Gossip Girl 2.15: “Gone with the Will”

The Wife:

Gossip Girl wasted no time in paying off the tease they gave us last week about some unscrupulous activities that Blair was involved in on New Year’s – that unscrupulous activity was hooking up in some capacity with apple-cheeked Uncle Jack. (I am not the only one who wishes to bite the cheeks right off his face.) After successfully turning Opium Zombie Chuck Bass/Drunken Suicidal Robert Pattinson Hair Chuck Bass back into Sneering Everyday Chuck Bass, Blair takes extra precautions not to let Chuck find out what went down between herself and his uncle, inserting herself into every facet of Chuck’s life. She attends the reading of Bart Bass’ will, along with Nate Archibald, who basically had two scenes in this episode and contributed nothing. (Why couldn’t he have died in a freak gasoline fight accident or something? Why?) The only person who cannot attend said reading is Lily Bass Der Woodsen, who is still off in Boston with Rufus Humphrey, looking for the child she gave up.

At the will reading, Chuck is told that he will receive his full inheritance, to be put into a trust until he turns 18, at which time the money is entirely his to do as he pleases. He is also handed a letter, written by Bart Bass before his death. Chuck, satisfied with the influx of cash, doesn’t give a damn about the letter and doesn’t want to read it, fearing it will only recapitulate the string of terrible disappointments he has been to his father, including wearing “so much purple.” Blair, however, encourages Chuck to read the letter, which goes on to glow about Chuck’s potential as a businessman, further explaining that, upon Bart’s death, Chuck Bass should receive the controlling 51% share in Bass Industries – the only thing apple-cheeked Uncle Jack wanted from his brother at all. Chuck proclaims that he doesn’t want any stake in Bass Industries whatsoever and willingly gives up his share to Jack. (For those who give a shit about the business world of GG, Lily received a 20% share in the company, with the remaining 29% being divvied up amongst members of the board.)

Running a company isn't all free booze and hookers, nephew mine.

Feeling that Chuck deserves to become the kind of man she knows he can be, Blair encourages Chuck to accept the majority share in Bass Industries. For all his harsh words to his son prior to his death, that cold dead bastard Bart Bass seemed to really believe in Chuck’s business acumen, and Blair believes in it, too. Newly confident, Chuck returns to Uncle Jack and tells him that he wants to take over Bass Industries, fully accepting the responsibilities of his inheritance. I love Uncle Jack, so much, because the exchange between the two younger Bass men in this scene opened with Jack cracking a joke about his relationship with his nephew:

“Well, you noticed that the Thai waitress I was gonna take home the other night had a penis, so . . .”

But all joking aside, Jack is none-too-pleased when Chuck Bass demands that he take over Bass Industries, fulfilling the role his father wanted for him. Immediately, Jack hatches an evil scheme to ruin his nephew. He calls Blair and tells her that he wants to throw a surprise party for Chuck, which Blair opts to help coordinate, even if Chuck’s new responsibilities as head of a company keep him from missing the romantic dinner in that she got all dressed up for in a really cute black and silver cocktail dress. Of course, those “new responsibilities” are actually Uncle Jack baiting Chuck to once again become Opium Zombie Chuck with the promise of good times, drugs and loose women.

Meanwhile, Dan is still avoiding Serena, while Jenny can’t keep the hell away from Eric. Jenny has been spending all of her free time becoming New York’s Most Annoying Fag Hag by constantly being the third wheel on Eric and Jonathan’s dates. This annoys Eric. It should, because it annoys me. Serena tries to assure Dan that their parents are not getting back together, which she assumes is the thing keeping him from being with her, spouting out something about a text message from her mom and a joke about French president Sarkozy not being a good kisser, which Dan remarks is one more thing to be disappointed with. What the fuck, Gossip Girl? That’s a really weird line. Why the fuck does Dan care about politics in France? Is this going to be a new interest of his? Like how being a writer suddenly became a character trait? The Gossip Girl universe has never been concerned with real people unless they are fashion designers or entertainers, so to go out of one’s way to write a line about a foreign politico is really odd.

Anyway, overhearing one of these conversations makes Penelope think that Dan may be cheating on Serena. She puts out a hit on Gossip Girl about him, asking people to dig up information. So far, the worst thing they find is that Dan brown bags his lunch and eats tuna salad sandwiches. (I’m sorry, does Daddy Rufus not have a panini press at home? Jesus, Brooklyn really is the fucking sticks.) That is, until Nelly Yuki spies on a very revealing conversation with Vanessa, during which she manages to steal Dan’s phone as Dan reveals to Vanessa (in a candy shop!) that his father and Lily had a child together. Relying only on information from the last Gossip Girl blast, the icky scary mini tween mean girls (who, despite their addictions to fashion and gossip, actually do, like children, hang out in a candy shop) show up to blast Dan for cheating on Serena and to remind Vanessa that she’s dating up by dating Nate Archibald. Thanks, characters that really frighten me. I think Vanessa already knew that. Later, Serena goes to visit Vanessa, hoping to find out the secret Dan has been keeping from her, but Vanessa will not betray Dan’s confidence.

The next day, at Chuck’s celebratory brunch, Penelope and the mean girls prepare to release the information bomb they found on Dan’s phone: Serena and Dan share a sibling. They ask Blair for her okay to release the information, but she is too distracted by Chuck’s absence to bother with trite high school crap, giving Penelope the okay regardless of the caliber of information. When Jack arrives without Chuck, Blair suspects that something might be wrong. Jack assures her that Chuck is hard at work in his office upstairs, and asks Blair to take a couple of the Bass Industries board members up to meet him. Like the dutiful wife Chuck scorns her for pretending to be, she leads them right into the horrific scene of Chuck cavorting with two scantily clad women and snorting lines off his father’s stately desk, making a truly bad impression on the members of the board, one so scandalous it would make any board demand the resignation of the affected party.

Jenny, stop trying to be part of my relationship. In no way do Jonathan and I want to have sex with you.

Downstairs, Jenny and Eric have it out over her fag haggy clinginess and he calls her irritating and conceited, both of which are, in fact, true statements. But then they and the entire party receive the text blast from Gossip Girl, dropping the bomb about the secret Hump Der Woodsen child on the unwitting Serena, Jenny and Eric. The Hump Der Woodsen children exit the party ASAP to cope with this new information. Jenny realizes that it only makes sense for them to share a sibling as all four of them fight like siblings (you know, with the ones that aren’t actually their siblings), but Serena can’t really deal with this information at all. When Dan confirms the truth of the situation, she gives her best (worst?) Garbo and goes off to be alone for a while.

After the party is over and the coke has worn off, Chuck goes to apple-cheeked Uncle Jack and demands to know why he wasn’t told he would be meeting board members. Jack admits to his evil plan to get Chuck so wasted and lie to him so that Jack, Chuck’s legal guardian, would gain the majority share in the company by pointing out the loophole: a morality clause that determined care of the company would go to Chuck’s legal guardian should he act, in any way, unbecoming of the chairman and CEO of a major real estate company. This was a pretty good evil plan, as far as evil plans that don’t involve death go. I thought the threat of nephew-cide was imminent, but apparently Uncle Jack is more of the type to keep his hands clean, yet filled with hookers. (Not that I’d want Chuck to die. I love Chuck and would never want any harm to come to him. I just thought they were going to go the really high drama route of foiled murder attempts.) Realizing the ass he’s been made of and how poorly he treated Blair when she had been nothing but kind and helpful to him, Chuck comes to Chez Waldorf to apologize, a bouquet of ranunculae in hand. But Blair refuses to accept his apology or his flowers, telling him that she can’t stand the emotional abuse anymore as tears well up in her giant brown eyes. To add insult to injury, she throws the flowers at his feet as the elevator doors close on him. I’m terribly sad that Blair and Chuck appear to be falling apart again, but that only sets us up for an arc where we’ll likely see suave Chuck try to win back the only girl who will ever actually love him.

As all of this drama goes down on the Upper East Side, Rufus and Lily wait around in a hotel in Boston for any word on their son. They were able to find the agency that placed him with adoptive parents, but as it was a closed adoption, there is no way for them to meet their son, unless, the adoption agent tells them – sympathizing, perhaps, for the fact that Rufus didn’t even know he had another child until recently – that they might have a chance at seeing their son if they get in touch with the adoptive parents directly. The adoptive parents call and demand that Rufus and Lily never contact them again, denying them a chance to see their son. Then Rufus and Lily reminisce and she admits that she wants to give up trying because every moment she spends in a hotel with Rufus is another moment that she cannot deny the fact that she’s in love with him. Naturally, Rufus takes this as a cue to have sex with her, and they reminisce some more about what I’m pretty sure is the time he impregnated her, after a concert Lincoln Hawk played in Paris.

They then receive a call from the adoptive father, who asks to meet with them privately, under his wife’s radar. When they meet the man, he tells them that he hadn’t wanted to meet with them because their son, Andrew, died last year in a freak sailing accident. All Lily wants to know is that the brief life her son had with his adoptive parents was a happy one, and the adoptive father assures her that it was. Satisfied with the knowledge that they will never meet their son (although, technically, Lily has met Andrew . . . you know . . . on his birthday . . .), Rufus and Lily return home to the Humphrey loft. Lily bemoans the fact that the dead Hump Der Woodsen son means that she and Rufus were, perhaps, never meant to be a family, only to walk in and find the other Hump Der Woodsen children, hanging out in the kitchen eating PB&J after having made up for all of their recent fights, Eric and Jenny mutually apologizing for being bitchy to one another and Dan and Serena deciding to stay together, citing various literary precedents as well as the movie Clueless, in which Cher hooks up with her ex-stepbrother Josh. Indeed, Clueless is, like, totally cultural capitol.

But not to be outdone by the oddly problematic romance of two people who share a sibling, back in Boston, the adoptive mother joins her husband at the table and asks if Lily and Rufus are gone for good. Her husband assures her that they will never call again, to which she states that she’s glad she doesn’t have to face the threat of losing another child. The missing Hump Der Woodsen is very much alive, it seems, and very likely not named Andrew. I hope that, if he should somehow get wind that his birth parents wanted to meet him and he takes a bus down to New York, The Missing Hump Der Woodsen turns out to be way cooler than 90210‘s Secret Brother Sean. That guy was a dick. And not an actual Secret Brother.

