What was the straight-up dumbest thing that ever happened on Gossip Girl?

Did you know Gossip Girl first aired 10 years ago? And did you know that, despite its many pitfalls, it’s still the greatest thing to happen to pop culture since the formation of the Beatles?

Yes, GG was something special – but that doesn’t mean some of its plot points weren’t totally incoherent and downright stupid. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are some of those plot points.

And as for how long this took me to compile? That’s another secret I’ll never tell.

The Humphreys’ apartment

The Humphreys are a struggling family. Their single dad was in a semi-famous band in the nineties, and now spends his days running an art gallery which only ever sells paintings to Lily Van Der Woodsen.

Yet he somehow manages to put both of his children through private school and still afford a Brooklyn Heights loft conversion with dope sliding walls.

Wait, was Rufus Humphrey a drug dealer?

The circumstances of Nate’s dad’s arrest

Sure, embezzlement cases happen all the time, but the New York Financial Crimes Bureau must have better ways of kicking off their investigations than than waiting for the suspect to punch his adult son in the face while in possession of a small wrap of cocaine.

Why not just get a warrant or something?

The blatant flaunting of the rules of uniform

Constance Billard and St Judes are supposed to be two of the most respectable and impressive private schools on the east coast, so it seems strange that the teachers are all absolutely fine with everyone dressing like they’re in an Avril Lavigne video.

Or a Britney Spears video.

Or whatever the fuck this is.

Dan Humphrey’s writing career

Yes, the man who coined the name “Charlie Trout” writes a book about how all his friends are mean to him and still manages to have it become a New York Times bestseller.

Guess I’ll just fucking give up.

Nate’s career in general

You need experience to become the editor-in-chief of a respected national magazine and then be elected mayor of the fine city of New York.

Unless you look like Nate Archibald, of course, in which case you can just get promoted from being a gormless intern because your azure eyes and lightly tousled fringe make women’s ovaries explode.

Lord Marcus Beaton

“I’M BRITISH,” booms the least authentic British accent of all time: “AND I’M A LORD!”

So begins the story of Lord Marcus Beaton, Blair’s boring Hamptons boyfriend who ends up being an English aristocrat with a penchant for fucking his mum. Even Chuck doesn’t have this many issues.

Gabriel and his pyramid scheme

We should’ve realised that guy was shifty when he turned up looking exactly like the Winklevoss twins.

Drug dealers who look like Damien Dalgaard

We know the whole “don’t get high off your own supply” mantra, but there’s no way any drug dealers shirk their Class As for an intensive skincare regime and a diet of biotin supplements.

Apart from Damien Dalgaard, that is.

The time they all went to college and then just sort of didn’t

What happens when your high school characters age out? Send them to college!

Until you immediately get bored of college storylines, so decide to drop them entirely after one season and never have any of the characters mention the fact that they all either a) dropped out or b) are missing a fuck ton of seminars.

Chuck getting shot

In the Gossip Girl worldview, Europe is a confusing and frightening place where you only ever meet two kinds of people: princes, and happy-go-lucky Dickensian highwaymen who’ll shoot you in the abdomen if you don’t hand over all your bloody jewels.

Unfortunately for Chuck, he had a run-in with the latter.

Chuck using getting shot as an excuse to become French

Chuck, who lived to tell the tale, used the opportunity to reinvent himself as Henry (or Henri?), a faux-French waiter with a limp and a wardrobe full of slightly-too-tight short-sleeved shirts.

Until he bumped into Blair on a street corner, of course because Europe is one of those 10.18 million km² landmasses where you always bump into your old pals from America!

That weird episode which was set in the ’80s

Who the fuck is this guy???

Lily’s fake cancer

Billy Baldwin gaslights Lily into genuinely believing she has cancer, yet the two still end up together by the final episode. Who said romance was dead?

That uncomfortable Princess Diana car crash storyline

The whole Blair-as-Grace-Kelly princess of Monaco storyline was absolutely fine, but the thinly-veiled homage to the death of Princess Diana in which Blair almost perished in a suspicious car crash left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.

Still, it gave the screenwriters a nifty way of sorting out her unwanted pregnancy. Charming!

That storyline about Serena’s cousin which I didn’t really pay attention to

I think her name was Juliet? And she wore expensive dresses with the tags still in so she could return them? Wait no, that was the girl whose brother was a wispy-voiced schoolteacher on the sex offenders’ register.

Nope, Serena’s cousin was called Ivy. Or Charlie? To be honest, I couldn’t give less of a shit.

The disappearance of Scott

Scott, Rufus and Lily’s secret son and Gossip Girl’s Most Annoying Character, was shoehorned in as a plot point and potential love interest for Vanessa. Then, all of a sudden, he disappeared and was never so much as mentioned again.

The most tragic thing about it all? You didn’t even notice.

The resurrection of Bart Bass

After he fake died because of something to do with oil trading in Sudan and a fake sheikh’s horses, Bart Bass returned as a full-on pantomime villain.

He tried to have his son killed in a plane crash; he had a bloke called Bruce Caplan drowned on a yacht or something. This all culminated in a rooftop showdown stolen straight from a ’90s Disney film, which ended with Bart tumbling to his death from the rooftop of his very own hotel.

This child’s outfit

Tell me this terrifying little wraith isn’t going to turn into a serial killer.

Dan being Gossip Girl

Dan Humphrey. Dan. Dan is Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl, voiced ever-so-sweetly for five seasons by petite blonde Kristen Bell, is actually Dan Humphrey. Despite the fact Dan Humphrey acts really shocked at every single Gossip Girl post, EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO-ONE ELSE IN THE ROOM.

Yes, it was Dan Humphrey who said “Can these two hotties work it out? There’s nothing Gossip Girl likes more than a good cat fight.” It was Dan Humphrey who coined the term “Her knight in shining Armani.” It was Dan Humphrey who declared: “Looks like World War III has just broken out – and it’s wearing knee socks.” 

Dan Humphrey spent five years tormenting and emotionally abusing everyone he cared about in the guise of a teenage girl online, all as part of some chilling long-term stalker plan to forcefully insert himself into the life of a classmate who once said hi to him.

Psycho. At least she doesn’t end up marrying him.

Still, at least it’s not as bad as 90210.