Gossip Girl 3.2 and 3.3: “The Freshmen” and “The Lost Boy”

The Wife:

So far, I can easily divide this season of Gossip Girl into things I care about and things I do not care about. I am interested in all things going on at NYU, including Blair’s adjustment to not being Queen, Georgina’s meddling, Dan’s sudden popularity and the Vanessa/Scott thing that, inevitably, ties into Rufus. I do not care about Nate’s extremely isolating romance with Bree Buckley, specifically because it is so isolating. I like Joanna Garcia and I like Bree and the idea behind this plot, but Nate needs to reconnect to the rest of the group of this plot will remain just as lost as its been so far this season.

I especially do not give a shit about Serena Van Der Woodsen and her daddy issues. Her life is a series of bad decisions which could easily be fixed by simply acting like a person. Rather than going to Brown like she told Rufus and Lily she should, she hides out with her friends in Manhattan because, suddenly, she’s decided she’s not going to college. Why? Because she doesn’t know who she is or what she’s supposed to do with her life and she can’t see how leaving everything she knows is going to help her answer either of those questions. And that, my friends, is how you know Serena is too fucking dumb to go to Brown in the first place. I mean, what? I’m pretty sure that NO college freshmen has any idea who they are or what they’re life should be, and that’s precisely why we go to college for four years, away from everything we know, so we can FIGURE THAT SHIT OUT.

So because Chuck talked to Rufus about her skipping out on Brown, she decides to ruin all of his business deals? And pit Chuck against Carter? Serena, you are infantile and an idiot. You do not come between someone and their money. You can mess with their social life all you want, but you don’t ruin someone’s business. Even fucking Tyra Banks knows that shit, yo. Just be a person, Serena. Be a fucking person.

Why are we so bad at being people?

While Serena is having a difficult time operating like a human being, Blair is having a hard time fitting in at NYU, where no one gives a shit if you’re a socialite and would really rather have pizza and beer and watch pretentious films that make you feel superior than, say, getting dressed to the nines and eating sushi and sake at a soiree. Dan takes pity on her and helps integrate her into Georgina’s way-more-appropriate rooftop kegger, only to find out that he’s been Blair’s inside man for embarrassment when she calls all of Georgina’s Jesus Camp friends to the party and tries to tell everyone it’s a conversion party. I mean, that’s pretty genius, and I’m surprised that Dan was able to turn everyone so quickly from Blair’s side simply by saying, “So, who wants to stay here and drink cheap beer with me?”

I feel badly for Blair. It’s hard to fit in when you’re so different from everyone else, but it is about time she got off her Queen Bee high horse. That shit may fly in high school, but college just doesn’t care. It’s good to see her humbled, cozying up to Chuck Bass, but that, of course, doesn’t last long when she receives an invitation to Le Table Elitaire, a totally made up secret society of college socialites, asking her to bring them a photo up for auction at Sotheby’s to secure her entrance into the group. Unfortunately, Chuck needs the same photograph to smooth over a business deal. What follows is an adorable bidding war between Chuck and Blair, which is actually a battle of who loves more than whom in their relationship. Serena, acting like a person, for once, realizes that the invite was written by Georgina, just as Chuck realizes that Georgina was turning his gears as well, via an office assistant she happens to know. Humbled once again, Blair gives the photograph over to Chuck for his business deal, which ultimately doesn’t go through when he decides, instead, to sell his shares in Bass Industries and buy a hotel on his own.

Meanwhile, Vanessa has finally started to get suspicious about Scott’s lies and finds out, after we all realize that she’d make a terrible detective, that he isn’t even enrolled in NYU. She does manage to get an easy confession out of him, where he tells her that he is Rufus and Lily’s son and he’s been trying to get close to the family to meet them. Vanessa convinces him to tell everyone at the auction, but when Scott’s adoptive mother shows up, he simply can’t tell Rufus the truth, lest he break his mother’s heart. Instead, he tells them that he is Dead Andrew’s brother, maintaining the lie that Andrew was Rufus and Lily’s son, and he wanted to meet his brother’s parents. It’s all very sweet, and was probably one of the most loving things anyone in the GG universe has ever done, but Vanessa is not happy with Scott because now she is burdened with his terrible secret. And, suddenly, I don’t think I care about Vanessa anymore.