The Husband:

A very expository but not very emotionally involving episode, this week’s GG nonetheless hit hard with all of its dangling story threads, putting a remarkable amount of effort into making even the most ridiculous plot twist seem perfectly natural (i.e. the adoptive parents using a newspaper clipping about the drowning of their one son and making it seem as if it was actually about the missing Hump Der Woodsen). Even Uncle Jack’s story has already rocketed through what would take other shows as least six episodes to handle while at the same time making him a more interesting character in a mere two episodes than Nate Archibald has been in two seasons.

I loved the “hidden” morality clause, loved the hookers-and-opium set-up and was very happy that Rufus and Lily hooked up in a manner not so melodramatic but more in tune with their actual loving relationship. How refreshing.

But was I on bated breath about how any of the characters really felt? Not really, and that’s a weird feeling to have. Even when everyone seems to have given up on caring about Dan, I still really relate to him, but I will admit that he’s becoming less interesting this season in comparison to s1.

 

Gossip Girl 2.13: “O Brother, Where Bart Thou?”

The Wife:

So, Bart Bass is definitely dead. He didn’t even get the chance to be in a coma for awhile while the other characters hovered around him, wondering what to do with his life, fighting over his will and haggling with his PI for that final piece of information. Nope. The Gossip Girl universe just decided that it would be better if he died outright, off-screen, with all the dignity befitting the richest and most prickly character on the Upper East Side. Bart’s death has affected the Upper East Siders in a variety of ways:

• Lily Bass Der Woodsen, although she was about to leave Bart, appears to be in a state of shock. She can barely navigate putting together the funeral, which makes it extremely lucky that her mother, CeCe, has showed up to help her daughter in her time of need. All Lily knows for certain is that she still wants to be with Rufus Humphrey, who promises her that he will wait for her as long as she needs him to.
• Chuck Bass is now an orphan and set to become the richest kid in Manhattan, even with some of Bart’s money passing to his wife, Lily. Upset at losing the man he tried so hard to love, Chuck has holed himself up at the Palace Hotel and gone on a drunken bender. He is disheveled and broken down and, frankly, has never looked hotter. He also refuses to associate the Van Der Woodsens and the Humphreys, blaming Lily and Rufus for his father’s death.
• Chuck’s admonishment of his family makes Eric Van Der Woodsen really sad.
• The untimely demise of Bart Bass makes Cyrus Rose not want to spend another day not married to Eleanor Waldorf.

So the whole of the Upper East Side heads to Bart’s funeral, where a doting Blair and Nate escort drunken Chuck, while Dan and Aaron Rose accompany grieving Serena. Chuck throws Dan out of the funeral, accusing Rufus of indirectly killing Bart. Not wanting to cause further embarrassment to Chuck, Dan agrees to leave.

“Chuck is Bart’s son. He doesn’t have to make sense today.” – CeCe Van Der Woodsen

At the Humphrey loft, Rufus tells his freshly-kicked-out-of-the-funeral son that he thought Dan and Serena might have been rekindling their relationship since Bart’s demise, but Dan insists he’s just being a good friend. Rufus continues to sit around in a cozy sweater, playing “Everytime,” which he obviously wrote for Lily, and pining away for her. At Bart’s wake, Cyrus proposes to Eleanor that they get married the following day, and opportunistic Jenny Humphrey offers to make Eleanor’s wedding jacket overnight in order to make amends for being such a snotty little bitch to her former mentor. Aaron Rose proposes to Serena that they head off to Argentina for the holidays so that she can take a break from grief. When Serena insists that she has to stay with her family, Aaron, ever the tactless douchebag, accuses Serena of wanting to stay in town because of Dan. Meanwhile, an enraged Chuck storms out of the wake to go meet with PI Andrew Taylor, who has contacted both him and Lily trying to sell the final bit of information he told Bart before he died, which Bart intimated on his final voicemail to Lily: he knows why she spent some time in a sanatorium in France when she was 19. CeCe offers to negotiate with Andrew Taylor about Lily’s secret in her stead.

I'll get you, Rufus Humphrey, and your little Dan, too!

Blair tries to talk some sense into Chuck and let him know that he doesn’t have to mourn alone, finally saying the three words that she said she’d never say to him. As she professes her love and tells him that she’ll always be by his side, he gets into his limo and tells her, “Well, that’s too bad,” speeding off to bid for the secret of the woman he blames for his father’s death. As Cyrus Rose sets up for his wedding to Eleanor the next day, he tells Blair how happy he is to have her in his family, an admission so genuine that it causes Blair to break down in tears, telling her new father that she finally told Chuck she loved him and that he rejected her. Cyrus takes her in his arms and assures her that Chuck would be a fool not to love her back and that he’ll come around, once he’s no longer blinded by grief and rage. I actually loved seeing our fierce Blair break down and show her vulnerable side. It’s a nice reminder that our favorite queen bee is human on the inside, despite the frosty exterior she may present.

“Only a masochist could ever love such a narcissist.” – Blair

Serena and Dan discuss their relationship in light of her possibly going on a sexcation with Aaron Rose. Again, I don’t know why this conversation happened, but I guess Dan and Serena didn’t get to sleep with Lexi and Aaron, respectively, after the Snowflake Ball because of Bart’s accident. So now Dan will never sleep with Lexi and it still doesn’t matter if Serena sleeps with Aaron or not. Serena returns home after this conversation to walk in on her mother admitting to CeCe that she still loves Rufus Humphrey. Hearing this, Serena tells Lily that she’s going to Argentina with Aaron because she’s not with Dan anymore. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Little J somehow convinces Dan to get Serena back and keep her from going to Argentina with Aaron. She facilitates this Aaron-tervention by asking Dan to carry the garment bag to the wedding at Chez Waldorf.

I absolutely have nothing to wear to my own wedding. I sure hope on opportunistic street urchin shows up to save the day!

Believing that CeCe has handsomely paid to keep her secret at bay, Lily calls Rufus and begs him to run away with her. Ah, but CeCe has betrayed her daughter and not bid on the information at all, giving it freely to Chuck Bass. At the Waldorf estate, Serena and Dan continue to discuss their relationship, but Serena insists on going to Argentina with Aaron, spilling the beans about Lily and Rufus and insisting that she doesn’t want to take a third chance with Dan because it would be weird to date the son of the person her mom is dating. (With which I kind of agree, actually.)

“You’re going to give all this up because of your mom?” – Dan

Cyrus and Eleanor marry in a lovely, small ceremony in the Waldorf foyer and everyone wears beautiful dresses – especially Dorota, who must have been so happy to get out of her maid’s outfit for a day and wear something lovely. (I think she borrowed Rose from Privileged‘s swarovski crystal headband, actually.) After vows are exchanged, Dorota tells Blair to go upstairs where she finds a contrite Chuck Bass who has come to cry on her shoulder after burning Lily’s secret that he paid so dearly for. Sad Chuck snuggles up tight to Blair’s gorgeous white fan-adorned dress and they fall asleep together. Meanwhile, CeCe heads over to Brooklyn to tell Rufus what her daughter should have all those years ago, under the guise of “giving them a chance for their relationship to actually succeed.” Dan returns home to find that his father’s mood has suddenly changed for happy packing-for-a-trip Rufus to sullen and stern Rufus, who announces that he can never be with Lily Van Der Woodsen.

In their limo to the airport, Aaron Rose delivers some creepy double entendres to Serena about how sleeping on the plane will be the first time they’ve actually slept together. I don’t know why she’s with this guy. I don’t know why he wants to go to Argentina. And I don’t know why he’s so fucking creepy. How could someone as awesome as Cyrus spawn someone so unawesome as Aaron? It’s inconceivable, I tell you. Inconceivable.

Please, dear lord, will someone poison this man with iocane powder? I'm certain he hasn't built up an immunity.

Blair wakes up to find that Chuck has left, leaving in his place a note that tells her that she deserves better than him. And finally, Rufus Humphrey confronts Lily in Grand Central Station, hitting her with the loaded question:

“Just tell me one thing: is it a boy or a girl?”

So Lily’s big secret is that she had a bastard love child with someone far below her station. Which is pretty much what I thought was going to go down. However, I had a dream about this episode last night in which Rufus and Lily continued this conversation, wherein Rufus discussed how weird it is for this to be Lily’s big secret. (Don’t ask me why. I can’t explain why I dream about pop culture. But I have had Lincoln Hawk’s “Everytime” stuck in my head all day, thanks to this episode.) I understand that Lily loves Rufus very much, but at 19, pregnant with a child she knew she couldn’t keep because of the scandal it would cause in polite society – why would she have kept that child at all? Just because it’s Rufus’ child? That she wouldn’t be able to raise it, with or without him? That makes no sense. As a very wealthy person, wouldn’t an abortion have been the better way to go? There would be no risk to her reputation for having an illegitimate child with a man far below her station. No risk of that child ever finding his biological parents and causing a scandal. No need to go to a sanatorium in France to have the baby. No need to be whisked away to do so and leave the love of her life in the process. Lily actually having that child just doesn’t make sense to me. At all. The only reason I can see for her decision to keep that child and give it up for adoption would be that she wanted something of Rufus’ for the rest of her life, and somehow knowing that she’d had his child would be enough. That or CeCe made her keep the baby because CeCe is weird like that and makes strange decisions on other people’s behalf.

Rufus had a right to know about the child either way, abortion or adoption. And I hope that this storyline, this strange decision to keep that bastard love child, takes us to a place where Rufus actively seeks out the son or daughter he never knew he had, because otherwise, I’m just going to find it a confusing choice for the remainder of the season. Although, it does imbue the lyrics of “Everytime” with an entirely new meaning now, doesn’t it?

“Everytime you walk away or run away you take a piece of me with you.”

The Husband:

Big drama. Big emotions. Big plot points. Nary a sliver of the snark and pomp that usually defines this show.

Yep, Gossip Girl just threw a great hour of television right up there on the boob tube, and I hope you were paying attention. It’s too bad that Dirty Sexy Money has already filmed their final episode and will not be getting a third season, because this episode is a great lesson in how to deal with the histrionics of the rich New York elite, even when confronted with such big scenarios as funerals and weddings (things that have also recently happened on DSM.) Aside from the Aaron story, everything worked beautifully for this episode, slingshotting us from emotion to emotion and revealing some big information to tide us over the show’s hiatus.

