STC GG Q&A: Sean T. Collins talks Gossip Girl

Over the course of this blog’s history, I’ve been fortunate to have my work read and shared by major comic book sites, pros in multiple industries and the occasional minor celeb, but to this day, I get more excited when I receive a plug from Sean T. Collins than anybody else.

Sean T. Collins is a former co-worker/current friend/forever guru to all of us here at the Cool Kid’s Table. When it comes to writing intelligently, insightfully and oft-hilariously on comics, TV, movies and just about anything, STC is my standard of excellence, whether at his own blog, on one of his various ventures or even here when we’re fortunate enough to have him.

Sean spends a lot of his energy breaking down, y’know, “good” show like Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad, which I love to get his take on, but it was of course a special pleasure to read him attempt to bring some class and critical breakdown to a true American classic like Gossip Girl. As a fellow who’s versed in both art house smarty-pants stuff and daytime soaps, STC offers a unique take.

Imagine my joy then when as the final season of GG churned its way out Sean informed me, Kiel, et al that he was writing a Gossip Girl comic telling the “secret origin” of Chuck Bass! It’s fantastically drawn by Dan White and you can find the whole thing right here.

I immediately got on Sean’s case for an interview, and around New Year’s, he gave me the holiday gift of his extensive thoughts on the show, the comic, Chuck and more.

Do enjoy.

In stark earnestness, what made Gossip Girl a show you found worth giving your time to? I'm not talking guilty pleasure territory here, I'm asking what genuinely quality factors do you feel it had?

STC: As one of those obnoxious people who says things like "there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure," I have to go with stark earnestness regardless. In that light, I think it's starkly, earnestly a fun, soapy, sexy show about attractive young quasi-sociopaths getting involved in crazy hijinks. That's either going to float your boat or it's not, but it certainly floats mine.

Thinking about it more specifically in terms of its place in my viewing trajectory, maybe Gossip Girl was the first television show I was able to watch with the new appreciation for glam decadence that had opened up the music world for me a few years prior, I don't know. Looking back, I think it was the first soap I ever really watched, opening the door for The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and The Young and the Restless years down the line. 

But GG always had that deliciously incoherent mixture of celebration and satire of the lifestyles it was depicting, giving it an is-it-or-isn't-it edge that most of those other shows, however much I enjoy them from time to time, can't really match. This was especially the case when the characters were all supposed to be 17 years old—what can I say, I've been a sucker for teenage sensation since I was one myself. But the decision to go full-on pervy with the love interests in the final season—Nate goes jailbait, Ivy goes Oedipal twice over, Serena and Lily have both been to seventh heaven with the same guy, etc.—showed that the show never really lost its knack for being dirty even as the kids grew up and the show lost its must-see-tv buzz. You never knew when GG was going to pull something as shiny and sleazy as a mid-'00s Goldfrapp single out of its sleeve.

Did I mention it was sexy? I mean, I sincerely appreciate that, I truly do. For squeezing Blake Lively into all those toothpaste-tube dresses, for playing lingerie dress-up with Leighton Meester time and time again, for crafting a dandy-of-the-underworld look for Ed Westwick, for every glimpse of Penn Badgley's chest hair, for every close-up on the inhumanly beautiful face of Chace Crawford, Gossip Girl did humanity a great service. 

Finally, Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf are terrific characters, as memorable as any on TV. It took them a while to get a handle on Chuck, obviously, but once they figured out what they had with him and Ed Westwick, a simultaneous Batman-and-Joker that would make "Batdance"-era Prince jealous...hoo boy. And Blair's manic perfectionism as expressed by Leighton Meester's chirpy caffeinated porcelain doll face—hoo boy again.

Going 90 degrees or so, what is absolutely ridiculous about the show to the point where it does become a guilty pleasure?

STC: This isn't so much a "guilty pleasure" thing as a "love to hate it" thing, but repetition, repetition, repetition. All those times someone found out something Serena was withholding from them, and she sighed with that slurry pitch-shifted voice of hers, "Look, I was gonna tell you, but..."—half-apologetic, half-irritated, all-ridiculous. All of Nate and Serena's four-episode-arc significant others. Rufus, the Human Turtleneck, disapproving Lily, Miss Congeniality, being cold. Vanessa spending however many seasons she was on the show busting everyone else's chops for, essentially, being Gossip Girl characters. It was fun to make fun of this stuff. 

Ditto all the things they picked up only to drop. Eric Van Der Woodsen, the adorable younger brother who could have been an awesome main character if this dirty and decadent show about teen sex weren't too cowardly to show a dude kissing another dude for reasons other than Chuck/Blair intrigue. The fact that all of them spent two seasons worrying about nothing but college and then all of a sudden, blam, it's never mentioned again. The need to cycle through love interests and villains preventing them from keeping most of the best of both categories around for as long as they deserved to—when they broke the mold, they had at least as many misses—I was never really sold on Ivy or the jailbait girl, though hubba hubba in both cases obvs—as hits Juliet, the Prince.

Now then, why a Gossip Girl comic? Of all the subjects out there and even all the TV shows I know you love and are intrigued by, what made this the right source material?

STC: The quick answer is that Robin McConnell of Inkstuds fame wasn't proposing to do a zine about any of those other shows, so I didn't get the idea to do something on anything else. The less quick, possibly less accurate, answer is that Gossip Girl fits squarely into some stuff I've been thinking about a lot lately in terms of comics writing: sex, success, celebrity, discontent. The comics I've done about Drake and David Bowie aren't a world apart from the world of young Charlie Bass.

Was there an aspect of doing a Gossip Girl comic that was less intimidating than doing, say, a Mad Men or Sopranos comic because there probably aren't the same expectations attached? Knowing you, I'm doubting this entered your mind, but if it were me, I'm sure part of me would certainly be thinking "Best case, it's art, worst case, it's parody I can easily get away with" or something along those lines.

STC: Hmmm...I don't think so, no. I mean, if I were to do a comic about Mad Men or The Sopranos I wouldn't write it in the style of those shows, you know? I wouldn't be competing with Matthew Weiner to see who could write Tony Soprano or Don Draper the best. So the weight of expectation wouldn't be insurmountable, for me at least. 

Why the structural choice to go with the newspaper style series of comic strips rather than one story? It's one of those things I would never have thought of and didn't realize how brilliant a choice it clearly was until I saw it laid out.

STC: Well, the whole thing clicked when I realized I could reenact the first Peanuts strip with GG characters, and that set the template for what was to come. But I'm sure on some level I was thinking about Daniel Clowes's work in this format in books like Ice Haven and The Death-Ray and Mister Wonderful and Wilson, where he uses individual strips or old-fashioned Sunday-page-length vignettes to tell an overall story. Other people have done that too—Tim Hensley and Adrian Tomine come to mind, not to mention all the actual comic strips that have told ongoing stories, Peanuts included—but I bet Clowes was what gave me the sense that you could really do this.