Stray thoughts:

• “The only queens at NYU are the ones with tickets to Liza at Carnegie.” — Chuck
• I love Blair’s saffron wrap top.
• Did it bother anyone else that Scott’s lies could have easily been confirmed by, oh, I dunno, looking on NYU’s website and checking course times? As well as confirming professor recommendations through ratemyprofessors.com? In a world where everyone gets gossip via text blasts, why can’t these characters use the internet?
• OH.MY.GOD. It just dawned on me that no one has received any conniving text blasts from Gossip Girl. Where did the central conceit of this show go?
• Oh, and there’s some old wounds between the Bayson family and the Buckleys . . . maybe this will solve Nate’s storyline isolation problem as Bree plans her revenge on Carter?

 

Gossip Girl 3.1: “Reversals of Fortune”

The Wife:

With 90210, Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries on the air (the latter of which I plan to write about by pairing the first two episodes), the CW seems to have finally settled into its groove of airing addictive, soapy teen-centric television that’s imminently watchable. This week’s season premiere of Gossip Girl wasn’t as OMFG as certain episodes in season one or two, but it was a well structured, well told 42 minutes of television.

And it has the bonus of not sucking like last year’s Hamptons-set season openers. The showrunners figured out that GG simply doesn’t work without NYC, so I’m very thankful that the majority of this episode occurred within the limits of the city that never sleeps. I mean, after all, the Humphreys aren’t even living over the bridge in Brooklyn anymore. They’ve spent the whole summer shacked up at the Bass der Woodsen home, tending to matters while Lily is away caring for her ailing mother, CeCe. (In other words, Kelly Rutherford is on maternity leave, so they’re killing CeCe for no other reason than that. I just hope she miraculously survives so that Jenny can have that stupid Cotillion Cece bought her a dress for.)

Serena, on the other hand, has allegedly been spending the summer Eat, Pray, Love-ing it at an Ashram, but we know from Eric and Jenny’s fussing over gossip magazines that Serena is up to something else entirely — she’s actually spent the summer trying to find her father. Of course, rather than normal methods of tracking someone down using various PIs (she only hired one) and other professional people finders like, say, bounty hunters, Serena is trying to force her father to notice her by partying it up across the European continent and having her photo snapped doing as many ridiculous socialite things as possible. Searching for daddy is a good quest, but I have to question Serena’s methodology here. She’s been tabloid fodder for years and that hasn’t drawn the attention of Mr. Van der Woodsen. Why would it change now? All I can hope is that this plotline somehow gets her kicked out of Brown so she can rejoin the others in the city. As I know from a classmate who “left” that school, the door to Brown doesn’t swing both ways, if you catch my drift.

We're all sorry about Privileged, JoAnna. Enjoy your consolation guest spot on Gossip Girl!

Meanwhile, Nate Archibald continued his attempts to piss off his family by turning down his political internship and touring Europe for the summer. He met up with Vanessa for those Prague peroghi, but otherwise spent the entirety of his trip fucking around with JoAnna Garcia’s Bree Buckley. It takes these two wealthy morons the entire summer to figure out that they’ve actually been sleeping with the enemy as they are the scions of two rival political families. (Shockingly, the Archibalds are Democrats. Does that seem right to anyone?) How do you spend an entire summer with someone and not learn their last name? Surely, he could have looked on the plane ticket she was using as a bookmark. Baffling.

Chuck and Blair have settled into a happy routine of keeping their romance alive by playing games with each other. They both pick a target for Chuck to seduce, and then Blair arrives just in time to humiliate the target of Chuck’s affection. These two are just a step away from attending swingers clubs together or practicing some BDSM. Actually, I’d love to see them engage in the latter. I just imagined Chuck Bass in a leather mask and ball gag, and it was really funny.

If anything is going to make "fetch" happen, it's this.

And then there’s Vanessa, who’s been paling around with Secret Brother Scott, the missing Hump der Woodsen, complaining about missing her nouveau riche friend Dan, chilling at a totally different coffee shop, wearing a lot of boho Anna Sui (hello, Target tie-in!) and, evidently, not combing her hair much. (Seriously, V, how dare you show up at a polo match with your tresses only a twist or two away from being dreads. Not cute.) She’s mad at Dan for his change in circumstance, which Dan insists is stupid, and it is, only Vanessa doesn’t see it that way because she’s embodying someone from a Jane Austen novel. This, however, is all a good opportunity for Secret Brother Scott to get closer to the Hump der Woodsens, attaching himself to Vanessa as her plus one for the aforementioned polo match and going so far as to shake his father’s hand.