• You want some major pathos? Behold Chuck’s complete collapse, a rare instance from such a collected character, rendering him completely sympathetic despite his utter contempt for everyone around him.
• You want some soapy secrets without dealing with ridiculous musical stings and an over-the-top shouting match? Behold the final moments when Rufus confront Lily at Grand Central.
• You want some mind games? Behold CeCe’s brilliant handling of the PI situation.
• You want some great joy? Behold the Cyrus/Eleanor wedding that brings everyone together.
• Just to make things feel a bit more regular-size GG, you want some confusing, inexplicable romantic gobbledegook that really makes no sense when you think about it? Behold Dan’s entire story this week.

This is all just in one jam-packed episode.

So why aren’t you watching?

 

Gossip Girl 2.12: “It’s a Wonderful Lie”

The Wife:

As with any good story about a high school, there must be one chapter/episode dedicated entirely to the trials and tribulations of going to a Big Dance, in this case its the Senior Snowflake Charity Ball, organized by Lily Bass Der Woodsen with sound system by Rufus Humphrey.

For the kids of Constance/St. Jude’s, the ball is about seeing and being seen (yet another one of Gossip Girl‘s 18th century traditions), and for Blair it’s particularly important to be seen with the right date. Chuck Bass knows that Blair is the perfect girl for him just as deeply as she knows he’s the perfect guy for her, but they’re both stubborn narcissists, so they can’t go together. Instead, they bet one another that they can find the perfect dates for each other. If Chuck actually likes the date Blair picks for him, she gets his limo for a month. If Blair actually likes the date Chuck picks for her, he gets to borrow her maid, Dorota, for a month. (By the way, Dorota is Polish. I don’t think we knew that before.)

“I can like an intelligent man. He’ll whisper mellifluous nothings in my ear.” – Blair

In Serena land, she tells Dan how much she loves the Snowflake Ball and is a little disheartened that Aaron Rose doesn’t want to go with her because it clashes with his ideals as an impoverished artist. Then Serena meets Aaron’s ex, Lexi, at the gallery, readily making fun of Aaron’s Gap-esque portraits of Serena (which, really, is the only kind of modeling former Gap Kid Serena knows how to do). Immediately, Serena hates Lexi because she has no sense of humor about herself and Lexi is a much more commanding, interesting person than Serena, with her easy charm and mumble mouth, could ever hope to be. Sensing that Serena really dislikes Lexi, Aaron agrees to go to the Snowflake Ball to make her happy, if she promises to give Lexi a chance. And then Lexi starts hitting on Dan, and gets him to invite her to the ball as the two couples share a stroll around the historic Brooklyn waterfront.

Seriously, what does your ex have against the Gap?

Blair tells Serena that it’s ridiculous that she hasn’t slept with Aaron, especially considering the information Aaron gave her about Lexi’s plans for Dan. Lexi, you see, likes to sleep with guys on the first date as part of her feminist agenda (okay?). She doesn’t date many guys, but when she sets her sights on one, she’s going to end up in bed with him. Dan, therefore, is Lexi’s newest conquest.

Jenny and Vanessa are still trying to be friends despite their mutual attraction to the least interesting man in the Gossip Girl universe, Nate Archibald. Jenny is going completely stir crazy and putting all of her energy into cleaning and organizing the Humphrey loft because she just doesn’t know what happened to her and Nate. Vanessa, feeling the slightest bit of guilt about intercepting Nate’s letter, just doesn’t have the heart to tell Jenny about her relationship with Nate. Vanessa won’t even tell Nate about what happened with Jenny’s letter until their kiss gets blasted all over Gossip Girl.

After Vanessa’s departure, Penelope comes to the Brooklyn loft to ask J to make her a custom gown for the Snowflake Ball with only one day of lead time! J agrees to do the dress, even as Penelope grills her about her relationship with Nate, whom all of Penelope’s minions are in love with. (Again, ladies, I ask you why. He’s not interesting. And he’s not even rich anymore. I honestly can’t see why anyone would like him.) They then receive the Gossip Girl text blast, which swiftly changes Jenny’s mood about Vanessa, whom she later confronts in a spectacularly stupid catfight that once again makes me want to remind them that Nate Archibald is Totally Not Worth It. Jenny, still miffed, takes Penelope her dress and notices that the dress Nelly Yuki had made for herself is totally see-through. Penelope, scheming in a way Blair Waldorf would actually disapprove of, suggests that J give Vanessa Nelly’s dress, pretending that she made it as a special “bury the Nate hatchet” gift for Vanessa. At the ball, the other ladies spurned by Nate would blast her with a spotlight and publicly embarrass V. (A see-through dress is only really embarrassing if you’re not wearing underwear, and this is a TV show, so underwear must certainly be worn.)

In the Bass der Woodsen home, Lily has been cold to Bart since the dossier incident at Thanksgiving, and Bart, fearing he’ll lose a woman he actually loves in his own Bart Bass-y way, repents and tells Lily that he’s fired the private investigator. She seems to respond well to this, and makes Bart promise to return from his business trip in enough time to escort her to the Snowflake Ball she’s been working so hard to put together. Bart makes sure to tell his son just how disappointed he is in him for giving the Van Der Woodsens their dossiers just before he leaves for the trip, putting the impetus on Chuck to once again prove that he’s actually a loyal and loving son. Just before the ball, Lily calls Bart to tell him that she’s waiting for him to escort her and finds out that he is in a meeting with his PI, and then she finds a recent invoice, which angers her so much that she calls back to tell Bart that she’s not waiting for him and that she’ll be attending the ball without him. Once there, she tells Rufus that she’s going to leave Bart because he refuses to change.

“There’s something I love about the Snowflake Ball. It’s like Anna Karenina by Anna Wintour.” – Serena

Why do you care who I sleep with? I slept with you and you're from Brooklyn!

Serena hints to Aaron that they’ll be sleeping together after the ball, and then Serena and Dan proceed to have a really awkward discussion of the appropriateness of sex on a first date, let alone sex with people other than each other, as both Dan and Serena agree that the times they had sex it was truly special. At the end of the dance, the two parties apologize to each other for criticizing one another’s decisions to have sex, and ultimately decide that they do not have any place telling each other how to lead their sex lives. Honestly, I don’t really understand the point of this plot or this conversation. While I appreciate the fact that Dan and Serena feel that sex should be something special and that neither of them should feel pressured by their dates to have sex before their ready, this is not at all something that should have mattered to Dan and Serena about each other. All that needed to be said was: “Don’t have sex with Aaron/Lexi unless you’re ready and feel it will be special, like it was with us.” That’s it. Enough said. No reason to be angry or offended – especially because Dan and Serena now are just friends looking out for each other. (You know what else makes no sense? That Anna Karenina comparison Serena made. I don’t think she really knows what Anna Karenina is about. And yes, I do realize she just wanted to allude to the fact that Russian winters have many snowflakes.)

Meanwhile, Chuck and Blair unveil the dates they’ve found for each other: a Beta Blair and a Beta Bass, the latter of whom does a perfect Ed Westwick sneer. Realizing that they’ve basically picked each other, but in knock-off variety, Chuck tries to get Blair to admit that they should have just gone together in the first place, but she will not lose her bet . . . until she finds the two clones making out with each other.

“This is the weirdest out-of-body experience ever.” – Blair

Even fake Chuck and fake Blair know that Chuck and Blair should be together, but real Chuck and real Blair insist that they can’t lest that new relationship change their entire strange, competitive friendship. As Blair bemoans this lamentable fate, Chuck Bass drags her on to the dance floor and tells her to shut up, stop worrying so much and just enjoy being his date for the remainder of the night.

Can someone please explain to me why a full length shot of this dress was never actually in last night's episode? Because it's fucking amazing.

Little J shows up at the ball and Vanessa, wearing the sheer gown, tells J that she’s going to break up with Nate. V tells Nate that she’s the reason Jenny never got Nate’s letter and leaves him on the dance floor. Jenny, feeling some remorse for what’s about to happen, tries to give Vanessa her stole before Penelope and friends can hit her with the spotlight, buts he arrives to late. Vanessa is publicly humiliated and walks out of the ball in tears. Outside, Nate tells Jenny about Vanessa stealing the letter, but then chastises her for humiliating Vanessa so publicly. Even with Vanessa gone, Nate doesn’t want to be with Jenny: “You’re not the person I thought you were.” Before Vanessa gets in a cab, Nate manages to win her back as a heartbroken Joan Jett-y Little J looks on. Later, Penelope approaches to berate J for helping Vanessa, and she in turn berates the Queen Bitch and walks away.

The Humphrey Der Woodsen Wedding that never was.

On the roof, Lily and Rufus have a heart-to-heart about her relationship with Bart. When she announces that she’s leaving Mr. Bass, Rufus admits to her that he regrets letting her go on her wedding day. Meanwhile, Bart Bass tries to keep his PI from revealing the details he learned on the project Bart fired him from, until Chuck, desperate to earn his father’s approval, calls to tell Bart that Lily is at the ball with Rufus. Upon hearing this, Bart asks his PI for the dirt on Lily. Chuck, being decent, tells Lily that he called Bart and that she owes Bart at least a conversation before leaving. However, Lily and Bart may never get to have that conversation as the evening ends with Lily receiving a phone call notifying her that Bart Bass has been in an accident.

I knew Bart Bass would be the one to die, because he’s not even in the main cast, but I had sincerely hoped that it would be Nate Achibald, whose only character trait other than being formerly rich and having floppy hair is that he is somehow able to hook up with every girl in the Gossip Girl Universe. I hope that he decides to stick with his first season plan of going to USC instead of his second season plan of gong to Yale, because I’m done with Nate and I don’t want to see him anymore.

Poor Bart Bass. You were a good villain – steely, reserved and sometimes in gross violation of privacy rights, but usually well-intentioned. Well, except towards your own son. Knowing how much you berate your son informs his ill-will toward practically everyone else. Maybe next week you’ll just be in a coma and there’s still plenty of time to kill off Nate!
The Husband:

The manner in which we find out about Bart’s accident – over the phone and directly after us seeing him about to learn something devastating about Lily either in her past or her present – was so anticlimactic that, unfortunately, I doubt he will be the one to die. I’m sure we’ve all been led to believe that this accident is actually a set-up, thus making it an “accident,” quote intended. Then again, maybe the surprise the PI had for Bart was a bullet to the head, but somehow I doubt it.