I know you've got a soft spot for Chuck Bass, so I wasn't surprised to see the story center on him, but what about this character intrigues and attracts you?

STC: He's just the break-out combination of actor and star on that show. As I said before, it's one of those remarkable Wolverine-type situations where they didn't quite have a handle on him at first, but they very quickly saw they had a golden goose and just kept cranking egg after egg out of him. As a result there was something of a no-prize factor in trying to figure out how the leering creep of season one and the vigilante hero of the later seasons could possibly be the same person. I was struck by the throwaway mention of Chuck losing his virginity to crazy-even-by-GG-standards Georgina Sparks when he was in the sixth grade and, because sexual hang-ups were basically the story of my own adolescence, figured that must be where the origin story would be located.

  

For anybody who has never read your thoughts on Gossip Girl, explain the Chuck-Batman thing.

STC: Like Batman, his one real super power is that he's unimaginably rich. He's a scion of privilege with a personality born out of tragedy. He walks the line between hero and monster. He dresses well. He's in love with Catwoman, basically. His catchphrase is announcing who he is. And he wears a lot of purple, which is a Joker thing not a Batman thing but it's in the ballpark.

How much time did you devote to actually setting this in –or lack of a better term—Gossip Girl continuity and thinking about where you knew the characters were before the show?

STC: Quite a bit, actually. I wanted it to work as well as it could, to the point where I asked Dan White, the artist I was extremely lucky to be able to work with on it, to try to find pictures of all the actors when they were 6th-grade aged and make it look like this really was an unseen season of the show. I tried to base all the relationships on whatever information about them we had from the show at the time. I think we did a good job, though I was bummed when the final season either revealed or reminded me that Serena and Georgina didn't meet and become evil friends until high school.

What did Dan think when you approached him with this idea? 

STC: Dan didn't have a ton of experience with GG, but several of his compatriots in the Mindless Ones group blog did, and they set him on the path of righteousness. I think that for Dan the real appeal here was the experimental appeal of collaboration, since he mostly writes and draws his own excellent stuff.

What aspects of this do you feel like were distinctly Gossip Girl and which were just a story you wanted to tell?

STC: Figuring out what Chuck Bass would be like before he became "cool"—that was unique to that character and that world. I wouldn't have thought to write someone like that but for the show. The rest...I think a lot of it was probably just me projecting about the inner lives of the popular kids in middle school who I continue to resent to this day, honestly, and that could have happened any which way.

How did you come to see young Chuck—and to a lesser extent the other characters—as he was in this story? How did you arrive at the characterization you landed on?

STC: Like I said, I had the idea of Chuck Before Chuck. A kid with that Croesus level of money and influence, that anachronistic vocabulary and sense of self, but largely pre-sexual and without the self-confidence and swagger and style; what would that look and sound like?

Who was the most fun to write besides Chuck?

STC: Georgina, for sure. She had to be true to the character on the show, she had to be the kind of person who would terrify and turn on and transform the pre-Chuck Chuck I came up with, and she had to be a young person with issues of her own driving her to behave the way she behaved, rather than just a plot device existing to service the needs of the Chuck story.

I know you think the end game for the show should be a Chuck/Nate romance, or at least you have intimated as much…

STC: The show's been pretty wimpy about same-sex relationships, as I said earlier. No way would it make two of its Big Three male leads gay at all, let alone gay and involved with one another. To be clear, I'm happy with Chuck and Blair working out, even though I can't for the life of me see why their collusion in criminally negligent homicide was necessary for their happy ever after to take place. I'm much less happy, however, about Nate winding up, in the parlance of my wife, FOREVER ALONE. He couldn't get with Jenny in her final cameo? Come on, GG.

  

All said and done, what were the parts of the comic you thought hit best?

STC: I like Blair, I like Bart, I like the longer monologues, and I think I got the sex stuff the way I wanted it to be, which was always gonna be the challenge.

Did you always know that was going to be the last panel?

STC: You bet. By the way, SHAME on the show for not giving Chuck one final "I'M CHUCK BASS." SHAME!

Could there be more Gossip Girl comics in your future or is it Vampire Diaries' turn?

STC: Haha! Neither, most likely, though with any luck I'll have some more TV-related stuff coming up.

XOXO 4 Ever: Ben & Kiel Say Goodbye to Gossip Girl Pt. 2

Previously on Cool Kids Table, Ben and Kiel revealed their roots as Gossip Girl fans, talked about the show's origins, discussed the Blair-Chuck wedding an more. We continue...

Ben: Ok, before we get to the big stuff, let’s talk Dan and Serena. As people were falling in love with the Chuck/Blair pairing season two and beyond, I was the dude sitting there screaming “The show is about Dan and Serena, people!” I stuck to my guns on this one no matter how boring Dan got (in the opinion of others—I always thought Lonely Boy was the best) or how loathsome Serena became; I firmly believed that both characters and their story would be redeemed if they ended the show together, and…I still feel that way.

Kiel: I wasn't assuming or rooting for them to end up together, really. I just wanted to see how they would logically make an ending happen after all the awful shit these people have done to one another. But again, I'll wait to put all my pieces together. Proceed.

Ben: Yes, it’s a bit creepy that Serena ended up with the guy who essentially admitted to being her long-term stalker (which actually makes total sense because she’s a narcissist). Yes, Dan forgave a shitload more than any sane person would have (I still think she got off way too easy for making that sex tape last season; when this season opened she was back to pouting about how everybody else ruined her life when she was a monster and that’s probably the biggest dangling unresolved thread I have an issue with). And yeah, it’s kind of a bummer the way that otherwise glorious flashback scene to the high school (junior high?) party complete Chuck Bass in all his scarf-adorned glory underlined how far they are from the relatively decent people they were at the beginning of the show, but whatevs. Gossip Girl was about a lot of stuff (and also nothing of substance whatsoever), but more than anything it was about the guy from outside getting the golden girl, so yay for that happy ending.

It also made the reveal of Gossip Girl’s reveal beautifully creepy and subversive.

Kiel: Yes. Well, it was creepy by an objective standard, but by the show's logic I'd argue that the reveal actually CONFIRMS its overall "message." But again, you roll with it...

Ben: First off, the identity of Gossip Girl is a sweater you really can’t pull any strand off if you don’t want it to come apart entirely. I can say with near certainty there are scenes of Dan alone reacting to Gossip Girl blasts and being shocked that blow up the whole deal—I’m sure bigger fans than me have already located said scenes and are crying foul. But I don’t care if the continuity adds up perfectly here—it’s fucking Gossip Girl—or if the creators had this planned from day one—I doubt it—as long as the emotional payoff and explanation works, and I think it did, big time.

