First, the New York Times intellectualized The Hills—or at least attempted to. Now the paper's devoted nearly 1,500 words to the "essence" of Gossip Girl, comparing it to The Hills and The Real Housewives of New York City. In examining GG, writer Alessandra Stanley referenced a bounty of works of literature, film, and television across three centuries and countless levels of quality. We knew GG was totally postmodern and at times, like, meta, but this article takes referencing to a new stratosphere. To help you make sense of it all, Radar's created a timeline detailing Stanley's many cultural talking points. Before you watch tonight's Gossip Girl season finale, let us first go back to 1844.

1844: Alexandre Dumas publishes The Three Musketeers in serial form, later providing Alessandra Stanley with the opportunity to create the delightful pun "Moschinoteers" while discussing such fashionable works as Sex and the City and Gossip Girl.

1905: Edith Wharton writes The House of Mirth, a novel about Lily Bart, a woman with little wealth looking to marry money in New York. On tonight's Gossip Girl, Serena's mother Lily may marry rich dude Bart, but she may just keep making out with her former rock star flame, Rufus.

1936: Clare Boothe Luce writes a play The Women, satirizing New York society women. In 1939, it's made into a movie, now beloved by gay men around the world. Apparently GG is so "post-feminist" that it circles back to such work.

1958: Rona Jaffe writes her first novel, The Best of Everything, about young women working in and sleeping around New York. Critic Camille Paglia later compares it to Sex and the City. Alessandra Stanley references it to differentiate Gossip Girl's essence from that of Sex and the City's.

1961: Audrey Hepburn stars in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, later providing the inspiration for a dream sequence in a very special episode of Gossip Girl.

1963: Betty Friedan writes what will become a seminal feminist text, The Feminine Mystique, which provides unending fodder for The Times to reference when writing about both The Hills and Gossip Girl.

1963 to present: The soap opera General Hospital begins. Gossip Girl does not feature similar scenes or plot lines.

1973 to present The soap opera The Young and the Restless starts up. Gossip Girl is not a soap opera.

1978 to 1991: The TV show Dallas shows the world how entertaining cat fights can be, provided the women fighting have big hair and are part of a wealthy Texas oil family. Contemporary Gossip Girl viewers prefer their cat-fighters to be younger, use fewer hair products, and have Wall Street wealth.

1981 to 1989: The TV show Dynasty shows the world how entertaining cat fights can be, provided the women fighting have big hair and are part of a wealthy Denver oil family. (See above GG ref.)

1981 to 1990: TV show Falcon Crest airs, is possibly watched by The Real Housewives of New York City to-be. The reference is lost on us.

1998 to 2004: With Sex and the City, Carrie and Co. portray women who are nice to each other in the cold, cold world that is the meatpacking district. The Upper East side of GG, thankfully, has less Bridge-and-Tunnel action. If any at all.

2003 to 2007: The O.C. airs. Alessandra Stanley says Gossip Girl is a totally different beast, though the two shows do share an executive producer in Josh Schwartz (which Stanley neglects to mention).

2004: The film Mean Girls hits theaters. In case you didn't know, chicks can be pretty bitchy to one and another. (In referencing the movie, Stanley neglects to mention that it was based on a non-fiction book, Queen Bees & Wannabes, which contradicts her thesis that "girls who join forces against one another" is just the "next evolutionary stage of girl power television.")

2004 to 2006: Laguna Beach replaces Sex and the City's female bonding with the girl-on-girl war between Lauren and Kristin. It spins off the most important cultural artifact of our times, The Hills. (Note: LB wasn't mentioned in The Times piece, but as discerning television historians, we have here.)

2004 to present: The epic fight between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag saves The Hills—and MTV. To mention GG without mentioning The Hills is to do a disservice to both.

2007 to present: Bravo inflicts its Real Housewives franchise on New York. The east cost "housewives" like each other far less than their west coast counterparts, have more cat fights, less silicone. This reference is also lost on us.

2008: Both Cashmere Mafia, Lipstick Jungle premiere to disappointing ratings. Entertainment execs realize viewers would rather watch teen girl frenemies in New York City, rather than middle-aged women friends in New York. They go back in time, create Gossip Girl series.

TONIGHT! The best literature, cinema, and television from the past three centuries fuse together like a cultural Voltron and bring you the Gossip Girl season finale. OMFG!