Gossip Girl Reality Check: "Yes, Then Zero"

The Gossip Girl premiere was good overall, but I have ISSUES. Read about them after the break!



So, all the press about this premiere revolved around how the identity of the pregnant woman would be shocking. And . . . it wasn't. At all. I guess it was vaguely startling that Dorota and Blair were both pregnant, but neither of those pregnancies was a surprise. I don't need for things to be shocking, but after all the hype, that was a weird sort of letdown with which to start the season.

Now, of course, we're supposed to be wondering whether the baby is Chuck's or Louis's, but I think they're having some slight timing issues. If she's six weeks pregnant, that means that conception happened about four weeks ago. The premiere made it seem like an entire summer had passed; the writers tweeted that it had been "less than six weeks." I guess that could mean four weeks, but I'm suspecting that the writers just don't know/haven't thought about the way pregnancy weeks are calculated. (It's also possible the dressmaker was wrong, of course.) That sort of carelessness drives me nuts.

The actually interesting possibility is that it's Dan's baby - although Dan has had more than his share of that sort of thing, I suppose. The big hint toward this solution is that Rufus assumes something in Dan's story about Blair is fiction. This could just be the kiss, but it could be something more. Regardless, I am very curious to see where they go with this story. It would be nice to see an unhysterical abortion storyline on a show like this, and that seems to make the most sense, but we'll see. If she has an abortion without knowing who the father is, that opens the show to all sorts of dramatic possibilities.

While we're on the subject of inaccurate things that are driving me crazy: There is NO WAY Vanessa would be able to get Dan's book published like that. I checked with a few literary agents and they agreed that publishing just does not work that way. The publisher would need a contract with the author under his legal name; if for some reason of life and death that couldn't happen, there would have to be lawyers involved to act as his representatives and it would be much more complicated. Vanessa couldn't just waltz in with the manuscript and demand the advance. This is RIDICULOUS. I mean, I don't expect this show to display realism, but this example is just so egregious that I couldn't let it go unmentioned.