If he is the one to die, I am conflicted. He is, as mentioned, not in the main cast and really an all-around hated character, but it would sadly leave Chuck an orphan, which is not something I wish on him. This season has, at least to some degree, been about Chuck finding his heart and soul, and having one’s only parent die, no matter how horrible that parent is, will stop this arc in its tracks. The best that can happen is that Lily becomes a guardian to him, a better mother and parent than he has ever known. Lily can battle Chuck over Bart’s wealth, leading to some interesting family dynamics which will be made even more interesting if Lily really starts it up again with Rufus, thus making a Bass-Woodsen-Humphrey free-for-all of sex, money, rock ‘n roll and a lot of sneering.

Despite the fact that I dislike Nate almost as much as my wife does, I was fascinated by the Little J-Vanessa battle over him. While he is absolutely not worth the fuss, he works as a catalyst that makes Vanessa seem actually interesting in comparison and a worthy Little J competitor.

In the realm of pointless points, I find myself strangely drawn to the evil daywalking vampire Hazel (a.k.a. Mini-Blair), even more so now that I’m baffled that the actress playing her, Dreama Walker, is 22 years old, about six years older than she looks. Way to pull that one off, Dreama.

And is GG so pressed for budget that they have to use that same building for every single one of their teen balls? First the party in the show’s pilot, then the costume ball, and now this? I mean, it’s a cool building and seems to have a rooftop that demands drama…but doesn’t it seem strange to anybody else?

 

Gossip Girl 2.10: “The Magnificent Archibalds”

The Wife:

After her disastrous fight with Agnes, Little J has been making nice with Eric and squatting in the Bass der Woodsen estate while Lily and Bart are away. Unable to get a hold of his daughter for a week, Daddy Rufus is going out of his mind and is ready to call the cops until Lily calls him to tell him that J is just fine at the Bass der Woodsen’s. Rufus wants to immediately get his daughter back, but Lily cautions that she’d like to talk to J first and find out what’s going on in her head. She assures Rufus that she’ll set up a meeting between the two parties when Jenny is ready. Lily tries to convince Jenny that she should be back under her father’s roof until she’s 18 and is ready to live on her own. Jenny accepts Lily’s advice, but then Lily finds Jenny’s emancipation papers and wonders if her advice got through at all. Not knowing what to do, Lily calls Rufus to tell him about the papers and invites him to Bass der Woodsen Thanksgiving to talk to his daughter. While it’s clear that Jenny doesn’t want to see her father very much, Rufus assures her that he isn’t angry with her and that he’s willing to sign the emancipation papers and let her go if that’s what it will take to get her back in his life. No matter what documents he signs, he says, it will never make him stop loving her. Honestly, Rufus’ speech made me tear up a little bit. Jenny’s actions don’t deserve so magnanimous a gesture, but I would expect nothing less from a pure-hearted Humphrey man. Thanks for making me cry a little bit, Daddy Rufus.

This promo photo was just too nice not to share.

Nate Archibald, after being absent last week, was given a Thanksgiving story worthy of having his name in the episode title. His father, the fallen Howard Archibald, has somehow sneaked back in to the country with the aid of his wife in order to have some semblance of a normal Tgiving with his family. Nate is wary of his father’s presence, especially when The Captain invites young Nate and his mother to move to Dominica with him. Mrs. Archibald tells her son that she will only go if Nate does, which Nate agrees to. I guess since he’s been a dick to all of his friends and betrayed Vanessa, he may as well just follow in his father’s cowardly footsteps and disappear happily to the Caribbean. However, all is not so happy in the land of the Archibalds. Vanessa runs into Nate at the gallery when he shows up to return a Pixies boxed set to Rufus (cool). Immediately after this encounter, Vanessa is approached by an FBI agent who wants to talk to her about Nate. She calls Chuck and the two former friends of Nate Archibald stage a Natetervention, where they inform him that the Feds know The Captain is back in the States and that they believe he is plotting a crime far greater than embezzlement. The Feds believe that The Captain is planning to kidnap Nate and his mother and hold them for ransom in order to get money from Nate’s grandparents, and then flee back to Dominica, without his family. Chuck and Vanessa urge Nate to convince his father to turn himself in, knowing that if he does, the Feds will unfreeze the Archibald accounts and give Nate and his mother their house back. Nate returns home and grills his dad about the kidnapping and extortion plot, to which he confesses. Nate then delivers an ultimatum to The Captain: walk out the service exit and flee back to Dominica and never see his son again, or turn himself in and hope for Nate’s forgiveness. Despite Mrs. Archibald’s protestations, the Captain decides to turn himself in and the Feds restore Nate to his former way of life. Or, at the very least, to his former home.

Eric also got to have a plot in this episode after being absent for so many. (Eric is hella tight. I wish the writers would pay more attention to him.) When Bart and Lily return a day early, Bart tells Eric that his boyfriend may be seeing someone else. Eric asks Chuck how Bart would know something like that and Chuck offers to show Eric the P.I. records Bart has on every member of his new family. Chuck open’s Bart’s safe for Eric and allows him to access the records. He reads his file, and then offers Lily and Serena’s files to them, claiming not to have read them. Lily is furious that Bart has records on her children. (Hers she can understand, but the kids are just kids.) Bart rationalizes the dossiers as his way of protecting his children, but Lily cannot bear the thought of having her children’s every move followed, so she takes Eric and Serena, along with all three dossiers, and storms out of the Bass der Woodsen apartment on Tgives.

What's this about dossiers?

Serena continues dating Aaron Rose, even though she’s bothered by the lack of exclusivity, which makes her all the more delighted when Aaron cooks her dinner and tells her that he wants to be exclusive. She jokes that had she known it would be such an occasion, she would have brought champagne, to which Aaron responds that he’s glad she didn’t, because he’s been sober for several years. Serena is taken aback by this admission, saying that she too used to party a lot, but that she doesn’t drink now, just the occasional celebratory glass of champagne. Aaron says that he needs to be around people who support his sobriety, so Serena tells him that she can be that girl – the girl who doesn’t even drink a celebratory glass of champagne. Dan runs into Aaron at the grocery store and inadvertently ruins Serena’s lie by telling Aaron that her family would prefer a giftset of wines from around the world. When Aaron shows up at the party, he asks Serena about what Dan said, and Serena tells Aaron that Dan probably lied to Aaron because he isn’t over her yet. Aaron, then, becomes irrationally angry with Dan when the Humpreys show up to rescue Jenny. Both boys call one another liars, and take the situation up with Serena, who gets Dan to realize through sheer unblinking mind powers that it was she who lied to Aaron about her alcoholism. Dan fesses up to the lie and apologizes to Aaron, just before Aaron heads over to the Waldrof’s to spend Tgives with his dad. When Serena gets hold of her dossier, she heads over to the Waldorf’s herself to deliver the dossier to Aaron, telling him to read it, and then decide if he still wants to be with her.

At Chez Waldorf, Blair struggles to meld her family’s traditions for her favorite holiday with Cyrus’. Blair likes a homecooked meal prepared by her father with his signature pie that she always helps him bake, while Cyrus’ family prefers a restaurant Thanksgiving, which is the most unholy of things in Blair’s book. When Cyrus eats a slice of Blair’s holiday pie, she confronts her mother about this man ruining her holiday (Inconceivable!), and Eleanor suggests that its time for Blair to welcome some new traditions and stop thinking the worst of people. After all, it may be a restaurant Tgives, but it’s a restaurant Tgives at Blair’s favorite place, which Cyrus booked just for her: Ramsay Tavern. (As far as I know, it’s not real, but I think its meant to invoke any number of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants.) Blair insists that this is beside the point. Dorota then tells her that Cyrus proposed to Eleanor and that they were planning on telling everyone at Tgives dinner. Upon showing her the ring, Blair grabs Dorota and storms out, choosing to drag her housekeeper around Central Park rather than participate in a new tradition that she feels is a farce. Blair forces Dorota to ignore calls from Eleanor (Dorota’s ring tone for her boss, by the way, is Britney Spears’ “Slave 4 U”), and Dorota suggests that perhaps she and Blair could participate in some of their traditions, like feeding the ducks. Eventually, Eleanor gets Serena to send a text to Blair to get her location, and Eleanor takes off in a cab to find her daughter. As she rescues Blair from the cold streets of New York, she finds Jenny, too, with whom Blair was having a talk about the importance of family and how much Daddy Rufus cares for Little J. Eleanor gives Jenny her shawl and a ride out to Brooklyn, insisting that she should be home with her family. When Blair arrives at Chez Waldorf, she finds her holiday surprise was not her mother’s engagement, but the presence of her father, who shows up to participate in his daughter’s favorite tradition and brings her his special pie. Blair does, however, spoil the reveal of the engagement, but no one seems to mind and the Rose-Waldorf’s enjoy a peaceful Tgiving dinner together as a family.

One big happy, slightly dysfunctional family.

When Dan and Rufus return home, they find Jenny waiting for them, tearing up her emancipation papers with a face free of black eyeliner and tears in her eyes. Soon after, Lily and Eric show up for a second Humphrey Family Tgives, fresh from their second pitiful diner Thanksgiving in which Eric admits that he read Lily’s file and asks her why she didn’t tell him that she was in a sanitarium when she was 19. Vanessa shows up shortly after and makes up with Little J in the spirit of the holiday . . . until she steals a letter from Nate from Jenny’s mail pile. Aaron returns to Serena’s to tell her that he didn’t want to read her file, but instead wants to know all about her straight from her mouth. They proceed to gab the holiday away as Nate and Chuck ride around town drinking Scotch in Chuck’s limo, just as the pilgrim’s intended. In another limo across town, Bart Bass calls his PI to ask him to look into why Lily did spend time in the Ostroff Center back when she was 19. (I suspect it might have something to do with an abortion.)

A much better Tgives episode than last season’s with a lot of plots coming to an end and a lot of new ones starting. I accept this as good start to the next half of the season. Also, I’m all about Serena and Blair’s Tgives outfits. That backless green dress? To die for.

The Husband:

I am so glad that GG decided not to take Little J’s proposed emancipation from her parents and run with it for the entire rest of the season, not only because it just would have sucked up the show’s energy each time it reared its ugly head, but because it actually really worried me that J was so far gone that she would even consider it. Rufus is a great dad no matter how you swing it, and I hate to see him suffer simply because his 15-year-old daughter played naïve dumbass for a few weeks. It would have broken my heart, honestly. This new rekindling of their relationship is far more interesting psychologically, anyway, because truth be told, 15-year-olds don’t know shit.

But we do know about making mashed potatoes!

Yes, that’s right; I felt major empathy and sadness for a couple characters on a CW “chick show.” I’m deeply invested in these folks, warts and all. Deal with it.