Kiel: I've been meaning to rewatch the Season 1 DVDs that I've got around here to see if there's any way they can justify this ending and say that they "planned it from the beginning" or some such. But until then, I'm going to assume you're 100% right.

Ben: Inverting the entire power structure of the show and making Dan the one who was really in charge all along? Brilliant. It retroactively gives all those schemes particularly from the early seasons where he was left on the outside looking in a renewed punch. I also love the larger message underlining Dan’s speech at Thanksgiving dinner to Serena and really showing what this show is about (not learning a lesson): these people were all horrible to each other, but at the end of the day forgave one another literally anything, so the only way to gain not just acceptance but the sort of unquestioned moral free pass you needed to thrive on the Upper East Side was something like this.

All that aside, I do like that when all is said and done the central conceit of the show was acceptance and gaining power respect and all that, but really a guy trying to get a girl. Was the way he went about getting said girl incredibly creepy and beyond borderline sociopathic? Yes! Absolutely! Was it still kind of sweet? Am I a monster if I say yes? I’m ok with that.

I also don’t think the fact that along the way Dan had relationships with Olivia, Vanessa, Blair, etc. blows anything up, because even if he momentarily lost interest in Serena—as a teenager would—that’s no reason he’d want to give up the intoxicating power of being Gossip Girl.

It was smart of them to cover their bases with the “Jenny knew all along” thing (and made for a hilarious “confrontation” scene demonstrating once and for all how low on the totem pole of respect and relevance Rufus is), but they hammered a little too hard with how Dan shutting down Gossip Girl after Blair and Chuck’s accident made him somehow a good guy; he wasn’t a good guy, but nobody was, so just own it. 

So anyhow, I was thrilled with the Gossip Girl ID. I can’t think of anybody else among the main cast who would have been as satisfying and bringing in somebody from left field would have been fun, but a bit of a cheat.

Kiel: All right. I agree with all of your points in a logistical sense. Dan's reveal made all the right people look foolish and all the the right reasons for his re-acceptance to the crew. I don't mind one iota that his canceling the blog when the car accident happened is a magical forgiveness bullet. I'm down with the "Jenny always knew" thing just because it semi-justifies the way that the characters kept mentioning her once every six weeks for the later seasons when any other show would have just ignored her existence once she was written out. I laughed out loud at the "it's not Dorota" joke.

But what really makes the reveal work is that idea you said about Dan being a monster for hatching a years-long plan to fool this girl into loving him. In anything resembling real life, that's 1000% true. But this is not real life. This is the Upper East Side.

For me, the show has been riding this line for a while where the characters would eventually either err on the side of actual, logical ethical structures (as Blair and Serena often profess to do while making up for the 135th time) or just embrace the evilness of what they are and ride that to its soapy nadir. Is Gossip Girl a series where the pursuit of power and social status is the ultimate moral code? You bet your ass.

I started thinking about this a lot during Season 4 where Sean made the A+ observation on Juliet's reveal as a big villain. She was poor. The poor are the bad guys in this show! For the characters to triumph, they don't have to do what's right. They just have to win the game, and poor people with their petty emotions and sense of fairness never learned to play.

To put it another way, Serena was a goddamned supervillain at the end of last season, and this year they found her out not for revenge but to beg her to rejoin the crew. You follow that through Dan's slow boiling plan of screwing her over so hard that she'd have to respect him (my FAVORITE storyline of the year...and now ultimately the true story of the whole show), and what the writers are showing us is that true happiness for these characters – for this world – is wealth by any means.

And while the reveal feels out of left field in the moment, it feels so right the more you reflect it against any other relationship in the show.

Ben: Speaking of out of left field—those cameos! I love that pics of Katie Cassidy leaked out early so people assumed she’d have a major part in the finale yet Vanessa wouldn’t show up, but instead they both ended up getting the same two-line appearance as Lola and the rest. It maybe would have been nice for them also to get Elizabeth Hurley or Bucky from the Captain America movie (or any of the other male love interests, really), but I was pretty satisfied with what we got. Kristen Bell and out-of-nowhere Rachel Bilson were incredible and made that scene seem more legitimate than it had any right to be; if somebody hasn’t already made a video loop of Kristen’s wink on YouTube yet, there’s your prompt to do so. Nice sneaky touch working in Olivia via Hillary Duff on the playbill for Ivy’s life story in the flash forward as well.

So finally, let’s talk about the flash forward. As already mentioned, the Nate thing was perfect in its sublime ridiculousness. I like that Blair and Chuck had a kid—and named him after Chuck’s French alter ego—because it gave them more substance than the destiny junk. Rufus wearing hipster glasses and being with an un-credited, non-speaking Lisa Loeb is more brilliant than words can express. Eric had a better appearance than Jenny—and I like that he made no effort whatsoever to visually move himself back to that character as opposed to the one he plays on Revenge—and I thought it was pretty BS that she got the “and” in the credits when he’s probably a bigger deal at this point. Lastly, Dan and Serena getting married in Blair’s apartment was ridiculous—I loved it.

Kiel: WOW. You caught so many more of the Easter Eggs than I did! I have it on DVR, so I'll have to go back and rewatch the last ten minutes. I had heard none of the leaks beforehand, so all the cameos were surprising and fun for us. The Bell bit was killer.

But what made me really love the montage into the final ridiculous wedding scene was how every little detail drove home what I was talking about a few paragraphs back. When I saw that Lily and William were still together, I loved it. It confirms everything about the Dan reveal. Ivy Dickens was a poor Florida actress (possibly a graduate of the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks) who also had some serious mental issues in the great "obsessive lover" tradition. But she still did a few decent human things in her arc. She was the only person nice to CeCe at the end and so she won that money for being good. And even though she did awful stuff at the end, it was for a so-called "pure" reason – true love for William. And what did she get for it? William scraped her off like she was dog shit he stepped in at the polo match.

Meanwhile, he and Lily go off to live the end of their romance as ultra wealthy assholes. And even Rufus is just like, "Fuck it! I'll marry Lisa Loeb and be rich!" The ending of that crazy cameo implies is that Rufus learned Dan was right in all this.

Even looking at that last scene in a meta sense supports the triumph of the Upper East Side ethos. Why did Taylor Momsen get a special screen credit when that Eric kid has a better career? Because Taylor Momsen is a fucking name in that ridiculous way that People.com readers kind of care about who she is. All the supporting roles in ABC dramas in the world can't buy Taylor's It Girl cred.

