Hey, Upper Eastsiders. Gossip Girl here. Back for one last hurrah before we take a short hiatus from following the highs, lows, and outright disasters of Manhattan’s young, beautiful, and filthy rich teens. Will I be back for more later? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. Because I don’t know if Kelli and Emily will want to recap after this episode. 

Kelli: This week, HBO has delivered yet another episode that I would describe as “fine.” Was this the worst episode of the season? No. Was it the best? Also no. Did it feel like a mid-season finale? Hardly. Maybe the CW set my expectations too high, but I expect a mid-season Gossip Girl finale to be full of high stakes and drama, and to end on a cliffhanger. This… was not that.

Emily: Yeah like… where is Serena van der Woodsen claiming she’s killed someone? Big yawn.

Kelli: Last week, we learned at the end of the episode that Audrey’s mom was in the hospital. It’s still not totally clear what happened, other than that it was likely a suicide attempt. We spend a lot of time with Audrey here, who in her anxiety over her mother’s condition reaches peak Blair Waldorf. I will say that despite what an asshole she is for most of the episode, I did feel a twinge of emotion when her mom woke up and they shared that moment together towards the end. How are you feeling about this storyline?

Emily: It’s hard, because as I’ve mentioned before and as you just said, at this point I feel like I know so little about who Audrey is as a person. All I can do is compare her to Blair Waldorf, because she does seem to be the Blair Waldorf character of this reboot. But when she freaked out at the hospital about her mom? Was I like, “Oh, that’s so Audrey”? Absolutely not, because I do not know this person. Like even when you just said that Audrey’s an asshole, I thought to myself, “Is she? What do we know about her really?” So yeah… if I try really hard, I can feel emotional about this. But it takes a lot of projecting, imagining what I would feel if I were in this situation. Do I feel anything for Audrey? No, because she’s not really a full character yet.

Kelli: We actually do get to spend a lot of time with the characters in group settings and family settings with each other in this episode, including a deeply awkward climactic family dinner which felt sort of in the spirit of the OG GG. It’s a nice change of pace from the indistinguishable bars and parties we have seen up to this point in the series. We meet Obie’s mom and Aki’s parents for the first time, and so does Zoya, who takes the opportunity to put her foot in her mouth and basically chew on it for the entire length of this event. Still… she wasn’t wrong!

Emily: She definitely wasn’t wrong, but I also wondered where this came from! I just didn’t realize that she was the type to start a fight with someone’s parents at the dinner table. I guess again this goes back to not really knowing these characters very well yet. I would say I do have a sense of who Zoya is more than, say, Audrey. But still. This was surprising. Not in a “wow” way, but more in a, like, “oh… okay” way. 

Kelli: Yeah—I will say that we have seen Zoya do this “I am very opinionated” thing before, like after the play in episode 3 when she was talking about theater and said some word wrong that I don’t remember, and we also saw her be pretty sassy with the two girls who planned on stealing their costumes during the Halloween party episode. I think she is established as a character who speaks her mind, but we haven’t really seen it backfire until this episode. Also, her birthday in late October makes her a Scorpio, so… that much checks out.

Emily: LOL say no more. 

Kelli: We’ll talk more about the dinner in a minute, but first, can we talk about Obie? I just need to talk about how much I hate him and how he is by far the worst character on this show. On the one hand, I’m glad that we got to see a little bit more explicitly in this episode that he actually does suck and that maybe the show doesn’t want us to see him as a hero—but then I feel like we were supposed to be proud of him or something for standing up to his mom, which… low bar, especially when he is so obsessed with seeming like he’s woke and progressive and an activist. Like, Aki’s dad is obviously horrible and Aki is not doing much to oppose him, but Aki also isn’t walking around pretending to be a martyr the way Obie does whenever his parents aren’t around. 

Emily: Yes, and this is good news, because I don’t want to have to like Obie. I’m skeptical of any white man anyway, so I’m glad to see the show is pointing out his flaws as well. Maybe eventually both Zoya and Julien will dump Obie. This loser has done a lot of virtue signaling and has over and over again attempted to shame both Zoya and Julien for any behavior he deems as “shallow.” So let’s see him being called out more for this hypocrisy. Also even if he ends up not being a hypocrite (he is), it’s still not cool to judge someone for caring about their appearance. You can want to look cute and also care about social issues. 

Kelli: Exactly. And the fact that we are already seeing that Obie x Zoya has run its course makes me think maybe they will both be done with him by the season’s end.

At the end of this episode, though, we see Zoya and Obie break up—kind of?—and then Obie and Julien IMMEDIATELY hook up at a protest the next day. 

Emily: Okay, so I’m still not understanding “hook up” as a term that just means making out. When you say “hook up,” it makes me think they fucked at a protest. I believe Susan and I discussed this somewhere. I wonder when the age divide is exactly between hook up meaning sex and hook up meaning making out. Someone let us know in the comments. I’m very curious.

Kelli: LOL. Yeah, I just use it to mean making out. To be fair, it’s very possible that these two people who have already had sex proceed to have sex after this alleyway makeout.

What is actually hilarious about this is that they’re like shrouded in sirens and tear gas as they make out against a wall, two rich people who are centering themselves in the middle of what appears to be a really violent situation for which neither of them will suffer any consequences, unless you count Obie’s mom calling him a bad boy and Julien not getting a contract with Sephora (I don’t). I genuinely could not care less what happens to either of these characters, and the only thing that keeps me vaguely interested in Julien is her relationship with Zoya. Oh, and her hot dad. Their mom really must have been hot, because BOTH of their dads are hot.

