One Gossip Girl Episode So Scandalous Angry Parents Petitioned The CW To Cut It
This show was not teaching kids any good anyways.
It's safe to say that teen television was never designed to teach kids valuable life lessons. If anything, it could serve as a guide to what not to do when you're in high school.
Starting with hits like 13 Reasons Why and Euphoria, and going all the way back to the '90s, these shows have always been a target for angry parents.
Gossip Girl, a show that introduced millions of teens to the beauty and pain behind the lavish lives of New York's upper class, was the one that took a lot of heat. The more daring the show became, the more extreme the measures taken against it seemed.
What's interesting is that the one episode that the adults thought was too much for the younger audience to watch contained only one sex scene.
It was not the usual sex scene, of course, but the one where some of the characters, Dan, Olivia, and Vanessa, decide to explore their sexuality further than what they know and agree to have a threesome.
While this could be a great teaching point, the scene made parents so angry that they started petitioning The CW to cut the episode.
Whether or not all that hype was worth the scene itself is debatable, as it's not nearly as harmful as it was portrayed in the media at the time.
Compared to some of the more recent shows that have explored the same theme, such as the aforementioned Euphoria or Elite, Gossip Girl has kept things very tasteful.
All three characters are shown having an intimate moment, sharing some looks and kisses (fully clothed, mind you!), and then there is a cut to show all three of them in bad shape.
Besides, they are all technically adults at this point, in college and looking for new experiences. However, none of these arguments could convince the angry parents to stop the hate.
As bad as the consequences could be for the network, The CW denied that the episode was cut, and everything stayed the same for us to re-watch and discuss today. The original Gossip Girl is available to stream on Netflix, MAX and Amazon Prime Video.
Source: MTV