And hey. Pour one out for Georgina Sparks. She may have been a shadow of her former self since sometime around the "I went to Christian Camp" storyline, but never forget that her blowing into town at the end of Season 1 was the thing that galvanized this show's themes. Take a bow, Harriet The Spy.

Ben: The final final scene, with Kristen Bell doing the “you may be rid of Dan Humphrey” narration and then explaining how as long as there are social outsiders there will always be a Gossip Girl felt like a freaking horror movie and was a nice “the characters you love are in their little bubble but the world they live in continues to be terrifying and awful” was the perfect way to end the show and one I never would have guessed.

This was a master class in how to do a series finale, in my opinion, be it ever so humble. Josh Schwartz did a great job on The O.C. with this too, so I’m not surprised. His formula of centering a big current event (the Chuck/Blair wedding or the Cohens moving) while also tying up all the loose ends (Gossip Girl’s identity or the relationship drama) then providing a flash forward so you don’t have to spend time wondering how all the characters ended up is a winner.

Kiel: You may find this random, but this reminded me so much Seinfeld finale. SO much. For years we've been watching these people do horrible and crazy things, and we've been perfectly entertained. Now as one last blast of people they've shit on are paraded in front of us, we realize our worst suspicions about them are totally true. But where Seinfeld reestablishes a normal moral universe at its very end, Gossip Girl revels in the triumph of its subterfuge. In this New York, awful rich people who laugh at a fat guy while he's robbed do not go to jail for a year. They go to a rooftop party where they drink for free, buy drugs from the DJ and embezzle from the host.

Ben: My hat’s off to the folks who created this for an exciting and satisfying finale to a show that wasn’t always good, but never took itself too seriously that I couldn’t at least laugh at it and ultimately taught me nothing.

Kiel: You know you love it.

Ben: XOXO!

But wait! There's more! Coming soon to the Cool Kids Table, the one and only Sean T. Collins joins Ben for an extensive interview on his original Gossip Girl comic, The Secret Origin of Chuck Bass!

XOXO 4 Ever: Ben & Kiel Say Goodbye to Gossip Girl Pt. 1

Gossip Girl was a television series that ran on The CW for six years, finishing up last month. It was primarily aimed at the female demographic, specifically young women.

Ben Morse and Kiel Phegley are grown men.

Here, they discuss the show, the finale and more.

Ben: Before we get into the finale itself, let’s do a brief history lesson. I have watched Gossip Girl from the beginning, and I believe my co-writer here did as well. I got hooked by borrowing the pilot episode from Mel Caylo when we were back at Wizard and watching it with Megan; we both liked it a lot. It was funny how Mel got sent such a random assortment of pilots given that we were ostensibly a comic book magazine; we got stuff like the failed Aquaman show Mercy Reef and the failed Ultra show…Ultra (based on the Luna Brothers book) but then we’d also get stuff like Dirty Sexy Money, Big Shots and Gossip Girl. The super hero stuff or the really schlocky stuff we’d all watch together in the conference room, but if you wanted to watch a teen soap opera, you were bringing that shit home with you.

Kiel: Ha! I recall the Mercy Reef/Ultra double feature at lunch. Mercy Reef was so awkward! I can't believe that Justin Hartley was in it as I look back now fully believing he was one of the best things about late period Smallville. But beyond the repeated hilarity that was repeating Ving Rhames' pronunciation of the name "Ooooo-rin" over and over, it was awful. I don't even think I made it through the Ultra pilot. But back on topic, I too watched Gossip Girl from episode one, though I'm not sure exactly why. It may have had something to do with the fact that we were living in New York at a time with only an antenna for entertainment in the apartment, and The CW was one of the few channels that came in with crystal clarity.

Ben: I don’t know if you already knew about the YA novels before the show?

Kiel: I did in that I knew they existed in a general sense, but beyond a vague understanding of the concept of what my idol M.T. Anderson has called "the modern tween bitch lit series," I knew nothing about the particulars of Cicily Von Zeigler's story.

But oddly, the books did cross paths with my watching of the show in two very distinctive moments that I recall even years later. First is that in advance of the premier, I read the New York Times review of the pilot which heavily referenced the books. As I remember it, they reviewer made the case that the appeal of the books was how the teens drank and screwed and schemed with reckless abandon and that the addition of parents with Rufus and Lily dragged the proceedings down and ruined the show's ability to match the outlandish fantasy nature of the book. We all know how untrue that turned out to be, but it was a cute theory, I guess. You hear a lot in the YA/tween media marketplace about how parents kill the marketability of stories because kids hate reading about adult authority figures in their preferred pop fiction, but I think that's a load of bunk. Parents are a HUGE parts of kids lives and therefore great antagonists in YA.

The second memory I have is of a newscast that ran just after the pilot or one of the first episodes. I don't know if you're aware of this phenomenon, but The CW is rife with that particular brand of corporate synergy where the local newscast is always doing stories about how rad the network's shows are. For example, when Veronica Mars was on, they did a story one night about fans sending Mars Bars to the network heads to stave off its cancelation. With GG, the New York local news did a piece I saw about actual teenagers from the Upper East Side who loved the books and were excited for the show. I remember this mostly because the girls they interviewed raved about how much the books were like their real lives – how the characters went to the same places as they did and acted just like them. And to be blunt, these were kind of nerdy-looking, bookish 14-year-olds. Blair Waldorf they were not.

I guess what I'm saying overall here is that YA books have a tendency to feel VERY real and in the moment to the kids that read them yet very artificial and ridiculous to most adults that encounter them, which is I think what a soap like this goes for in spades.

Ben: I’ve always liked prime time soap operas and I had always been a fan of teen protagonists in other mediums—mainly comics—so Gossip Girl hit for me. I had also gotten into The O.C. late, so I gravitated pretty naturally from one Josh Schwartz show to the other. I remember having lively “debates” with the likes of Rickey and TJ over whether or not Gossip Girl had any intrinsic social value, but I can see now my argument was pretty silly. I would contend that whereas shows like The Real World or Jersey Shore glamorized real people behaving badly and getting paid to do so were hurting society, a show like Gossip Girl that was more of a send up of how ridiculous the idle rich was helped it, but…wow, that sounds even more idiotic when I write it out. The Real World, Jersey Shore and Gossip Girl all have pretty much no redeeming social value, but I found the last one entertaining.

I also watched Melrose Place when I was a good decade younger than the leads and Gossip Girl when I was a good decade older than the leads; I’m sure that says something about me and my fascination with whatever stage in life I’m not at.

Kiel: No, I get what you're saying. There's a definite ironic distancing the show has from reality (or in the case of those other shows, "reality") that sets it apart. That's a huge part of the appeal. I'm not sure that fact always tips the show into the category of art that has something big to say about human existence, but it sure does make it less of a guilty pleasure and more of a pleasure, full stop.