Emily: I 100% agree with everything you just said. Retweet. I’ve been watching this show wondering if maybe I’m just too old to care about young people problems. Especially because every week I sit here thinking, “Damn, these parents are hot.” But it’s not their age that’s the problem. I think I’m just over rich people problems.

Kelli: The dinner also prompts what is perhaps Audrey’s worst moment of the episode, which is accidentally outing Aki to his parents. She clearly did not do this out of malicious intent, but it was still extremely stupid of her, and it leads to something even more upsetting, which is Aki’s father outing him on television in order to save his own skin — and not even CORRECTLY outing him. Shoutout to Aki for being a textbook bisexual and grabbing the mic to clarify: “I’m not gay. I’m bisexual.” 

Also, I just have to quickly point out that Aki’s father and the brief reference to his children fighting over the inheritance of the company is a direct rip-off of the plot of Succession, also on HBO. People, if you want to watch a show about awful rich people and you can only pick one, go watch Succession instead of this.

Emily: I know we’ve said this before, I want to restate for the record that I think Aki is probably the best character on this show. When that dumb predator teacher (Rafa) was trying to get not-Chuck (Max) back at the beginning of the episode, I was actually really, really concerned that Rafa was going to out Aki on Gossip Girl. If that had happened, I would have 100% been done with this show. I know Audrey outing Aki and then later Aki’s dad outing him to everyone was, like, technically just as bad, but for some reason the Gossip Girl thing would have been a step too far. Does that make sense?

Kelli: Yes, that makes perfect sense to me. I think it’s because Gossip Girl as a concept on this show, the way the teachers are the ones running it, is ALREADY too far. We see them snapping pics of minors making out, or naked through a window, STALKING their students… like, it’s too much, and outing a character would have been way too far when we are already past the point of too far. 

Kelli: Speaking of bisexual, I was right in my fairly obvious prediction that we would finally get the threesome in the mid-season finale. I do appreciate that they let this simmer for a full six episodes, unlike a lot of the other weird and sudden plot developments and conclusions we’ve seen so far on this show. I am here for this threesome, because while the jury is still out on my feelings about Audrey, we all know that I love Aki, and I also am continuing to enjoy Max. I think it says a lot about Max as a character that as soon as he found out about Audrey’s mom, he pulled his shit together and became singularly focused on being there for his friends. He has done a full pivot on his feelings for Rafa, much like Rafa’s full pivot into villain mode. I really enjoyed the way he continued to put Rafa in his place throughout the episode. 

Emily: Yes, we’re definitely on the same page with this. This episode made me like Max a lot, and I think we got a much better idea of the friendship dynamic between Max, Aki, and Audrey. When all the drama is set aside and shit gets real, this is how they are there for each other. It was great to see. It felt like our first true love story of the season. And it’s too bad, because I would really love for Gossip Girl to do something new and show us a functioning poly relationship. But I seriously doubt we’re going to go in that direction. 

Kelli: Yeah, I would be surprised. I see this going in a direction where Aki and Max form more of a romantic connection and Audrey can’t handle it. But I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it plays out differently.

Finally, I guess we have to talk about Gossip Girl, which ironically continues to be the worst part of the show.

Emily: Yeah, I have zero idea why these people would let Rafa have anything to do with this account. He’s clearly shady. And yet Kate just hands over the account details. Of course, it’s not even a full episode before that comes back to bite them in the ass. With them being this open about Gossip Girl, I’m actually shocked they haven’t gotten caught yet. This is bananas.

Kelli: There is a moment at the beginning of the episode where Kate hands the other teachers full-ass schedules for Gossip Girl that are printed out and in labeled folders. Yes, let’s just disseminate this secret information in the most obvious way with multiple paper trails, why don’t we? These people are seriously so stupid. It’s painful to watch. They also briefly got a video from Max of him and Rafa fucking which Rafa then deleted before they could do anything with it, but like… I would have also been grossed the fuck out if they had posted that? 

Emily: I also want to say that Zoya’s hot dad deserves so much better than Kate. Even though it was really insulting for him to ask Kate to tutor after hours when she’s a full ass teacher, he still deserves better. Because Kate is trash. I’m really upset, because he gave Kate all of these intimate details about Zoya and Julien’s mom, and you know she’s going to use them. 

Kelli: Yeah, we’ll see what happens with that. I have a feeling that Kate is going to be pivoting away from Gossip Girl eventually because I think the show wants us to see her as a hero, or at least the hero of the group of teachers. I think she’s going to start dating Nick, because obviously they wouldn’t set that up for no payout, and then she’s going to become too conflicted and decide that she doesn’t want to do Gossip Girl anymore and it’s going to be a whole thing. I sincerely hope she doesn’t end up using that information, but I can see it somehow getting into the hands of the other teachers who will then post it, because that’s the way this show works.

Emily: Oh, yeah, I guess I should say I’m not sure she’ll be the one to post them, but they will get posted. And then there will be this whole thing where he probably finds out she was involved and he asks if she was only getting close to him to find dirt for Gossip Girl. And she’ll be like, “At first that’s what it was, but then I found out I really like you.” Because that’s it. That’s the one plot.

Kelli: So, Emily: what say you? Are we doing the second half of this season when it premieres in November?

Emily: I’m undecided. Can we wait and see if we like the episode in November? Is that a thing we can do?

Kelli: We make the rules, so… yes. That’s the plan now.

Emily: You heard it here first. We don’t know what we’re doing.

Kelli: You know you love us! XO XO!!!!!!!