I’m a huge fan of both Gossip Girl and Euphoria. Two incredible shows that have made huge marks in the pop culture world.

So… let’s compare how similar Jenny Humphrey and Cassie Howard really are.

They’ve both been labeled annoying… maybe unfairly

A major similarity between Jenny and Cassie is that fans of both Gossip Girl and Euphoria have labeled them as annoying and weak as a surface level response to their onscreen behaviors instead of diving deeper to recognize the trauma that drives both of their behaviors.

It’s true that both Jen and Cassie do extremely annoying things that make them look like some of the weakest and most frustrating characters in television history. But to completely ignore the trauma that caused them both to end up where they ended up is completely dismissive of what the show writers likely intended.

The fact that Jenny always felt like she could never fit in with her wealthy classmates since she grew up in Brooklyn was her driving factor to doing everything she possibly could so she didn’t feel like an outsider forever.

Couple that with her abandonment issues from her mom leaving, and you have the perfect storm for a problematic character like Jenny to turn out the way she did. Cassie’s trauma from her dad dipping on her family, is only part of the issue because he left her and her sister alone with her mother who seemingly created an unstable home environment.

Although not very much time is explicitly spent on analyzing Cassie‘s mother, it seems that she might be struggling with alcoholism. The trauma to endure in her home life spills out into the way she acts whenever she’s navigating the world on her own.