Also, while you mention it, I did want to put in one word about The O.C. Like you, I didn't watch that show from square one. Actually, it started when I was in college, and aside from being a Phantom Planet fan, my only exposure to its start was when I'd mention my comics stuff at a party and have some drunk girl go, "Ooooooh! You're just like Seth from The O.C.!" Eventually, I started watching it after hearing that so much, but by the time I picked it up in Season 3, the show had apparently taken a dive in quality. I get the feeling that show was like other notable nerd flame out Heroes. But I think that experience was a positive for Schwartz and company in that they were (mostly) able to avoid either letting GG get stale or blowing up what worked about it in an attempt to stay relevant like they had with The O.C.

Ben: Ok, enough jibber jabber, we’ve got a finale to take on.

Kiel: Yeah!

Ben: Actually, a little more jibber jabber.

Kiel: Okay!

Ben: Did you catch the one hour recap/farewell special prior to the episode itself? I highly recommend it if you did not. For one thing, it’s fantastic to get a look back at young Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley and Chace Crawford—and by the way Sean T. Collins hit the nail on the head when he immortally noted that every young actor on this show has a more pretentious real name than just about any of their characters—but most of all Ed Westwick as Chuck Bass. Because Chuck has more or less been in a suit for the back half of the show, I forgot all about his ridiculous scarves, red tracksuits and ascots from the early years. Westwick waxes poetic about how much he used to love ascots out of character and it’s hilarious.

Kiel: Jami and I ate that up. We were also shocked to recall what the cast's hair was like in the first season. That they flashed back to short-haired Freshman Dan in the episode was slightly mind-blowing.

Ben: Per Megan, the flashback was the final scene they shot of the entire series because Penn Badgley had to shave his head more or less. Apparently he has super human hair growing abilities, because I saw him from afar when I was going to Subway a couple weeks back and his hair was longer than ever. I also did not approach him because I was starving. In retrospect, I can't imagine he would have wanted to chat for more than 20 seconds, so that was probably a mistake on my part.

All the out of character interviews with the actors are pretty great. Crawford and Badgley both come off as guys you’d want to party with while just hearing Westwick’s heavy as hell British accent is a trip. Blake Lively seems overly excited in a “I am so happy I can finally leave this show” way, but that’s fun too. Kaylee Defer is also pretty unintentionally funny trying to make it seem like she was ever more than a bit player. The only interviews I was let down by were Meester’s, because Blair is probably my favorite character—tied with Dan maybe—and she was just kind of blah.

Kiel: My only real complaint was that they didn't directly address the kind of pro-sleeze stance Gossip Girl has always had. They briefly showed the BRILLIANT poster from Season 2 that was just Serena making an orgasmic face with the quote "Every parent's worst nightmare" on it, but mostly the special was just the producers patting themselves on the back for being culturally relevant by CW standards.

Ben: I was also able to confirm that all those people who showed up for cameos and they made a point to say their full names on camera were indeed fashion, art and New York society people I had never heard of.

Kiel And Sonic Youth one time!

Ben: Ok! The show! I guess it makes sense to start with Chuck and Blair, since as the show went on it really seemed to become about them, and the finale was no exception. I like both characters and their early hook-ups were a lot of fun, but once they became the “destiny couple” of the show, I got a bit bored with the whole thing, because the two chief troublemakers became so defanged every time they were cooing or emoting over how they were meant to be together. That said, as much as I was momentarily fascinated by the Dan/Blair diversion last season, even if I got sick of the destiny stuff, it was hard to ignore, and it was nice they got their happy ending here. I do feel like it didn’t really allow either Leighton Meester or Ed Westwick to truly shine in this final episode because both are more enjoyable to watch when they’re being mean and snarky as opposed to lovey dovey, but oh well.

Kiel: I remember desperately wanting the Blair/Dan hookup to happen and being very pleased when it did. That was the only move in the show that could really shake things up, and in retrospect, Dan's fizzled relationship with Blair was the best catalyst to put him totally on the outs with the gang. It added emotional heft that writing tell-alls didn't.

But you're 100% on that Chuck and Blair were never quite the same, in a bad way, after their relationship was in full swing. The worst arc of this final season was the absurd idea that they made "a pact" to only get together once they'd won their respective society battles. Even by the standards of the wacky rich person fantasy land this show exists in, that was mega contrived.

Ben: I did enjoy the simplicity of “if you two get married, you can’t get convicted for murder” rationale since plans that eschew logic and sense for the sake of providing a splashy event are the backbone of Gossip Girl. I also enjoyed Jack Bass immensely as he’s one of my favorite characters and I’m glad he got such a meaty role in the finale, getting to deliver all the obnoxious lines everybody else was too busy worrying to get in there. His “room service” entrance with “I’ve got some bad news…Bart is dead” was great, although he was holding that tray really oddly. I also enjoyed “I had cameras installed back when I still hated you.”

Kiel: Jack Bass 4 Lyfe! The series best pseudo-villain by far.

Ben: Was it ultimately a bit unsatisfying that Chuck didn’t really best his father after spending the whole season trying and instead just let him fall to his death? Eh. Lily getting the line about just reusing the stuff from the first funeral made Bart’s brief resurrection all worth it (actually, he was a pretty good villain in general, it’s just too bad they killed him rather than defeating him).

The wedding itself was nice. Wallace Shawn rushing through the vows was a delight. I don’t really know if Blair’s dress was ugly or not.

Kiel: Neither Jami nor I have any real barometer for whether the fashion on the show is good looking or not. This gets especially confusing when they're telling us the fashion is supposed to be horrendous and/or brilliant as they did all over with Blair's designs this season. But otherwise, yes, I agree with everything you're laying down.

Ben: Getting back to Lily briefly, this was a good season for her as it got her away from the toxic bore of a relationship with Rufus and back to being the bitchy socialite the show needed. Everybody on Gossip Girl is pretty good with the art of the putdown line, but as a Melrose Place vet, Kelly Rutherford is certainly the old pro. I’m fine with her ending up with William both because it allowed for the return of scene-chewing Billy Baldwin—who has become an almost eerie parody of his brother Alec at this point—one last time and him getting the great slam on Ivy about how a Lifetime movie about her would be called Nobody Gives a Damn (for the record, I thought Ivy had a lot of potential when they introduced her as Serena’s fake cousin, and I actually like Kaylee Defer, but no character got used more poorly).

