The massive hit show Gossip Girl has an impressive amount of endurance considering it is a plot hole-riddled teen drama that often veers off into storylines that lack logic and bounces between brief love affairs and brutal, life-ruining tensions like it’s nothing.
It also happens to have a fair few continuity errors in each episode in which characters inexplicably move around, objects disappear and reappear, and certain things don’t make a whole lot of sense when compared to previous episodes. We’ve collected the 10 biggest continuity errors in the first season.
Eleanor Becomes A Different Person
The pilot episode of Gossip Girl was, like all TV pilots, used to test the waters. The CW needed to know that a show about privileged teens leading their privileged lives while getting into mischiefs of varying degrees. The first episode introduced all of the major characters, including Blair’s mother Eleanor.
However, by episode 2 of the show, the producers had obviously decided that Florencia Lozano didn’t quite fit their vision, replacing her with Margaret Colin. Changing face, voice and personality between episodes certainly does impact the continuity of the show.
Nate’s Changing Hair
Another big issue in continuity also comes from the first episode. The show is known for its stunning fashion choices throughout, though looking back on those first few episodes might really shock some when they see what was ‘cool’ back then. Nate, in particular, was given a particularly disastrous haircut.
So disastrous, in fact, that it kept changing styles. Towards the start, its shaggy and quite long, before appearing to have been cut to be shorter and more under control. In a few scenes after that, it returns to its previously long state.
The Bus
This continuity error also doubles up as a bit of a plot hole. Firstly, it doesn’t really make any sense for Chuck and Nate to be on the same bus as Dan considering they don’t live anywhere near each other. Plus, it doesn’t make sense for Chuck (a multi-millionaire) to get the public school bus anyway. This is where the issue in continuity comes in.
In every episode after this, we see that Chuck is actually chauffeured to school and doesn’t actually take the same bus as Dan and Nate after all. So we have to wonder why he was ever on the bus in the first place?
Chuck’s Medicine
The fourth and final error from the first 45-minutes of Gossip Girl comes in the form of Chuck once more. He makes a (quite strange) joke to Nate regarding getting some of his “mother’s Paxil” so that Nate can have sex with Blair.
However, it is revealed in the next episode that Chuck’s mum has actually been dead for quite some time, making his very much present tense statement seem both creepy and unmatching to the life circumstance revealed in episode 2.
Double Magazine
In the episode ‘Daredevil’, we see Jenny breaking into Eric Van Der Woodsen’s room in order to break him out of the mental hospital he had been living in following an attempt at suicide.
When she bursts in and shocks him, he closes his magazine. When the shot changes, he closes the same magazine once again. Whether this a bad editing job the mashed up two separate cameras filming the same scene or was built from two different takes, it should certainly have been edited out of the final cut.
Wine Changes
The episode ‘Blair Waldorf Must Pie!’ is a particularly strange one. Set on Thanksgiving day, Dan asks Serena and her family to spend it with his. At the same time, Blair is celebrating particularly lavishly with her fancy family.
The table they’re eating at has a glass of wine on it which changes fullness in nearly every shot, suggesting that certain scenes were filmed after someone on set had a few sips of their drink, and a few were filmed before, then the two were merged together without much thought for continuity.
The Zodiac Poster
The very same episode also has another blunder that only the most eagle-eyed and knowledgeable could notice with ease. The film ‘Zodiac’ came out in 2007, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo realizing David Fincher’s vision for the thriller quite impressively.
However, the flashback in which the poster for the film appears should be set in 2006, long before the film had even been released.
Serena’s Buttons
One of the most life-and-death dramas of the show comes in the episode ‘School Lies’ in which a guy almost drowns in the school pool (but Nate saves the day). A slightly less dramatic problem the episode presents is that of Serena’s coat buttons.
When she is talking to Rufus, the coat is fully buttoned up, but when she talks to Dan a couple of seconds later, it is fully unbuttoned once more.
Phone Menu
This is one of the classic errors in continuity that crops up in a multitude of films and TV shows: the fake phone call. Obviously, when filming a scene, the character doesn’t need to actually call anyone, so have to master the skill of pretending to be on the phone.
However, this always falls flat when someone sees your home screen instead of the call screen. This is exactly what happens in ‘A Thin Line Between Chuck And Nate’ when Rufus calls Becks and his Nokia phone menu is very clearly visible.
Moving Hand
The episode ‘Desperately Seeking Serena’ introduces the off-the-wall Georgina Sparks into the mix. She does a few creepy things, and has had quite the past with Serena (and quite the future with Dan), but doesn’t have much of an impact on this issue.
When Dan is telling Serena that he is worried after finding out someone else took her exams, his hand seems to teleport from being placed under her hair on her neck, to over it throughout the scene.
