Conceptually, season finales are difficult beasts to write, posing problems that seem unique to the television medium but in fact recall the earliest of storytelling traditions. You have to give some sense of closure to make the long journey seem worth the while (and also just in case you get canceled), but at the same time you have to give some incentive to tune in after the hiatus, and to plant the seeds of storylines so they don’t come as a surprise right off the bat.

Another issue that finales have to face is that if they are to truly be climactic, they often have complicated setups; these setups get pushed into the episode before, and so usually the penultimate episode of each season is a transparent exercise in getting all the pieces in the right place. Lost is a prime example of this: watch any pre-finale episode and it’s about shuffling characters into the right places and mindsets to do what they have to do in the finale. These episodes are especially difficult to write without leaving fingerprints all over them.

So how does Gossip Girl handle it? Rather admirably, in fact, especially since the show had to deal with the strike-induced break that caused so many other shows to crash and burn. I sense a lot of hatred for the Georgina Sparks arc, but the show had to address fundamental character questions about Serena, and this way was as good as any and better than most. (Again, far better shows have tried and failed to do what Gossip Girl did.)  The very end with the relationship musical chairs feels very much like transparent character shuffling, but I understand that it’s a narrative conceit of what is very much a soapy show.

And as a season, it doesn’t wrap up as neatly and poignantly as The O.C. did, but hopefully it won’t need to, in that the second and third seasons of Gossip Girl will maintain the quality and sharpness of narrative that eluded that other show.  (One of the difficulties of writing catch-up analysis is that everyone else has an opinion that you have yet to form. When discussing with George Ding, I mentioned that I hoped Schwartz and Co. wouldn’t fall back on crutches they used on The O.C., like “Hey Dan, I’m your half-brother from when Rufus slept with a groupie! Here I am to make your life miserable!” George’s first reply was “Umm…..”)

But in the end, I have to give this series more credit than I did eighteen episodes ago; if for nothing else, it’s (in the words of another television character) tricking kids into thinking they’re not learning so they do. It’s Theory of the Leisure Class for teens who are allergic to books; it’s a bildungsroman for people who don’t even know what language that word is from. If The O.C. was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Gossip Girl is Ulysses.