Kiel: Okay, I've got a lot of opinions here. For one, Lily as a character is someone that whipsawed around all over the place for me. I'm down with her being the archetypal mega-bitch of the Upper West Side in a general sense, but the idea of her softening from that position had the potential to be a worthwhile character arc. The whole purpose of the character in the early seasons was that she had once been a grungy (i.e. poor) groupie of Rufus and that said youthful romance was the missed love of her life. Yes, predictable but also a perfectly fine storyline for the C-characters that are the parents on this show. And you're right. Her and Rufus as a married couple was flat as shit.

On the other hand, there were things I really liked about Lily's conversion from queen of her generation of gossip girls into halfway decent human being. I ADORED her relationship with Chuck over the years. The fact that we never got any dramatic closure with Chuck's real mother was fine by me because Lily filled that role in such an unexpected and believable way. All that made it only that much more bizarre when the writers would have Lily throw her own daughter under the fucking bus just to ratchet up the soapy drama.

On the gripping hand, her ending up with William was the most unexpected and hilarious scene of the entire finale, so I was all good with it. You're right that Ivy was maybe most intriguing in that first season when she went ape shit psycho on Nate and Serena at the eleventh hour, but I enjoyed her role throughout the show from the poor little rich girl we'd normally sympathize with but had to hate on through to her slutting it up with Rufus to make his arc worthwhile this season. In the end, what happened between her, Lily and William in the last scene of the finale is probably the biggest piece of evidence to support my "Grand Theory of Gossip Girl," but I'll save that for the end. Proceed with our next topic, sir!

Ben: No character on this show won me over more over the course of six seasons than Nate Archibald. He was unbearable for the first two or so—remember his life-sucking relationship with Vanessa?—but then over the summer before season three, Chace Crawford both learned how to act and decided to say “fuck it, they’re always going to give me the most ridiculous storylines on this show, let’s rock.” The whole 22-year-old trust fund kid who didn’t stay in college more than a semester—the greatest mystery in the Gossip Girl world is, of course, not GG’s identity but rather how they all opted out of school as freshmen and it never got mentioned again—and who has never demonstrated any aptitude for anything running a successful magazine plotlines was a keeper because you could see in Crawford’s steely blue eyes that he fully recognized it’s absurdity and was going to run with it. Similarly, Sage was an awful character, but because she was with Nate, it made everything ok. To once again quote Sean T. Collins: “You’re too beautiful for this world, Nate Archibald.”

Kiel Jami fucking HATED Sage. There was not one episode this season where I didn't hear her complain about that girl at least twice. And justifiably so! She was the latest in a string of characters nowhere near good enough for Nate. It's ironic in the grandest sense how at the start of the series, Nate was the hot rich boy all the girls wanted to bone and/or marry, but as soon as he became cool enough to earn that status, all the main characters stopped trying to get with him. Bizarre to the max.

Ben: And not to skip ahead, but 27-year old Nate Archibald is the leading candidate in New York’s mayoral race? And presumably still hasn’t earned a college degree?! There are five years of fantastic Nate stumbling upward storylines awaiting a spinoff, people!

Kiel I would watch his spinoff series AND vote for him.

To be continued later this week, as Ben and Kiel continue to throw their self-respect to the wind, gushing over Dan and Serena, gasping at the reveal of Gossip Girl and much more!

Sean & Megan Watch Game of Thrones: Fire and Blood

From the blog that brought you "Lynn Phegley Watches Lost," get ready for another experience that redefines the art of recapping TV shows!

Sean T. Collins is a friend to the Cool Kids and avid devotee of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series of books, upon which the HBO television show Game of Thrones is based; he is currently chronicling the series on two separate blogs, one with book spoilers and one without.

Megan Morse is Ben's wife who has never read the Martin books and does not typically go in for the fantasy genre but loves Game of Thrones for reasons she doesn't even fully understand.

Each week, Megan will provide her analysis of the show from a neophyte's standpoint and then Sean will interject with his informed reactions and insights, answering her questions and commenting on her observations.

Whether you're a nerd or a newcomer, if you're watching Game of Thrones this is the recap for you!

Megan: Have to be honest, feeling a little disappointed as I write this, but that's just because this was the season finale, which of course carries with it certain expectations, and for me, those were not met. It was not the worst episode, it wasn't even a bad episode, but it was not in my top three, and since it was the climax of a 10-episode season I really enjoyed, that's a let-down for me. I was hoping for a more intense conclusion to make the next nine months unbearable. I'll still miss the show until it comes back, but it didn't leave me with too many burning questions I need answered right away--some, but not many.

Sean: Here's a question for you, then: How much experience do you have with the big HBO genre-revisionist dramas?

Megan: None.

Sean: An interesting thing about The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire is that they all tended to save the biggest fireworks for the penultimate episode. Unlike even really good network or basic-cable shows, where the goal with the finale is to knock you flat on your ass, those shows always took a more novelistic approach, holding the climax back for the second-to-last episode and leaving the finale for aftermath -- the tone usually a sort of "okay, what have we learned this season?" one, ruminative and reflective, while the story sort of ties things off and leaves them in the shape you'll find them next season. So the way Game of Thrones handled ending Season One didn't surprise me. I mean, it obviously wouldn't have, since I read the book and that's how it works there too.

Did you have anything particular in mind for the "more intense conclusion" you were hoping for? Were there any events you were expecting to see? Since so much of the story is about subverting reader/audience expectations, I'm really curious what your expectations were!

Megan: Y'know, when you pose it right to me like that and put me on the spot, I can't think of much specifically. I was expecting a "bigger bang," but nothing in particular really, so perhaps saying I was let down is a bit inaccurate so much as I was surprised. I guess I thought more time would be devoted to Daenerys' labor as opposed to her waking up with the baby gone, but I didn't mind how it was handled. I assumed we'd get more reaction to Ned's death, but as we'll get into, I don't mind that there wasn't. In the end I suppose it wasn't so much that my expectations weren't met, just that I don't have the experience with these types of shows you mentioned above so the idea that the season finale isn't the game changer is not one I'm used to, and my immediate reaction was disappointment. Upon reflection, it's more just something that will take some getting used to.

Quick note on the very first shot of the show: It did jump out at me that there wasn't just blood on the sword that beheaded Ned, but skin, tissue, etc. Normally when you see something like this on TV or in the movies, they just use blood, and most people don't think anything of it, but this was more accurate and attentive to detail, which I appreciated.

Sean: And what a great way to open the episode and convey the finality of what had just happened. I also like how much of that aftermath scene, with Yoren spiriting Arya away while chaos reigns on the steps of Baelor's Sept, happened in the background, out of focus, in brief snippets, inaudibly to our vantage point in the crowd. It's like shit goes on whether you want it to or not.

Megan: Refresh my memory: Do we know Yoren? He's shown up before right? I feel like I should know him and his ties to Ned and the Starks but I can't place him.