The final element to this story is Carter Bayson, whom Serena apparently slept with during her European vacation, but for some reason doesn’t want to admit. So she tells her friends that Carter has been stalking her, which gets Blair to slap him with a restraining order at the polo match, only for Serena to lead Carter on a chase through the woods on a stolen stallion so they can fuck like dryads. Serena makes bad decisions. She’s very bad at being a human being. Just be a person, Serena! Tell people things! It will make your life a lot easier!

Stray thoughts:

• Okay, GG wardrobe department, you can’t feature three different rompers in one episode. JoAnna Garcia’s yellow one was passable. I’ll even give you a pass for Jenny’s polkadot one. But Serena’s brown, skin-tight romper? No. That thing is hideous. I get that this is a trend, the romper/onesie, but it needs to happen sparingly. And tastefully.
• I will be happy if I never see another maxi dress ever again, as well. NOT EVERYONE CAN WEAR A MAXI DRESS IN THE SAME SCENE!
• So, thank you thank you thank you for Blair’s incredible 30s-inspired polo outfit. That mint green dress with the square back and flutter sleeves is one of the most inspired pieces of clothing I’ve seen on television since Pushing Daisies went six feet under. The pink straw cloche was also a great touch.
• “Now take your American Girl hair and your poreless skin and get out!” — Blair
• “Well, that’s not fair. Everyone goes topless on Valentino’s yacht.” — Jenny
• “I’m not Chuck Bass without you.” — easily the sweetest thing Chuck has ever said. I melt.
• Favorite scene? Chuck and Blair doing a little restaurant-based foreplay roleplaying. So cute.

 

Gossip Girl 2.25: “The Goodbye Gossip Girl”

The Wife:

This finale had its moments, but over all, I think it was rather silly and disappointing. Let me summarize the episode’s main crisis: Gossip Girl sends out a mean text during the Constance-St. Jude’s graduation ceremony calling Dan an insider, Serena irrelevant, Blair a weakling and Chuck a coward. For some reason, this hurts everyone’s feelings and Serena decides its time to declare war on Gossip Girl and find out who he/she really is. I enjoyed the mini Scooby gang scene in which the four plus Jenny try to surmise who GG might be while at their post-grad brunch at Chez Bass Der Woodsen, but their attempt at detective work in this moment was the only highlight of this plot. Serena gets a flash of brilliance and sends a tip to GG, as GG must be in the room with them. Jonathan’s phone lights up, but it turns out he’s only been hacking into GG’s server for months, overseeing the kinds of gossip she chooses to post and what she chooses to hang on to. (Like any good reporter, GG saves her juiciest information for the moment in which it will have the most impact.)

Love Blair's dress. Hate Serena's.

GG, knowing what Serena has been up to, sends out a blast filled with very juicy information about how Blair slept with Apple-cheeked Uncle Jack on New Year’s (a revelation that was totally anticlimactic; I had hoped they had done something far more scandalous than that), Vanessa slept with Chuck and a whole bunch of other crap that basically neatly sewed up all of the secrets the main cast had been keeping from each other. This makes everyone pretty angry, and disappoints little J, who had hoped to earn her place as Queen next year (and thus destroy the monarchy from the inside) by spilling that bit of gossip about Blair and Jack Bass. I realize the nature of the show is peppered with these gossip blasts from an anonymous, omniscient narrator-god type of figure, but to have so many secrets be released at once in a melee of shallowness seemed less like something Gossip Girl would do and more like something the writers needed to do to move the story into closure, as well as set up new dynamics for next season. It was a little deus ex machina (or deus ex text message?) for me, and that wasn’t the only instance of something tied up a little too neatly.

