Gossip Woman was one of the crucial fashionable teen dramas through the late 2000s.
Primarily based on the novels of the identical title by Cecily von Ziegesar, the sequence adopted Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass, Dan Humphrey, and Jenny Humphrey whose private lives are consistently scrutinized and commented on by the titular nameless blogger. Relationships have been a core story ingredient of the present. Whereas a number of of the romantic entanglements have been problematic, the friendship between Serena and Blair was probably the most poisonous.
The Poisonous Basis of Serena and Blair’s Friendship
Though the sequence usually bought Serena and Blair’s friendship as extraordinarily shut, the ladies spent most of their time preserving secrets and techniques, harboring jealousy, and outright attempting to sabotage one another. The toxicity of their bond was first seen in Season 1, Episode 1, titled “Pilot,” which revealed that Serna had slept with Blair’s boyfriend, Nate. She then abruptly left for boarding college earlier than with out saying goodbye to her greatest good friend. The secrecy surrounding her departure from the Higher East Facet was the primary level of competition of their relationship lengthy earlier than Blair discovered about Serena’s tryst with Nate.
Nonetheless, Blair will not be an harmless sufferer within the friendship. When she finds out concerning the affair and the rationale for Serena leaving, she vows to take her down. Season 1 is crammed with every woman (principally Blair) plotting vicious assaults on one another to destroy their social standing at college and in the neighborhood. Their rift ultimately resolves, and non permanent peace follows. However issues flip chaotic in Season 1, Episode 11, titled “Roman Vacation when Blair tells everybody that Serena went to the Ostroff Heart for rehab, not figuring out it was truly Serena’s brother being handled for despair.
The Intensifying Rivalry and Sabotage
In Season 2, Episode 6, referred to as “New Haven Can Wait,” Serena and Blair every tried to sabotage the opposite’s Yale acceptance. The toxicity took heart stage throughout an occasion for potential college students hosted by the College’s Dean when Serena deliberately steals Blair’s reply to a query he posed. When the group was requested who they’d most wish to have dinner with, Serena named the Dean’s favourite author, George Sand, figuring out full properly that it was going to be Blair’s response. The transfer damage her greatest good friend, who was compelled to retaliate by blurting out that Serena had killed somebody.
Whereas Serena was technically accountable for the dying of a person named Pete, it wasn’t precisely homicide. His dying was an unlucky accident by the hands of manipulative younger socialite Georgina Sparks, who wished to videotape Serena in a compromising place with Pete. However issues went sideways, and Pete ended up taking too many medication and overdosing. Though Serena was the harmless occasion within the incident, it had an enormous impact on her. Whereas Blair sympathized together with her good friend when she discovered about it, she weaponized the knowledge when it suited her.
The Final Betrayal and Supposed Truce
Their rivalry continued all through the sequence, with stolen picture shoots, banishment, job sabotage, orchestrated public embarrassment, and deeply private insults being among the highlights. However
whether or not it was intentional or not, Serena all the time managed to get the higher hand or outshine Blair, with that latter consistently left to play catch-up. That’s most likely why she ultimately determined to this point Dan in Season 5, Episode 17, “The Princess Dowry, despite the fact that she made her dislike for him recognized at any time when the chance offered itself in prior seasons.
Whereas her friendship and subsequent romance with Dan felt natural on the time, he was by no means Blair’s kind. She knew it could damage Serena and throw their friendship into chaos. However she did it anyway, and Serena retaliated by sleeping with Dan. One can’t assist however marvel if Dan, who was hiding in plain sight as Gossip Woman, used his platform to govern the ladies in order that he might be with Serena ultimately. If that was the complete level of making the nameless persona, it labored. Dan and Serena have been married through the sequence finale, and the woman’s “friendship” appeared to be on strong floor in that second.