I was disappointed that there was no November sweeps death as rumored – yes, I know I don’t do spoilers, but it was hard to avoid Michael Ausiello’s article in the pages of Entertainment Weekly – because there’s no episode next week and the week after that is December, but I’m also appreciative that they’re letting the stories breath organically and not just forcing a death just for the sake of ratings.

Still, I spent much of the second half of the story thinking up who was going to die and how. One really far-fetched one involved Mrs. Archibald killing Vanessa to show Nate what it feels like to lose a lover.

I also – and I mean this absolutely seriously – thought about something very absurd during the final minutes. When it was obvious nobody was going to die, I thought up the ways that they could still, absurdly, kill a character just for shiggles in the final minutes at Chez Humphrey. As Rufus – one of the rumored potential characters that may die – walked around his kitchen, I imagined – once again, with absolute seriousness – the 1980s Domino’s Pizza Noid crashing in through the window on a rope, tying said rope around Rufus’ neck until he died from suffocation, and then running out the front door screaming.

There is something seriously wrong with me.

OH MY GOD! Rufus Humphrey! I'm your biggest fan!

.

 

Gossip Girl 2.10: “Bonfire of the Vanity”

The Wife:

It’s the eve of Blair’s 18th Birthday Soiree at Chez Waldorf and she needs everything to be perfect, including her mother’s new boyfriend. Unfortunately for Blair, her mom’s new prince turns out, inconceivably, to be Wallace Shawn, a man of short stature who comes complete with a catch phrase and is altogether rather less than Blair had desired for her mother.

“I was expecting Cary Grant and I got Danny DeVito!”

Blair tries her best to keep her clam about this scenario, hoping to come of age with dignity and class like her idol, Grace Kelly, but when Cyrus starts to question the exorbitant cost for Blair’s party, she has to try incredibly hard to keep her cool, chanting:

“I am Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly is me.”

Eventually, the thought of being with a short little man who once played Vizzini is too much for Blair to bear, and she sets up a lunch date to pump him for weaknesses to exploit, in typical Blair fashion. On her date with Cyrus, she learns that when he was in Vietnam, he cheated on his wife with a Vietnamese girl he truly loved, Kim-Li. He planned to bring Kim-Li back home to America, but had to divorce his wife first. Just as he filed the papers, he learned that the love of his life, Km-Li, was killed in a raid on her village. While Blair at first seems to respond positively to this story, she later tells her mother that Cyrus is, in fact, just like her father (for being a cheater) and is thus not the kind of man Eleanor thinks he is. Eleanor doesn’t quite know what to do with the news, but chooses to confront Cyrus about it at Blair’s birthday party. When he admits to cheating, she throws him out of the party.

Cyndi Lauper! You're from Queens! GET OUT!

And then Cyndi Lauper shows up to play Blair’s party and informs Blair that Cyrus had bought out all of the tickets at her upcoming Joe’s Pub gig (that Blair and her mother had wanted to attend) so she could play Blair’s party instead. Blair, seeing that Cyrus had done something nice for her/played her just as she was playing him, runs out to tell Cyrus that she respects his game and that she would be delighted to continue having wars with him for as long as her mother wanted to have him in her life. I see there being many more Cyrus-Blair wars in the future, considering how displeased Blair is to hear the news that her mother has asked Cyrus to move in to Chez Waldorf with them.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the Humphrey kids are both being severe disappointments to Daddy Rufus. I’ll start with Dan. Noah Shapiro loved the Charlie Trout story so much that he agrees to write Dan a letter of recommendation for Yale. When Dan goes to meet with him, Shapiro introduces him to an editor at New York Magazine who liked the Charlie Trout piece so much that he wants to offer Dan the chance to write an expose on Bart Bass. Knowing Chuck Bass, evidently, is enough to get you an offer to write a journalistic expose even though you have no journalistic experience whatsoever. I used to work in publishing, and I find it extremely odd that a high-powered magazine editor would take a chance on giving a cub fiction writer what could be the expose of the century. (At least, that’s how he’s painting it.) First of all, just because someone writes good fiction, doesn’t mean they’ll be a good reporter. It’s a different sensibility and a different manner of storytelling. There are indeed people who can write both ways, but I doubt Dan Humphrey, at 17, has the skills to make that transition. I don’t know why the editor wouldn’t simply, I don’t know, pay his best investigative reporter on staff to do the piece. It would probably be a lot better. But anyway, we need Dan to do it so that we can have conflict, so he agrees, despite his father’s protestations.

Dan goes to meet with Bart Bass to see if he can shadow the man a few days a week, pretending to be interested in construction. This makes Chuck Bass extremely unhappy, as Bart begins to show more interest in young Humphrey than he ever has in his own son. Chuck had previously gifted Bart with season tickets and a private box to enjoy his favorite hockey team, and is infuriated to find out that Bart has chosen to take Dan to the game instead of his own son, who bought the tickets specifically to spend time with his father and get to know him better through reliving his childhood passion of hockey. Chuck then starts a little investigation of his own to parallel Dan’s and find out just what young Humphrey’s angle is. Dan discovers that Bart’s real estate empire is based on an insurance scam he ran back in ’87 when he committed arson on one of his own buildings in order to collect the fire insurance. Just as Dan gets this juicy tidbit, Chuck uncovers from a contact at New York Magazine that Dan is indeed trying to get close to his father to write an expose. When Dan asks Bart about the fire, he admits that someone died inside the building and Chuck races in to stop his father from saying to much to a reporter. Bart Bass offers Dan hush money to kill the story, but Dan refuses to accept the bribe. As he storms out of the Bass Der Woodsen apartment, Chuck begs him not to write the story, knowing full well that it will not only destroy Bass Industries, but also Chuck, Lily, Eric and Dan’s former paramour Serena, echoing the warning Daddy Rufus had set out earlier.

Dan decides not to write the story, but sees a chance to help Chuck Bass reconnect with his father, and so sends Bart Bass a copy of the Charlie Trout story as an apology. (I notice that all of Dan’s stories simply have dates as titles. That’s gonna get old real fast.) The story moves Bart to recognize the distance between himself and his son and he apologizes to Chuck for this transgression. He also tells his son that he never blamed him for his mother’s death, and offers to take him up on those Rangers season tickets after all. I’m so pleased that Dan has chosen to use his art for good, and I’m sure Daddy Rufus is proud of him too. Chuck and Bart needed a catalyst to mend their damaged relationship, and Dan Humphrey is that catalyst. (By the way, that framed photo of Chuck’s mom looks just like Ed Westwick. I wonder if it is actually the actor’s mother.)

As for Little J, she apparently dragged her magical suitcase all the way to (I assume) the Lower East Side to live with Agnes. Agnes’ mother is involved enough with her wild child daughter’s life to phone up Rufus and inform him that she’s gone through the exact same things with Agnes but that the girls will take care of each other. The two girls head around town to meet with various business managers in order to get “their line” off the ground. Unfortunately, Jenny and Agnes don’t seem to meet eye to eye on anything at these meetings, with Jenny representing someone who has really through about the name and image of her brand and has a clear picture of what she wants to make and who she wants to sell it to, and Agnes attempting to jump in on her glory and claim Jenny’s ideas as her own. Later, Jenny starts to realize that Agnes’ unorganized lifestyle (filled with weekday hangovers) is costing her time and potential money, so she takes responsibility into her own hands and meets with a business manager behind Agnes’ back, who says he’d love to work with her alone and admits that Agnes was the problem with Jenny getting representation all along.

When Agnes gets Jenny’s contract call by mistake, all hell breaks loose. When Jenny returns to the apartment, Agnes is ready to declare war, hurrying across the street with Jenny’s dresses in hand, which she promptly shoves into a trashcan and lights on fire, despite Jenny’s protestations. Frankly, Jenny, that’s a point where you have to make a call. If a psycho bitch has your entire life’s work in her hands and is dousing it with lighter fluid and holding up a lit matchbook, you have to make a choice: do you grab the matchbook out of her hand and suffer a burn on your palm as you put out the flame, or do you cry about it and let your entire collection go up in flames? I would have chosen the burn, but Jenny instead chose the couture bonfire. Bad call, Little J. Frankly, instead of crying about it and screaming at Agnes, the best move would have probably been to punch Agnes right in the moneymaker. Hurt her as much as she hurt you, J.

So despite watching her entire collection go up in smoke, J returns home to Daddy Rufus with the parental consent forms she needs to start her business. When Rufus refuses to sign it, Jenny runs away again and meets with her business manager, who tells her that the only other way to get in business with him if her parents won’t give consent is to take them to court and sue to become emancipated. Please don’t do it, Little J! Then you’ll really be Little Jenny Orphan and you can’t be because that name belongs to someone else and I invented it! I hope Daddy Rufus will take his son’s advice and get J back by signing the papers, because it would really suck to lose our miniature fashionista.

Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

Nate and Vanessa were not in this episode at all, so our final plot belongs to Serena, and I left it for last because it is my least favorite. She’s still seeing Aaron Rose the Artist who sends her all over the city via GPS to see his favorite places, unfortunately, she takes this to mean that they are exclusive, when he believes in strictly the opposite. Per Blair’s quips:

“Sure, he starts out in his blue period and it’s all great, but it’s only a matter of time until he’s all into Cubism and it’s some other girl’s eye coming out of her forehead.”

Serena gets jealous of Aaron’s other girlfriends and breaks up with him, even though he’s Cyrus’ son, which would have been a cool story thread to follow.

“You believe in long hair, peasant skirts and sandals. But you in an open relationship? I don’t think so.” – Blair

If it weren’t for Blair’s quips about this plot, I would have been totally bored because Serena without the other characters to interact with is the worst kind of ennui for me.

The Husband:

This was a great episode. Like, season 1 pre-WGA strike good. It’s fascinating, especially, that in this particular episode Little J was far more heartless than Blair. Just like last season when she usurped Blair’s position as the Queen Bee of Constance-St. Jude’s, she’s a fascinating character when she decides to ignore her soul, only to regain it right before she loses it altogether, forever. (Like Blair’s friends, who are daywalking vampires as far as I’m concerned, especially mini-Blair Hazel.) But going all Jena Malone and emancipating herself from her parents, that’s not going to get her anywhere as a designer, as by the time the case gets to court and she wins (which she won’t), her guerrilla fashion show will have become irrelevant and her clothing will no longer be cutting edge. Seriously, haven’t you seen that Drew Barrymore movie Irreconcilable Differences?