Post-party badness, Serena tries to trap Gossip Girl into meeting her, but is surprised to see everyone she knows show up instead of the mystery blogger. Once the entire assemblage arrives, they all receive a text from Gossip Girl basically saying that each and every one of them is Gossip Girl, because she’s nothing without the tipsters who send her posts. And to announce that she plans to follow them to college, but there they will all get to start with a clean slate, since she’s already blasted out all of their worst secrets. I’m not going to complain about not meeting Gossip Girl in the flesh, mostly because I don’t want to, as it would kind of ruin a major creative point of the show. But really, Gossip Girl? Did you honestly think that pointing out to these people that they are all Gossip Girl was somehow going to change them and make them earn that dear ol’ clean slate? Because it’s not. She’s not saving them at all from the labels she put on them at graduation. Dan is an insider. Serena is irrelevant. But Blair and Chuck, though . . . she might have changed them a little bit.

The Blair and Chuck bit of this episode really worked for me, actually – as did the resolution between Rufus and Lily. Serena tells Blair that Chuck had confessed his love for her, so Blair, on the advice of her mother, suggests that she take charge of her feelings and get Chuck to admit directly to her how he feels. And so she heads to Nate’s post-grad party, where the secret-spilling GG blast will take place, dressed to kill and slowly removes articles of clothing, asking Chuck if he likes them until she’s stripped down to her amazingly sexy shapewear and asking him the ultimate question, “And what do you think of me?” But even though Blair is bringing shapewear back (and really, it needs to be brought back; a good foundation garment does wonders), Chuck can’t admit he loves her and breaks her little heart when he finds out she slept with Apple-cheeked Uncle Jack. After a good cry, Blair resolves to give up on Chuck and stop chasing a guy who will never love her back, even though she remains slightly tortured by constant updates on his European whereabouts from Gossip Girl. That is, until she runs into him outside her apartment building one day, his arms full of gifts because he toured Europe to buy Blair her favorite things as an admission of love and an apology. Here, by the way, are my exact notes during this scene: “Awwwww! No, B! Accept him! Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase???? Yay! He said it! Yay!” I think from that you can safely infer that Blair was about to turn him down, but then he finally admitted he loved her, with those chocolates from France and her favorite stockings from Germany. And I was made happy. Chuck + Blair 4evah.

Rufus and Lily, meanwhile, after some awkwardness about sitting together at graduation, suddenly realize they’re old because they have 18-year-old children about to go off to college. So Lily drops by the Brooklyn loft with some weed she found in Chuck’s room (at least I think it was weed . . .) and a six-pack. She and Rufus hang out and reminisce about the good ol’ days and, eventually, he realizes he still loves her, despite that whole thing with the investment scheme and mutual funds and whatever, and makes her a ring out of one of his old Lincoln Hawk flyers and proposes. It is, perhaps, a little more low-key, even, than a vintage ring, but perfect.

As for Jenny, without her winning piece of gossip stolen from the GG server, she assumes her chance to be Queen and end the monarchy from the inside is ruined, meaning that Penelope’s chosen replacement, a new girl who looks like a tiny Rashida Jones, will terrorize the school. But after being cast-off by Chuck, Blair tells Jenny that she wants her to be Queen and, just as Baby Rashida Jones is about to be crowned with a sparkly rock and roll headband, Blair shows up to coronate Jenny. Because she can. Why Jenny had to look like a hot tranny mess throughout this entire episode, I’ll never know. But she’s Queen now, and she officially rules no more headbands (except her sparkly one) – a rule I heartily disagree with.

This hot tranny mess is your queen now.

Nate apologizes to Vanessa, and she announces that she’ll be at NYU next year, too, making Serena the only person who won’t be in the city come this fall. (It seems that, without his Yale money, Dan will also be going to NYU, although that fact was never mentioned until this episode.) By the episode’s end, Nate announces that he’s quitting his internship at the Mayor’s office because the deputy mayor hit on him (perhaps because he told Gramps Vanderbildt about his affair with the Countess?). He invites himself along on Vanessa’s backpacking trip, as a friend, and a random dude says he’s going with her instead. But seeing right through that guise, Nate is persistent and wears Vanessa down, so they’ll spend the summer nomming peroghi together after all. But the interesting thing in this scene wasn’t any of that, it was the random dude: Secret Hump Der Woodsen Love Child Not-Dead Andrew (a.k.a. Scott), who has transferred to NYU and is lying to his parents about being in Portland, all so he can find out more about his birth parents, or so I glean from the creepy news clippings he carries around with him. I had waited for some kind of resolution with the Hump Der Woodsen Love Child, and I’m glad to have some. That’ll be a good storyline to play out for next year, as we’re unsure if Scott’s motives are purely to get to know his parents, or to wheedle some money out of them/leech off his half-brother Dan’s New Yorker fame.

