Families may be at their worst around Thanksgiving (hey, if you aren’t fighting with your sibling over pie, did you even celebrate?), but Gossip Girl’s iconic Thanksgiving episodes are The CW show at its most interesting.
Throughout Gossip Girl’s six seasons, lies, arguments, and betrayals severed the fabulous lives of Manhattan’s elite, but Thanksgiving always brought them back together again — mainly so that further chaos could ensue. The annual Thanksgiving episode (which is strangely missing from season 5) is Gossip Girl in its most Shakespearean form, a comedy of errors built around more dramatic irony than your English teacher could ever hope to explain to you.
As you peel the sweet potatoes, set the table, and ready yourself to deal with relatives who ask why you’re still single, you can at least be assured your actual Thanksgiving will probably be less action-packed than ones involving the Waldorfs, van der Woodsens, and Humphreys. But when your own Thanksgiving environment gets a little too uncomfortable to bear, grab a leftover turkey environment and slip into glamorous Upper East Side life. And if you’re not sure which to choose, here’s our absolute, final, incontestable ranking of all five Gossip Girl-sgiving episodes, from most deliciously drama-filled to least. Though the best way to celebrate is by watching all five, sure to leave you as bloated on gossip as you are from turkey.
5. Season 6, Episode 8, “It’s Really Complicated”
This, the final season’s Thanksgiving episode, is a doozy. It pays homage to past episodes, with shots of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a reunited (again) Dan and Serena, and torn-apart (again) Blair and Chuck. Dan even neatly sums up the show’s Thanksgiving history, saying, “Given our track record with Thanksgivings, it might be kind of risky. Divorces have been filed, affairs revealed—” Before Serena cuts him off, “Yes, but that was our parents, not us.” Oh optimistic Serena, don’t you know children throughout fiction history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forebears?
Plotwise, just like in her season 4 Thanksgiving arc, Blair is once again trying to fly to Paris for the holiday to spend time with her family (“a pumpkin macaron will have to do!”). Lily and Bart are also trying to fly to the beach to get away from Chuck. And Serena and Dan decide to throw the ultimate dinner by themselves, but surprise, things don’t go as planned.
This episode gets points for all its meta-commentary on GG’s Thanksgiving culture, though it loses points for existing in a season that is on the whole, extremely, over-the-top wild. Example: Georgina, queen of fixing show slumps, appears to say, “I’m your everything,” after Dan refuses to send her his book draft (he instead sends it straight to Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter’s assistant, because sure, that’s a thing). Also extreme minus for Blair and Chuck trying to roleplay Pocahontas/John Smith/John Rolfe — no one asked for that.
4. Season 4, Episode 10, “Gaslit”
In this episode, Gossip Girl gives thanks for the “bounty of secrets” these characters bestow upon her – and to be fair, that bounty is pretty fully-loaded.
It’s Thanksgiving at the Humphrey/Van der Woodsen abode on the UES, and the climate is chilly. Lily is pissed at Serena, Blair is pissed at Serena, Dan is pissed at Serena — but Serena herself is nowhere to be found, until she wakes up in a random bedroom, clearly drugged, and calls 911.
Thanksgiving is interrupted from here on out, as Serena’s friends, family, and doctors assume she overdosed on purpose, and is possibly depressed. She’s sent to the Ostroff Center, the van der Woodsen family’s go-to rehabilitation center. But they don’t know the full story yet, which is that Juliet Sharp (Katie Cassidy) teamed up with Jenny and Vanessa to turn Serena’s friends against her as part of a revenge plot; and Juliet took the plot 1,000 steps further by drugging her.
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