And seeing Blair go through a complete 180 within mere minutes is always very fun, as this manic-depressive rich girl – one afraid of being mistaken as “upper-middle class” – finally meets her match in stubby little Wallace Shawn. For once, it’s going to be a happy back-and-forth war, something this show has yet to do. Sure, earlier wars on the show were happy and fun for us as viewers, but, of course, the characters involved in said wars ended up anywhere but in happy places. (I like to imagine that Georgina is floating somewhere in space, trapped in the Phantom Zone.)

It’s strange, though, that Gossip Girl and Privileged, in the last week, have both dealt with secrets uncovered via budding writers trying their hand at journalism/biography, secrets of the rich and famous doing very naughty things, and then having the secret-keeping rich person offer massive amounts of money to the writer. Yeah, on Privileged it was that Laurel Limoges got pregnant with her daughter while her husband was still in Vietnam, which isn’t nearly as bad as committing arson, but both are career-destroying secrets, secrets now known by ambitious but confuzzled young persons. Is this going to be a running thing on The CW? At least on Smallville whenever Chloe would discover some terrible secret about Lex or Lionel, they would threaten to kill her, and then everything would just kind of go away by episode’s end.

Fuck, is this going to happen on Everybody Hates Chris, too? Is he going to find out something about his boss at the grocery store? I mean, he and his siblings have plenty on Mr. Omar, but I don’t think that widow-stalking Lothario gives a fuck what they have.

 

Gossip Girl 2.9: “There Might Be Blood”

The Wife:

Little J, fashionista extraordinaire, begins her Betsey Johnson-like career by staging a guerilla fashion show at a charity ball in town. Agnes and all of her friends volunteer to model and Jenny sews, sews, sews until she has something that can pass as a collection. The only problem is that she hasn’t told her family that she quit as Eleanor Waldorf’s intern, which causes quite a tiff between her and Big Brother Dan when he catches her heading out with her wares. Nate tries to stop her, until he decides to drive the van and go with her, which is fortunate in the end because Little J has apparently not done much research on the venue she’s planning on ambushing and only finds out when she gets there that it is a private party in honor of Bart and Lily Bass. Nate happens to be on the guest list and gets Jenny in as his date, which makes for a great excuse to kiss her in the middle of the party before her show begins, a shot that ends up on Gossip Girl, leading Dan, Vanessa and Daddy Rufus straight to her. (This also ultimately leads to Dan kicking Nate out of his house for acting like the Big Bad Wolf and seducing Little Red Riding J.)

Dear Nate, Please stop dating every chick on GG. KTHXBI.

The trio arrive too late to stop the fashion show, which Jenny is just about to hit the greenlight on as they arrive. The fashion show itself is pretty cool in concept, with slicker-covered models marching their way in Gestapo-style only to strip off the black plastic vestments and reveal J Humphrey Designs beneath them. The models shower the audience with a rain of promotional cards bearing the J Humphrey logo and Jenny’s cell number. Jenny’s clothes for this collection are not nearly as good as anything else we’ve seen “her” do on the show, are not nearly as cute as the white dress-and-fascinator combo she dons herself, and are entirely derivative of Betsey Johnson’s early work, but that doesn’t matter to anyone at the charity ball! They’re enthusiastic! They’re excited! These old fuddy-duddies have never seen anything like this! And by the end of the evening, Jenny has already received 37 missed calls from people who are excited about her work. (Or pissed off. One of the two. She didn’t bother to check her messages.) Daddy Rufus is furious with his daughter. After all, he knows the high price of fame and knows it won’t last forever, but he just can’t seem to get that through Little J’s head. He tried to teach her a lesson by having her arrested for the public disturbance she created, but Lily saves her ass by insisting that she won’t press charges as owner of the hotel. (“Well, that makes my job easy,” says the arresting officer.) So upset at her father’s betrayal, Little J runs away, miraculously packing all of her clothes (including the wedding kimono she hangs on her wall) into a single, magical suitcase and totes her sewing machine along with her on her journey through the mean streets of Brooklyn.

May I remind you that what you just did it an offense punishable by law?

Dan, meanwhile, receives news from the TA Nate seduced at Yale that the three professors who read his work find his writing to be “anemic.” Upset, Dan assumes now that he’ll never get in to a school with a decent writing program. (Yes, you will, Dan. It might not be Yale, but you are a smart kid with great grades. You will get in somewhere.) In desperate need of beefing up his work, he pulls an all-nighter after Jenny’s fashion show rewriting the Charlie Trout story he swore he’d never complete. Daddy Rufus is surprised to hear Dan has resumed that story and that he intends to send it to Noah Shapiro in exchange for a letter of recommendation, as Daddy Rufus believes in coming by one’s fame honestly . . . or something. In short, he fears that his children are trying to become rising stars too fast and that their stars will too quickly burn out, as his did. I don’t think he needs to worry about Dan, as Dan is clearly on the path to making something of himself by getting his degree in English/Writing/Whatever and going forward into the world of professional writing from there. In J, though, it’s clear that Rufus sees too much of himself. But you know something? If she becomes washed up at 40 and can channel the remainder of her money into running a gallery and owning a sweet loft in which to raise two more Humphreys, I think she’ll be okay. Rufus really seems to have done okay for himself, even after his star burned out, and I’m sure Little J realizes that somewhere in her misguided teenage rebellion.

As for Serena, the unimportant dating Cecil the Caterpillar storyline continues with the delivery of a licorice ring and Aaron asking her for a second chance, even after she calls and finds another girl answering his phone. I don’t even remember what her final decision was regarding going on a date with him. That’s how much I don’t care. Amidst this, Serena is being wooed by the Yale Dean’s numerous friends, and she insists on dragging Blair to every one of these encounters, hoping that the Yale donors will see something special in Blair and recommend her to the Dean. Serena foists one of these opportunities onto Blair, asking her to take Mrs. Boardman’s daughter Emma out to the movies while Mrs. Boardman meets with her old friends from Bryn Mawr. Emma, however, does not want to go to the movies. She wants to lose her virginity before Muffy the Lacrosstitute (a Blair coinage I adore) beats her to it. Blair and Serena try to get Emma to accompany them to the Bass Charity Ball, telling her that there will be plenty of worthy young suitors there for her to seduce, but Chuck Bass bursts her bubble and tells her that its all old geezers at the ball. (Too bad, she missed a cool fashion show.) Chuck takes her to a club instead.

“Looks like you’ve hooked yourself a Bass.” – Chuck Bass

Blair and Serena follow Emma and Chuck to a club, where they lose her briefly and accidentally happen upon Mrs. Boardman making out with a man who is definitely not her friend from Bryn Mawr. Just in case blackmail is necessary, opportunist Blair snaps a photo. The trio finds Emma just before she’s about to swipe her V card with the apparently uncircumcised Serge (when Chuck says “Lose the tulip” to the naked man, I can only assume that’s what he means). Blair tears her away from him and shows her a post on Gossip Girl that claims Muffy has beat her in the game and lost her virginity. Blair advises Emma to wait to lose her virginity to someone she loves, like she did, not in some stupid game with Muffy the Lacrosstitute.

Blair wishes she, too, could hook herself a Bass.

I was happy to hear Blair so freely admit her love for Chuck Bass for two reasons. 1.) It’s true. And 2.) I recently read this article that presents a study that finds that teens who watch racy shows like Gossip Girl are twice as likely to get pregnant as teens who don’t, a claim which I’m sure makes the Parent’s Television Council extremely happy. The study attempts to flatten out any extenuating circumstances that may be a factor in teen pregnancy (such as socioeconomic status, race, etc.) and claims that even when those factors are stratified, the results still show that teens who watch shows like GG are twice as likely to get pregnant. I feel that there’s some very bad methodology behind that claim, as no one is taking into account whether or not these twice-as-likely occurrences happen in homes where parents talk to their children about sex and its consequences. Gossip Girl is not responsible for teaching your children and presenting them with the various consequences of sex. That doesn’t make good TV, for one, and for another, parents are responsible for teaching their children, not the television set. The sex on GG is barely even that racy. And I believe that consequences do occur when Serena fucks Nate, but not when she fucks Dan because she loves Dan, just like Blair loves Chuck. All the show is trying to say, and in fact did say in this episode, is that people should have sex with people they love. Take that shit, PTC. Stop censoring things that happen in life! Like teens having sex! It happens! And that’s why it’s on TV! Not the other way around!

Okay, yelling tangent done.

When Blair brings Emma home, Mrs. Boardman is upset to see her daughter home late and in some slutty dress she borrowed from Serena (a dress, btw, that Serena would never wear by the looks of it) and she immediately sends Emma to bed. Blair is about to show Mrs. Boardman her blackmail photo when Emma runs out and says that Blair was only trying to help her and that she actually had a really nice time and thinks Blair is a great person. Blair suddenly has a change of heart and decides to speak up for Emma, informing Mrs. Boardman that Emma is a good girl, as Blair sees so much of herself in this girl and her relationship to her mother. Fortunately for Blair, Emma calls her up the next day and says that she spoke to the Dean and said that Blair Waldorf is the one person, real or imaginary, that she’d like to have lunch with. The Dean informs Blair that Yale could use more girls like her and she and Serena giddily flip through the Fall ’08 course catalogue to scope out classes and majors.

If all goes well for Dan and his Charlie Trout story, it looks like everyone will be at Yale next fall, recreating the Upper East Side in New Haven.

 

Gossip Girl 2.8: “Pret-a-Poor-J”

The Wife:

Oh, Jenny Humphrey, fashion superstar and miniature trainwreck in the making. This week, Little J got an edgy new haircut and learned how to use black eyeliner, all to reflect her diligence at being a fashionista. You know, being homeschooled and working full-time for Eleanor Waldorf. At Waldorf Designs, J meets a young model named Agnes who convinces her that she has more talent than Eleanor could ever hope to have again. J finds that this evidence is corroborated by the fact that Eleanor won’t let her sit in on meetings with the buyers, and even more by the fact that Eleanor demands that little J remake her plaid harajuku dress in Waldorf fabrics so that Eleanor can pass it off as her own. When J and Agnes spent a night partying and Jenny produces an inferior version of the dress, Eleanor chastises her for putting parties before work and Jenny calls Eleanor out on her abuses of the young fashionista’s talents and quits, but not before stealing back both of her designs.

Harumph!