Sean: He's from the Night's Watch. We first saw him drinking and joking around with Tyrion during his visit to the Wall when he accompanied Jon. He came south with Tyrion in order to go to King's Landing for recruits, and was there at the Inn when Catelyn had Tyrion arrested. Subsequently we saw him at King's Landing, where he told Ned that out of respect for Ned's brother and his fellow Night's Watchman Benjen Stark, he rode as fast as he could to warn him about what had happened. That's when he first met Arya -- I think he mistook her for a boy. I think I may have mentioned this last week, but in the book he doesn't have that brief encounter with Ned on the way to the execution, where Ned tells him where to find Arya -- it's mostly luck that he finds her, although he did at least know where to look, if I recall correctly. The implication with both Arya and later Gendry is that Varys tipped Yoren off to help them escape, thinking that the newly powerful Queen Cersei would not be kindly disposed to Eddard Stark's daughter and Robert Baratheon's bastard.

Megan: Ok, confession time: After he hasn't been on the show for weeks, I found myself not hating Bran so much when he showed up. This is certainly a good thing since characters are dropping left and right and even though I know they'll introduce new ones, it's nice that some I had an intense dislike for are growing on me. And I forgot there was another Stark kid! Has Rickon ever even had a line to this point? Nothing really more to say about Winterfell since it was so brief and I'm not quite sure what it was meant to set up if anything.

Sean: Rickon appeared a couple episodes ago, I believe, in the episode where Ned was betrayed and captured. He showed up in Bran's bedroom, and Bran told him that the family would come home eventually, and Rickon just looked sad and said "No they won't" and left. I like how they're using him as this pessimistic but accurate oracle figure.

Bran is a much bigger deal in the book than he is in this first season, mostly because there's a lot more to his dream sequences than there is here. I won't say more than that to avoid spoiling anything, but I will say I'm kind of anxious to see if they pick up any of that slack in season two. I think right now many viewers probably are wondering why we're spending time with him.

Megan: Well didn't Joffrey develop into a nice little villain in record time? They kept him somewhat off to the side for so much of the season that his emergence in the last few episodes, obviously pushed into overdrive last time with Ned's execution, has been something of a pleasant surprise. I remember thinking he was an annoying little punk in the beginning, but didn't foresee him being able to step into the shoes of a true big bad so seamlessly. When he ordered the minstrel to have his tongue cut out, it seemed perfectly natural and like he has been doing stuff like that the whole time. However, that said, I think one of the things that makes him a good villain is he's erratic and unpredictable; when he does something awful it totally makes sense, but I'm still guessing right up until whether he'll follow through or not.

Sean: He's a terrific little sociopath, isn't he? Kudos to Jack Gleeson for selling that character as well as he has, not just with a sociopath's cruelty, but with his bafflement and rage anytime things don't go exactly his way. I love watching his face anytime Sansa defies him in even the most minor way; he's not just pissed, he's confused and scared. How could anyone not do exactly as he says? Oh yeah, Grand Maester Pycelle, he'll make a terrific king.

Megan: He's also got a face that was just made for punching.

Sean: Yes, there's that too.

Megan: I badly wanted Sansa to push him off the bridge; it would have deprived the show of a tremendous emerging bad guy, but I enjoy immediate gratification. Sansa's retort about Robb maybe bringing her Joffrey's head was a nice little bit of snark too. I'm looking forward to their developing relationship in season two.

Sean: That scene was wonderfully done. It's one of my favorites in the books -- Joffrey making Sansa stare at the severed head of her father is like George R.R. Martin's entire view of power in a nutshell -- and the interplay between Joffrey, Sansa, the odious yes-man Ser Meryn Trant, and the Hound, who is brutal but not cruel, is a bleak joy. And kudos to Sophie Turner as Sansa, too. She looked so damaged and devastated in that scene that when she made her move toward Joffrey, I found myself hoping she'd go over the edge with him and end her own misery too.

Megan: Cersei is really making it hard to justify her incest when she's sleeping with her scrawny cousin. Hot brother? Ok, you can almost brush aside the grossness and buy into her "it keeps the blood line strong" routine--but that kid? Now she's just oddly kinky.

Sean: Well, someone had to make sure Robert drank all that wine...

Megan: I didn't like how the scene with Catelyn and Robb following the news of Ned's death went down, specifically how Catelyn was played. I'm not sure if it was down to Michelle Fairley, whoever was giving her direction or some combination of the two, but I didn't feel it was clear enough for the viewer--me--how she was processing her husband's death or what her next move was. I'm going to be an acting snob here for a second: Her verbal communication and non-verbal communication were not at all congruent. With her words, she was trying to convey that she was sad and wanted revenge, but pretty much everything in her body language told me she didn't care and was pushing past the situation. Either one of these would have been an acceptable choice--she can be upset or she can be soldiering on for her children's sake--but trying to do both at once was just confusing and gave me no indication where her emotions were. If she was meant to be going for conflicted, she didn't pull it off.

Sean: I'm not nuts about Fairley either, honestly. I think the idea here was that she was devastated herself, but quickly pulled herself together to set a good example when she saw that her newly minted Lord of Winterfell son had totally fucking lost it. "You've ruined your sword" is the key line -- he needs to keep it together if he's going to lead his forces to victory in war, where swords are what matter. That said, you're right, I didn't feel like the emotional throughline in that sequence was clear, even though it was beautifully shot.

Megan: On the contrary, Catelyn's scene with Jaime was much better. She wore her anger much more blatantly, so maybe she was trying to keep it in check and put on a brave face for Robb? I get it, but again, I don't think she conveyed it properly. We've seen Jaime so sporadically that it's always a bit of a treat trying to figure him out. Small doses of him have been nice as it makes you ponder how much of his act is legitimate and how much is posturing.

Sean: He has one of the best lines in the whole series here. "There are no men like me. There is only me." In the book it comes across like braggadocio, and it is, but the way they shot this scene shows that it's also self-condemnation and self-pity. There's only one kingslaying sisterfucking would-be child murderer. He may be handsome and rich and famous and a god with a sword in his hand, but he carries a lot on his back.

Megan: As a general choice, I like that pretty much every character received the news about Ned off-camera and we didn't have to get five different variations of Robb and Catelyn vowing revenge. It would have eaten up the whole episode and you get the gist after the first time: All the good guys loved Ned and they're going to go kill the bad guys. Cool. Next.

Sean: Agreed.

Megan: Not as much Tyrion as I would have liked, but I suppose that was to be expected given how much focus he got last episode. I did like his appointment as Hand of the King and thought Peter Dinklage really handled well the bit where Tywin told him "Because you're my son"--it certainly felt like that was the first time he had ever heard that and he sold it.

