

Kelli: Re: the fake student, there is a weird through-line here that you already mentioned: a kid brings a gun to the competing school, and we see this play out in the first few seconds of the episode. No shots are fired or anything, but it still felt like they were kind of trivializing the situation, especially with the two girls Julien is competing with for the costume contest prize. What are your thoughts on this?

Emily: I agree, and I think that’s maybe why I wanted the school “shooter” to factor in a bigger way in the episode (like Zoya getting close to him by accident and then realizing this person needs help). And yeah, it was upsetting to see these two girls get excited about what being so close to a gun might do for their popularity. But I’m also not surprised at all, considering how much I hate everyone in this show.

Kelli: Yeah, and it also just seemed kind of randomly placed in here for people to react to, but it didn’t have an actual impact on anyone or anything. 

Emily: I want to talk about Nick Lott (Zoya’s dad) and the teacher Kate. Because on the parent-teacher meeting day, it was clear they were undressing each other with their eyes. And honestly, I’m here for this romance because Zoya’s dad is hot. But also I hated the set up for this. I’m sorry, but if I’m a full-time fucking teacher, I would be a little insulted if a parent asked me to tutor their child after hours like that. Like I HAVE A LIFE, SIR. I don’t know. Again, this whole show feels like it’s been written by people who have never taught and have no idea how teachers work.

Kelli: Yeah, I feel like that was definitely his excuse to get her to come over so that he could flirt more, but it was not the best move. It’s like if someone asked me out by asking me to come over and help them with their logo design. Like, no thanks? 

Emily: I also hate when I tell people I write and they’re like, “I want to read your story.” No. The answer is no. 

Kelli: We also see Kate go through a miniature crisis about whether or not she should continue doing Gossip Girl, which is tangentially related to the school-almost-shooting incident, because the kid was getting bullied because of some post he was tagged in on Gossip Girl (although we don’t get any real detail about what happened here). By the end of the episode she’s back on her bullshit, though, especially because her story got rejected by The Paris Review. I would love to know what that story was about.

Kate’s trajectory in this episode highlights something about this show that has been really frustrating to me. It seems like all of the characters are stuck in these loops of indecision that begin and end in the same place every episode. Julien is worried about being popular, decides popularity isn’t that important, and then is worried about being popular again. Zoya is worried about losing herself, starts to lose herself, finds herself, and then starts losing herself again. Aki and Audrey think maybe they should break up, get back together, think maybe they should break up again. Kate has a crisis of conscience, gets over it, then has another crisis. The show just keeps repeating over and over again on a micro level without the plot or any of the relationships developing or moving forward at all. 

Emily: This is 100% one of my biggest problems with the show, and one of the reasons I wait til the very last minute to watch every week. I’m not excited about the storylines, because at the end of the day they seem inconsequential. These characters don’t feel like real people who change and react to things happening around them. They feel more like cartoon characters who wear the same outfit everyday and reset to their original beliefs/understandings at the beginning of each new episode. 

Speaking of teachers, let’s go ahead and talk about this situation with Max and the predatory teacher, yes? In this episode, we find out that this teacher (I’m too lazy to look up his name) actually has a history of hooking up with students. We actually appreciate this, because at least we’re not going to have to pretend like this is some great romance and Max is the special student that got this dude to break his rule. But on the other hand, this makes the teacher’s behavior in previous episodes totally random and incomprehensible. Why did he spend so much time resisting? Why did he act like he actually gave a fuck? How do all of these plot twists add up to a character that makes any kind of sense?

Kelli: Yeah, it’s very weird. It’s almost like they got feedback on the storyline and then tried to retcon it, but obviously it didn’t happen that way because this whole show was written, filmed, and produced already… so this is just a failure in storytelling. The inconsistencies are wild. The only answer I could come up with is that Rafa (the teacher) gets off on being withholding at first, but it felt like he really was trying to be there for Max in those first couple of episodes, and now he’s pivoted into being fully evil. Which, again, is much better than where I feared things were going, but they could have done a better job planting this plot seed.

I did like seeing Aki go out of his way to try to warn/save Max, mostly because if there’s any relationship I’m invested in, it’s theirs. Is it because they’re hot? Maybe.

Emily: Are they though? I think for me, I mostly feel for Aki because he seems like one of the only people on this show who isn’t a total dick. Max is okay, I guess. I feel for him and his family drama, and I can see why that might be making him act out. Audrey being a little bitch about having to move to Connecticut though… like girl, you are a child. Your mom’s problems ARE your problems.

Kelli: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Audrey gets a continuation of the storyline with her mother in this episode. Her mom cooks fancy dinner to break the news that they’re going to have to move back “home” to Cornwall because they’re poor now. One nice touch here was that after Audrey yells at her mom and storms out, her mom dumps the freshly-cooked salmon into the sink. This is not the type of thing you do when you don’t have any money, Kiki.

Emily: I know. I don’t even eat fish and that pained me.

Kelli: Anyway, Audrey spends the episode trying to find a way to trick her mom into staying, and even threatens to involve her dad, which her mom definitely doesn’t want, since he cheated and she has pride. This is something that always confuses me in storylines like this where a person could be financially bailed out but they don’t want to ask for help… I feel like if I was in that situation, rather than upend my entire life and my daughter’s life, I’d be like “Yes ex-husband, pay me what you fucking owe me,” lol. But yeah, Audrey is being a brat about this, which Aki points out, because again, he is the only person with any kind of overall concept about how the world works. I think it’s kind of funny that Obie is the one who is performatively woke when Aki is actually the only good person here (other than Zoya).

Emily: I don’t know. Like, sometimes Zoya is a good person? Sometimes she’s just an idiot. Overall, I think what we’re learning is that Aki should be the star of this show and everyone else sucks.

Kelli: Yeah, I am willing to give Zoya slightly more leeway because she just turned 15, but her choices are questionable. I think she at least has decent intentions.

At the end of the episode, Audrey has been abandoned all night at the party because of stuff & things, and so she gets drunk and cries about it. Finally she understands what her mother was going through that night at the parent-teacher mixer! Just as she’s explaining this to Aki, she gets a phone call from her mom, and it turns out Kiki is in the hospital. We don’t actually hear what happened, but I’m assuming it’s some kind of overdose based on context clues. Everyone leaves the party and shows up for her, even Max, after he tells off Rafa and luckily removes his terrifying threaded mouth makeup.

Emily: Haha! I kept staring at that like how is that even working? And do I want to know?

But yes, I guess in this final moment we are to believe that all of these people are really friends and will be there for each other at the end of the day. Which is nice, I guess. I don’t buy it, and just because you tell me it, Gossip Girl, doesn’t make it real. But okay. I guess. 

Kelli: The problem is that we have spent so much time on the same petty popularity contest drama—

Emily: Aha so now you admit that shit is dumb. Lol.

Kelli: YES EMILY YOU WERE RIGHT.

As I was saying, we have spent so much time on the same petty popularity contest drama and other meaningless shit (like whether the teachers are going to keep being Gossip Girl or not) that we’ve spent almost no time developing the actual friendships here. Like, what kind of relationship does Max have with Obie? Or Aki with Julien? They do this group hug at the end and I couldn’t help but feel like I have no understanding of the dynamics of this friend group aside from their individual insult styles. It’s not enough. 

Emily: How many more of these do we have before the mid-season break? One?

Kelli: One! And that is when we will decide once and for all if we want to continue with these recaps. Stay tuned, y’all.