After J announces to Nate that she’s quitting Eleanor’s to start her own line (because if Kira Pastinina can do it, so can little Jenny Humprey!), Nate begins to worry about the suddenly reckless lifestyle Little J is leading and he tails her to Agnes’s boyfriend’s apartment where he finds the two girls dancing in their underwear. Nate is boring as hell, but he’s totally right about this one. It seemed a little out of character of J to go this far off the deep end, or at least begin her descent so spectacularly. But then again, the first season informs us that she’s a consummate follower of whatever is deemed cool at the moment, so perhaps the idea of adhering to whatever a cool model says is not entirely unfounded. It’s just that when she was with Blair and Co. they were mean, but they weren’t self-destructive. (Destroying other people is much more fun.) Oh yeah, Nate and Jenny hook up after he rescues her. Because that is what Nate does: dates every chick in the Gossip Girl universe.

I spent most of the Little J plot yelling at her for being stupid, as I was much more interested in the Chuck and Blair cat-and-mouse game. I love their witty exchange of bon mots:

Chuck: I’d love to give you a ride.
Blair: I’m sure you would.

And when Blair tries to cop a feel on Chuck at a bar by spilling her drink on his crotch:

“I’m bored. You ruined my pants.”

Dan made an attempt to help Blair, per Serena’s request, to get back in Chuck’s good graces. Dan suggests that Blair make herself completely unavoidable so that Chuck can’t help but want her. This strategy works, until Dan gets word that Chuck and Blair used Vanessa as a pawn in their Cruel Intentions game last week, so Dan decides not to help Blair anymore, humiliating her and costing her Chuck’s heart. Serena lays into Dan about this, and Dan tries to ameliorate the situation by telling Chuck that Blair really does love him. Chuck then goes to Blair’s house where he forces her to realize that the two of them simply can’t be happy together because the reason they love each other is the fact they love to torture each other.

It should be fairly obvious to you all by now that I am a major Chuck and Blair ‘shipper, so I would love nothing more to see them hook up again. In fact, I still don’t see why they can’t just have hate sex outside of a real relationship and just keep up their typical mutual hatred of one another in public. Seems like it wouldn’t be terribly out of the ordinary for them . . .

The Husband:

I was certainly happy to see The O.C.’s Willa Holland’s triumphant return to the Josh Schwartz Universe as Agnes, the skanky, conniving model who has nothing but bad intentions for Little J. I was always amused by her presence on The O.C. during its final season, as I was also tickled that her character, Kaitlin Cooper, left for boarding school in season one and came back as a completely different actress. (Where is that first actress now? Why, she’s the lead of ABC Family’s awesome The Secret Life of the American Teenager.)

Let me help you ruin your future!

I will agree that the Little J story, while interesting, was a little too much too soon for our little fashionista, but I’m glad they’re dealing with the repercussions of dropping out of Constance only a few episodes after it was made final. To me, that means that they have a buttload of stories to deal with for the rest of the season, and GG always works best for me when it always has something in the on-deck circle.

In the storyline that my wife did not mention (because it was kind of weird and we’re also pressed for time today), Serena visits the Humphrey-owned Bedford Art Gallery only to catch the eye of a young up-and-coming artist Aaron Rose, much to the dismay of Dan, who is sidetracked on his own to aid Blair in getting Chuck back into her bed and into her body. (…ewww…sorry for that.) He finally relents and lets Serena know that it’s totally cool if she wants to date again (despite the fact that, hey, he has no right to complain since he tried to start up something with that Amanda chick only a few episodes ago), just as she realizes, thanks to a riddle Aaron proposes to her, that they actually knew each other years earlier when they were at camp as children. Just as she is about to ask him out, though, she spies him hopping onto a motorcycle with an entirely different hot, young chick. Poor Serena.

Coming up on GG? Cyndi Lauper! Put that in your “Time After Time” decorated pipe and smoke it, cuz you’re gonna see some muthafuckin’ true colors up in this beeyotch.

 

Gossip Girl 2.7: “Chuck in Real Life”

The Husband:

In this week’s episode, Gossip Girl takes a page out of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ canon and goes all Les Liaisons Dangereuses on us as Blair and Chuck decide to band up together to seduce and destroy poor little Vanessa. Why? Because Vanessa still has the upper hand on Blair – thanks to the pictures she has of that whole royal partial-incest deal with Blair’s ex Marcus – and is using it to lightly blackmail Blair into supporting a charity that would save a bar known as the Brooklyn Inn from being taken over. Vanessa, nobody blackmails Blair and gets away with it.

Blair recruits Chuck to pretend to buy up the bar, seduce Vanessa and then humiliate her, but almost immediately he decides to back out, so like the Marquise de Merteuil before her (or, if you’d prefer, Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions), Blair ups Chuck’s prize to include her very own body.

Come on, it'll be just like that movie with Ryan Phillippe! It'll be fun!

Ah…but what Blair didn’t count on what Chuck starting to have feelings for Vanessa – basically his polar opposite both socially and personality-wise – and as soon as he proposes to buy up the bar, we start to see little pieces of Chuck’s shield chip away, revealing somebody almost resembling a human being. This is never more apparent then when Bart, who rejects Chuck’s investment in the bar outright, begins to tear his son apart insult-by-insult (“Letting people down is your forte,” for instance), and we soon see that Chuck, this suave and irresistible monster, now has absolutely nobody to confide in. Chuck wants love just like everybody else.

Blair, jealous of that gleam in Chuck’s eye whenever he talks to Vanessa, decides to delete all of Vanessa’s evidence of the royal incest and tell Chuck the following:

“Bet’s off…I’m calling it on account of boredom.”

She is satisfied with the small amount of public humiliation she brings Vanessa’s way, and later makes good on her wager with Chuck and offers up her body to him. But Chuck isn’t biting, and he turns the tables on her, reversing the test earlier this season that Blair had for Chuck – to simply be able to say “I love you.” Now that Blair can’t say it to him, he rejects her outright, saying that he’s been chasing her for too long, and now it’s her turn to chase him. Burrrrrrn…

But now that Chuck really does care about saving the bar, Vanessa and the bar owner want nothing to do with him, and as he walks away from the bar with his tail between his legs, Vanessa watches from the shadows, hurt but unwilling to put up with any more of his shit.

In Humphrey Land, Dan is proud to finally call himself One Of The Boys (even being able to say “Sweet, brah” over the phone), as he is now friendlier with Nate and is also an alternate for the St. Jude’s men’s soccer team. Hoping to prove to his sister that he’s not only just friends with girls – yes, you are, Dan – he meets up with Nate at the park for some soccer practice, but not before stopping by Nate’s house and discovering that the Archibald residence has been seized and that Nate is squatting. Hoping to keep this quiet, he invites Nate over to Chez Humphrey for some good old-fashioned family time – Nate’s mother is avoiding all responsibility in the Hamptons – and some good Rufus-made supper. But the truth comes out, and Nate, acting with an entirely new kind of energy, huffs out in a storm, declaring that he doesn’t want to be anybody’s charity case. Bit of Chuck Bass in you there, huh, Nate? In the end, he relents and realizes that Dan is a better friend than Chuck (and definitely Blair) will ever be.

Up in Van Der Woodsen Land, Bart and Lily decide to put down some ground rules re: their respective children, as right around the corner is their housewarming party and, as Bart describes oh-so-coldly, “our debut as a family.” Chuck and Serena immediately rage against the rules, but it’s Serena who takes a stand against Bart, misbehaving and complaining directly to his face. (The rule she really hates is one that I can’t entirely relate to: not being able to go out on weeknights.) After reminiscing about all her mother’s past husbands, Serena decides to take a stand at the housewarming party and humiliate both Lily and Bart in front of an InStyle reporter, bringing all of their family problems right into the open. (She’s also pissed that Bart would so thoroughly convince Eric – welcome back, Eric! – not to bring his new boyfriend to the party as it would put too much pressure on the poor suicidal gay child.)

Mr. and Mrs. Bass der Woodsen host their family debut. No gay boyfriends allowed.

Lily later forgives Serena for the public embarrassment (just like when Bree forgave Lynette so quickly on this week’s Desperate Housewives for a similar humiliation, I wonder what it would take to truly piss off these women) because she feels it’s basically her own damn fault for being such a distant mother for so many years (as Eric pointed out, the Van Der Woodsen ringtone for Lily was “Since You’ve Been Gone”) and since Bart had already halted the InStyle story from happening. While I think that Lily should take her daughter to task a little more for something so mortifying, I appreciate what I’ve always appreciated about her – that deep down there is still some good, still the sympathetic wild child Rufus fell in love with decades earlier, and she is able to let it peek through every now and then. (Unlike Bart Bass, who is a truly despicable character.)

Another great week for GG, although when I heard about the Blair/Chuck/Vanessa storyline I was hoping for something a little more…juicy and naughty. Still, the characters are back to feeling like themselves again, and I’m really liking how the show is getting smarter and smarter in its storytelling. I did rue the lack of a Jenny storyline, but that seems to be covered next week, which from the ads appears to chronicle a battle between Little J (looking all edgy and Sienna Miller) and Eleanor Waldorf over nothing less than fashion itself.

The Wife:

Since my husband provided such a thorough recap of this week’s Dangerous Liaisons-infused GG, I’ll point simply to a few moments I truly enjoyed. In the Dangerous Liaisons plot, there were some moments where I realized that Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick have exactly the same vocal tenor as actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe, who play the equivalent characters in the DL adaptation, Cruel Intentions. I’d like to think that someone somewhere in a CW writing room noticed that, too, and thought that this plot choice would be perfect for Meester and Westwick.

I also liked CW’s little meta-dig at the major networks who don’t count the ratings of Gossip Girl’s largely online audience when Eric and Serena lament a time when they weren’t allowed to watch TV on school nights: “Who watches TV on TV anymore, anyway?” GG is a cult show, certainly, but if the Big 4 could only see the kind of hits the CW’s programming gets online, they’d certainly be scared about how well the network does there. Perhaps this comment is also a bit of repentance for the low ratings GG pulled when, in a post-strike ratings stunt last year, CW pulled the last new episodes of the GG season from online. No one tuned in to catch them on air, because GG viewers are a savvy, tech-loving bunch who’d rather catch episodes online when they want to, not when the networks tell them they should be watching.

My favorite Blairism of the night, uttered while scolding one of her underlings about her attire:

Underling:  I’m sorry. I, I didn’t realize –
Blair: That tights are not pants?!