Sean: Yes. I'm such a sucker for any time two characters in fiction treat one another with respect. Tywin's a shit, but I'm happy for Tyrion here nonetheless.

Megan: Put Shae down as another character I'm eager to get to know better in season two; glad she's coming along to King's Landing. Tyrion also used my absolute favorite word in the English language during his scene with Shae, but I can't repeat it, because my in-laws read this blog.

Sean: "Father"?

Megan: Moving on...Daenerys had a gross stillborn dragon baby with grey worms in the middle! Tremendous! So gross. Then she has to wake up and find out her husband is a celery stick. Poor girl. At first I was a little let down by Dany's failing to really chew Mirri Maz Duur out when she learned the witch basically set her up, but the later payoff was more than worth it as Daenerys evolved yet again, this time from kick ass warrior princess to calculating warlord who makes an example of her enemies.

Sean: Huh, I never thought of it that way, because I've read the book and knew what was coming. But yeah, you totally think she's being Ms. Nice Guy even after this woman killed her husband and son, only to discover that she's just biding her time until she can light her on fire. Yikes.

Megan: I totally screamed when Dany smothered Drogo with the pillow, 100% legit, Ben can back me up. [EDITOR'S NOTE: It's true] He grew on me more than just about any other character this season and as I've said I loved their romance, so it was very sad. She committed euthanasia in the same bed they made their dragon baby in. No more Sun and Stars...well, at least we hopefully don't need to hear that pet name again. [EDITOR'S NOTE: For the record, if this had been Smallville, Dany's speech about loving Drogo would have been enough to revive him with a single tear running down his cheek so he could go destroy Darkseid]

Sean: It's a weird love story for the ages, definitely.

Megan: I have this to say about the Wall stuff: In my disdain for Jon Snow and all scenes involving him, I have neglected far too often to say how awesome Sam is and how he is the only thing making all that tolerable. Sam is the unsung hero of Game of Thrones.

Sean: He's a strong character, totally unsuited to life in the Night's Watch yet trying to make a go of it in his own way regardless. Admirable.

Megan: The scene with Pycell rambling on lost me, but I totally picked up when he got up and was doing his stretching exercises. I immediately jumped on the fact that his feeble old man bit was an act while my husband was like "Huh?" Score one for Megan!

Sean: I also feel like that scene was kind of the show spoofing itself and its "sexposition" technique. So you've got the naked lady walking around while a guy rambles on about history, she can barely keep her eyes open pretending to be interested, the story goes nowhere like he's Rose Nylund talking about St. Olaf, and in the end it's revealed that half of his doddering old geezer routine is bullshit anyway. Funny stuff.

Megan: I was pretty confused by the stuff with Arya. I'm going to ask you a bit about that later. It's possible I just zoned out. I do love her spunk and how she threatened the bully. "I like killing fat boys" is a great line. I was not a fan of her hair which was clearly a wig. I was a fan of Chris from Skins finally showing up again as Robert's blacksmith bastard and hope we get to see much more of him in season two.

Sean: I'm hoping they'll actually cut her hair rather than stick a wig on her, yeah.

Megan: I was absolutely terrified that the season was going to end on a shot of Jon Snow riding off to the other side of the wall. That could potentially have killed every bit of goodwill I have built up over the past three months. I probably would have had to write an angry letter.

Sean: Hahahaha! Now that's an anticlimax. I wonder if Jon will grow on you more now that he's finally and firmly committed to living life as a man of the Night's Watch. What do you think? Is it just his emo/Hamlet indecision that makes you dislike him?

Megan: I wouldn't hold your breath. It was never his indecision that bothered me--at least not entirely--but more how angsty and whiny he was. I don't see that changing and don't anticipate him being any less emo just because he made up his mind, now he'll just bitch about how he could be off doing the other thing. Loser. [Megan makes an "L" with her fingers]

Needless to say I was thoroughly pleased with how the season really ended instead. If there's one way to get on my good side if you're Game of Thrones, it's making the big finish centered around the khaleesi. In fact, she got a lot of attention this episode, more than she has in awhile, so perhaps I liked it more than I thought. I knew there would be dragons! I mean, it's not a huge shock since they were pretty heavy on the foreshadowing, but it was still very very cool.

Sean: I kind of wished they hadn't included that "The dragons are dead, khaleesi" line in the "Previously on Game of Thrones" montage at the beginning. They might has well have added someone saying "DOT...DOT...DOT..." at the end of it. That said, I'm reasonably sure newcomers couldn't predict that the dragons would hatch from Drogo's funeral pyre/Mirri Maz Duur's execution, and that Dany would stride into the fire to reach them and be found buck naked with the dragons crawling on her as her people bow before her. That's tough to foreshadow.

Megan: I just did an adorable imitation of the baby dragon shrieking that unfortunately cannot translate to e-mail, but trust me.

Sean: Of course.

Megan: As I said earlier, the way she handled Mirri Maz Duur here was far more satisfying than if she had just yelled at her and pushed her off a cliff earlier.

Sean: True. She doesn't fuck around.

Megan: I said early on the thing that made Daenerys my favorite character was that she evolved and changed with each episode--even each scene--and this final transformation--for now--showed it once again. At the same time, there a somewhat neat symmetry in that when we first met her she was staring vacantly off into space practically nude and that's basically how she ended up here as well; also in that very first scene, I remember her going into that hot water and being unscathed, and lo and behold, she ends the season walking into fire and emerging unharmed and with dragon babies!

Sean: I honestly didn't pick up on this symmetry until I saw you point it out. Very smart.

Megan: I am so impressed by Emilia Clarke and particularly that she is this good at only 23--it's going to be crazy how good she'll be by the end of this show!

Sean: Oh man, she is great! And this role...for a young inexperienced actor -- this is her very first film work! -- this is like getting thrown right into the deep end in order to learn to swim. There's no filter between you and the audience, basically -- it's like "Okay, go stand here naked while people bow before your awesome power, and at the same time be a teenage girl and try to own that." It's a highwire act and she pulled it off.

Megan: Overall, it was a great first season. I absolutely did not expect to like this show and to be honest wasn't even going to give it a chance, but I'm glad I did. It's hard to pin down exactly what hooked me, but I think it's mostly that this is so different from pretty much anything else I'm into and along those lines the characters stood out to me more than most would. I'm very excited for season two--and can't believe it's not going to be on for like a year! I just made the dragon baby noise again, but this time I'm angry!

Sean: Just don't burn anyone alive, okay? Anyway, I like that the show's selling point is that it's not actually selling anything you'd usually buy, so you're more interested in taking a look at the wares. I'd be perfectly happy for this to be people's "I'm not into fantasy, except..."

[And with that, Sean and Megan will see you in Spring 2012, folks!]