Monday's Best Bets on TV

“Gossip Girl” (8 p.m., The CW): On “Gossip Girl,” a citywide blackout during a fancy shindig leaves Serena and Dan trapped in an elevator. (Bet you never saw that plot device). Maybe this is the chance they need to finally confront their relationship problems.

“Solo: Lost at Sea” (10 p.m., National Geographic Channel): Andrew McAuley had an obsession with adventure. It pushed him finally to embrace a challenge many people thought impossible: kayaking solo from Australia to New Zealand across 1,000 treacherous miles of the Tasman Sea. Even the 39-year-old McAuley didn’t fully comprehend why he was making the attempt, as he confided to the video camera mounted on his kayak shortly after embarking in January 2007. “I’ve got a lot of people that want me back,” he declared. “I’ve got a great family” — including wife Vicki and young son Finlay. National Geographic Channel’s “Solo: Lost at Sea” charts McAuley’s defiant, doomed mission. It hears from comrades who helped him prepare for the journey, whatever their misgivings. It includes his last words in a crackling radio transmission. And there are excerpts from his video footage, retrieved from his empty kayak 50 miles off the New Zealand coast a month after he had set off. His body was never found. But his widow insists, “He made it.”