No, no they’re not pants. Tights are not pants. Thank you, Blair, for being the protector of quality, taste and style. I’d like to see Blair host that show with Tim Gunn, just once.

Finally, my absolute favorite thing about this episode was the mini music video advertising the greatness that is Chuck Bass, set to Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” Why, oh, why, isn’t this the official video for that song???? In case you passed it up when you were speeding through commercials, here it is:

Hate to love him? Love to hate him? I don’t know what these people are talking about. For me, Chuck Bass is pure love.

Chuck Bass: 40% orange trousers, 60% awesome.

 

Gossip Girl 2.6: “New Haven Can Wait”

The Wife:

Over the course of our week-long stay in New York, my husband and I watched the entire first season of Gossip Girl. That’s right, kids. I have now seen every episode of Gossip Girl. I recanted a few weeks ago about my former opinion of the show, because the first season does not totally suck. It’s really just the first episode that’s not very endearing, but it sure takes off running from that point forward. Because it’s not fair of me to try to summarize the entirety of the first season and my thoughts about it in favor of the current episode, I will say the following:

• I love Chuck Bass and kind of want to be him. (I’m thinking about changing my grad school entrance essay to read simply: “I’m Chuck Bass.”)
• Blair Waldorf is extremely entertaining.
• I hate Serena Van Der Woodsen. Actually, my issue is not with Serena as a character or anything she does, but solely with Blake Lively, whom I believe is the reason Jimmy Caar made the following joke in a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien, I paraphrase:
  
  “You know how they make dogs in commercials look like they’re talking? They put peanut butter on the roof of their mouths and when they try to lick it off, it looks like they’re talking. Coincidentally, that’s also how they make Gossip Girl.”

If you watch Blake Lively’s attempts at acting closely enough, you’ll notice that her mouth does not move in a way a normal person’s mouth would to form words. This is perhaps why everything she says sounds like she’s slushing it around in her mouth. It’s far too silibant. You’ll also notice that she cannot open her eyes any wider than they are naturally, which is not very wide at all. They’re like slits in her face. Now, after seeing the first season, all of those things are exactly why they cast Blake Lively for this role. Serena has been drunk for a good portion of her life, and Blake Lively does indeed always look (and sound) a little drunk. But my problem is this: Serena’s sober now. As such, Lively’s limited acting skills just make Serena come off as incredibly boring. She’s very boring to watch. Compare her to Leighton Meester in any scene they have together and I think you’ll begin to see how much more interesting to watch one girl is over the other.

So, with that said, I’m sure you can see that my thoughts are similar to Blair’s about Serena starring as the desired end-product Eliza Doolittle in Blair’s My Fair Lady dream sequence. I love Blair’s little old Hollywood dreams. I wish I had more dream sequences like that, but not with Serena Van Der Woodsen stealing my starring role in them. Clearly, the writers are aware that Leighton Meester can act circles around Blake Lively. Even if their characters are in constant competition for the spotlight, the actresses certainly are not.

This episode revolved around everyone’s adventures at Yale College Visit Weekend, a phenomenon which I will never understand wherein prospective applicants from wealthy and legacy families are invited to schmooze Ivy League deans for pre-acceptance into the school. I suppose that’s how our stately current president got into Yale, so it must really be true. Blair, Chuck and Nate all go hoping to gain early acceptance. Blair has always had her sights set on Yale and will stop at nothing to make her dream come true. Nate turns toward Yale because he no longer has to follow his father’s footsteps to Dartmouth, but has evidently given up on getting into USC like he wanted to last season. Chuck Bass, of course, chooses his colleges based on their secret societies and thus wants to be a part of the Skull and Bones.

Skull and Bones? It's Chuck Bass calling. I fucking own you.

Brown-bound Serena receives a handwritten invite to the Yale Weekend from the Dean, but only accepts to spite Blair after Blair says something untoward to her about it. Dan, who had also been interested in Dartmouth until recently, longs to join the Yale English Department, which he claims is the best in the country. (Technically, according to the 2001 rankings, it is tied for the number one spot with Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley. However, Yale is number one if you want to specialize in 18th to 20th Century British Literature.) Personally, since Dan is so into creative writing, I’d have expected him to go to Purdue or NYU. But I guess since everyone else is Yale bound, Dan might as well be, too, right?

It’s lucky for Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald that Dan Humphrey joined them at Yale so that Nate, reeling from his father’s various embezzlement schemes that cost a number of Yalies their trust funds, could pretend to be Dan and not get his ass beaten by every trust fund baby he came across, as well as score some hot English Department TA tail. (BTW, the Marquez book she’s holding up is way too thick to be Love in the Time of Cholera. It had to have been 100 Years of Solitude, which is the better of the two anyway, in my opinion.) The real Dan Humphrey set the record straight when he caught Nate in bed with the TA, pretending to be Dan Humphrey, but that didn’t stop Chuck Bass from bringing his new Skull and Bones buddies a Dan instead of the Nate Archibald they intended to humiliate. After Nate frees a denuded Dan from the Yale courtyard statue (with the help of the hot TA and several implied jokes about the knot-tying skills of the Yale Regatta), Nate starts a bar fight with the Skull and Bones boys in Dan’s honor, and declares that he hopes to continue beating them up next year. Angry, the Skull and Bonesers try to take out vengeance on Chuck Bass, but Chuck Bass is prepared to blackmail them with photos from the hookercams he installed on the hookers he had previously brought to the secret society. Really, Chuck Bass thinks of everything. I think he needs business cards that read: “Chuck Bass, Champion of the Lost Weekend.”

Why don't you tell them about that guy you kind of murdered and how you're totally cribbing that dress from Robin Scherbatsky, Serena? She has that dress in grey, white and yellow and it looks way hotter on her.

Serena and Blair battle it out for the Dean’s affections and poor Blair is crushed when she doesn’t receive an invite to the private reception at the Dean’s house. Instead, she buys her way in by bribing the porcelain cat-loving Delores Umbridge of a secretary to the Dean with some precious Victorian kitty statues, a bribery tactic I will be using in my own life from now on. At the party, everyone is expected to answer the Dean’s hypothetical question: “If you could have dinner with any person, real or imaginary, whom would it be and why?” Blair had come prepared to answer George Sand, which I think is a good answer because George Sand is hella tight and also because she happens to be the Dean’s favorite writer. Chuck gives Serena Blair’s answer, so Blair switches Serena’s answer without her knowing: revealing the name of Pete, the drug addict Serena inadvertently killed. Serena handles the embarrassing situation rather well while Blair chides her on and the two step outside to handle their issue like real ladies: in a dress-ripping, hair-pulling catfight on the patio. Ultimately, the two call a truce, realize that they’re being totally retarded and become friends again. Serena gets a call from the Dean at the end, hinting at offering her early acceptance, but she refuses on principle unless Blair gets in, too. How sweet. Frankly, I hope Serena does get into Brown like she wanted to so she can have that blonde mane dreadlocked, per Blair’s suggestion. (Although, really, aren’t dreadlocks a little more UC Berkeley? Or UC Santa Cruz? Or my alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, for that matter?)

This is Blair's George Sand dream sequence, wherein she's equally fabulous and loves a hot cloche.

Back in Brooklyn, Little J tries to convince Daddy Rufus to let her be homeschooled, with help from Vanessa to prove that one can work full-time and get an education in other ways than attending Constance. I’m glad that this plot explained V’s school situation to me, because I just assumed she had already gotten her GED or something. But nope, V homeschools herself and has her sights set on NYU. After shadowing J on the job and hearing how good she is from both Eleanor Waldorf, her employer, and love-of-Rufus’ life and J’s client Lily Van Der Woodsen, Daddy Rufus decides that Little J doesn’t have to give up her dream and she can homeschool herself. After all, being 15 isn’t stopping Kira Pastinina from being a fashion superstar, and it’s certainly not a good reason to stop Little J.

The Husband:

Haha! I win! By streamlining the first season over a week was the best way to get my wife fully into the world of GG, and it’s even easier when both of us are sick on vacation and bedridden for a full day. Success! It is a GG house now, muthafucka!

Since my wife so thoroughly covered the episode — I’m still at home, by the way, recovering from said vacation illness — I’d just like to say a few things regarding what I dug about this episode.

For one, I liked everyone’s take on Yale, as it was a great bit of information about how each of the characters really think (after all those Hamptons episodes where nobody really acted the way they were originally written to be).

• Nate considered Yale to be his backup school. Now that’s some kind of a world I simply don’t understand.
• Serena referred to it as “full of the Blairs of the world,” explaining to her mother that Brown really would be the answer for her. (Since when is Brown a school anybody should frown upon? What a strange show. It does remind me, however, of a Family Guy episode when they visited the school and Chris loudly declared, “Brown’s the color of poo!” to which Brian calmly replied, “Yes, Chris. Yes it is.”)
• Dan basically thinks of it as “a place for presidents, not Humphreys,” without expressly mentioning the fact that, yes, he wasn’t interested in Yale during s1, and didn’t even mention being a writer other than one passing plot device regarding Vanessa and a short story he once wrote.
• Of course, Blair has been all about Yale for the entirety of her life, her father having gone there and her doing all the research necessary to ensure a place at his Alma Mater. Unfortunately, going into your interview with an essay titled “On Being Blair” is not the way to make yourself an actual person, nor is saying, “Everything worth knowing about me is in that folder.” Ouch, Blair. Ouch. It’s hard to, as you put it, always be the Darth Vader next to Serena’s Sunshine Barbie, but legacy or not, I doubt any real school wants somebody that acts like a rich robot.

Hopefully, Gossip Girl can deal with the college situation better than Josh Schwartz’s last teen show, The O.C. At one point, both Marissa and Ryan had gotten into UC Berkeley, Summer into Brown and Seth pretty much nowhere. Not everything went according to plan, though, since…well…Marissa died in a car accident, and out of grief Ryan chose to drop UC Berkeley to become a cagefighter. (Seriously, what the fuck, O.C.? I was the biggest show apologist for the longest time, but that was really dumb.) Then Seth stalked Summer for a while and it just got awkward. If GG knows what’s good for it, it can learn from these lessons and deal with college stuff with more tact. After all, Yale isn’t that far from the Upper East Side, and Harvard is only a four-hour drive. (And Dartmouth and Princeton aren’t far off, either.) It can be like Metropolis on Smallville — even if there are characters in both places, it’d be entirely feasible to have them all meet every couple episodes and act like every location is just next door. I don’t mind.