This pilot does an incredible amount of work in just over 40 minutes. It quickly and efficiently introduces us to the main players, the world of the show, the concept and mechanism of the “Gossip Girl” blog, and the main conflicts. There are tights! And headbands! And yogurt! All of these are woven into the satisfying arc of Dan and Serena’s first date. Most impressively, we learn straight from this one episode who knows what and who wants what and from whom.

But as fun, funny, and structurally impressive as the first GG episode is, the thing we really have to talk about is: This is the episode where Chuck tries to rape Jenny. And Serena, actually. For some, this makes Chuck’s later redemption completely unacceptable. We don’t see him behave quite so aggressively again, but the show treats him as a bad boy instead of a bad person. So it’s understandable if you watch this episode and think: nope. And unlike so many other series' deranged (read: hastily and melodramatically written) rapist characters, Pilot Chuck has a consistent M.O. He finds and flatters a vulnerable woman, physically isolates her, gives her something he knows she wants, and then demands sexual satisfaction in return. He leverages his money and position to influence both Jenny and Serena. He mentions to Nate that perfection needs to be “violated.” In short, he seems practiced at this. It would have been interesting to see a teen show with a sexually entitled main character who has to either unlearn his view of women or suffer the consequences. Instead, the show...pretends it didn’t happen.

I have a theory about what went down. It's not uncommon for series to have a minor, or even major, retooling between the pilot and subsequent episodes. On GG, you'll notice that Chuck has a mom in the pilot and doesn't later. Blair’s mother is played by a different actress; the Waldorf apartment is a different set; the whole gang smokes a lot more weed. We see Nate and Chuck riding the bus, but they have drivers the rest of the series. Minor changes, sure, but the point is that what works in a pilot doesn’t always work on the whole. It seems like the writers needed a villain to create conflict and heighten the stakes, all of which Chuck does in the pilot. They’ve said before they didn’t know how often he would be in the series—initially, he was going to be a sometime player like Georgina. Maybe they planned to make him deal with harsher consequences for the assault. Maybe they planned to kill him. I don't know. But they decided to keep him around, and no one really wants to write a charming rapist week after week. I know (through secret channels, xoxo) that the network put the kibosh on a plot that would have made Serena much more culpable in the murder she confesses to in season one; I think similar noting happened here, and they had to walk it back.

VICTOR, VICTROLA (1.7)

This episode is so well done. We have Jenny in three scenes—the perfect amount of Jenny—being spurned by Blair and realizing that instead of a mother-figure she needs her actual mother. We have Dan's sexual performance anxiety made hilariously explicit in dream sequences. Good job sneaking that message about communication between consenting partners in there, writers. Serena thinking it can "just happen" when what she doesn't realize she needs is a thoughtful, plan-ahead guy like Dan, who gets new sheets because Vanessa said. A guy who looks at Serena with love and respect, and she's never had that. If that moment doesn't make you want to cry, then you are dead inside. Which is all to say, this is the episode where Dan and Serena (maybe?) bone. More importantly, this is the episode where Chuck and Blair bone. Blair, who has tried to many times to engineer the perfect deflowering, doesn't realize she needs a passionate guy like Chuck to finally buy what she's been trying to sell. What gets overlooked here, because it's such a strong episode for the couples, is the father-son plots: Nate taking care of his drug-addict father by getting him arrested and Chuck trying to impress Bart but accidentally screwing up his relationship with Lily. Just a great episode start to finish.