I’m also glad that Georgina will be back next year, but really displeased with her integration into this episode. While the coda about her enrolling in NYU and asking specifically to be Blair’s roommate was fantastic (except that I doubt Blair will deign to live in a dormitory by any stretch of the imagination), the most deus ex machina part of this episode was Georgina’s call to Dan to simply say that his Yale money is back in the bank. Ex-Jesus Freak ex machina, apparently. I’m sure they’d like to reveal next season how Georgina got everyone’s money back, but at this point, it just seemed a little too neat. Gossip Girl often burns through storylines very quickly, creating drama and resolution that exists within no more than a three-episode arc, but they usually tie things up better than the entire “Who is Gossip Girl?” plot of this episode and Georgina’s sudden ending of Dan’s money crisis. It made the episode seem, to me at least, a little haphazard. I’ve definitely seen better work on this show, and too many good finales this season to count this one among them.

Other notes:

• Serena is a fucking tool. How does that bitch think she can get away with not wearing her cap during graduation and, instead, twisting her tassel up in her fucking hair? If the show just stranded Serena at Brown next year, I’d be perfectly happy with that because she’s such a vapid dickbag.
• Nate’s party had some good music. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs rock.
• Can Nate and Vanessa end up in Hostel III and die during their backpacking trip in Europe?
• Also, Serena’s been using Carter Bayson to hunt for her dad? Because he’s in Tahiti? Why?
• I am kind of in love with Blair’s Diane Von Furstenberg Sofia Loren dress that she wore under her graduation gown. French Connection had something with a pattern similar to the pattern on the bust two seasons ago and I always thought about buying it, but never did. Unfortunately, I’m a grad student now and can’t spend money on fabulous things anymore.

The Husband:

I definitely liked the finale far more than my wife, and while it couldn’t reach the high standard set by the s1 finale, what with the wedding and lost love and Chuck’s ultimate dismissal of Blair, I think it worked quite well. Everything it shot through too quickly was stuff I really didn’t give a shit about. Instead, it did a great job saying that, despite the fact that high school is done, it’s never really done, and that even after graduating, your problems are still going to follow you. And since everybody except for Serena is going to be in NYC (and she won’t be too far away in Rhode Island anywhoozle), those problems won’t have to travel too far. And this way, their stories can still connect with what Little J and Eric at up to at Constance-St. Jude’s, as that drama isn’t going anywhere. It’s actually a neat little restart button, and I’m okay with that.

And while I was starting to get super-sick of Blair and Chuck’s will-they-or-won’t-they, I found that not only was Blair’s strip-seduction to be the sexiest thing on this show so far, but their final embrace was remarkably emotional for me. I still think Blair has a long way to go to really get me to embrace her as an actual human being of a character after some of the shenanigans this season, but maybe NYU will humble her a bit. Because she clearly doesn’t want to go there, despite the fact that it’s a prestigious private school I’ve wanted to attend for a decade now.

Now let’s hope that the show doesn’t lose its verve now that college is starting. But since the show was never defined by its high school (don’t forget, we have never seen any of them in class), I doubt it will be defined by college. These people’s lives are too big for that to happen.

 

Gossip Girl 2.24: “Valley Girls”

The Wife:

I think I’ve found the one episode of Gossip Girl I really don’t like. And believe me, I desperately wanted to like the “backdoor pilot” of the Untitled Gossip Girl Spin-Off About Young Lily Rhodes, but I didn’t. I liked what they tried to do with it, but the execution just fell utterly short. For instance, it made sense that, as Lily leaves her daughter in jail to think about her actions, she reflects on her own relationship with her mother and the night she spent in jail as a teenager. Premise = solid. In fact, the cast = totally solid, too. I like Brittany Snow. I like Andrew McCarthy. I like Cynthia Watros. I like Ryan Hansen. I love Krysten Ritter. But there was something about the writing of these characters that just didn’t work. Part of the point is that Lily as a teenager was very different than the Lily we know now, the one who ultimately fulfilled her mother’s wishes for her by marrying up, marrying someone grand (or several someones, as the case may be), but it was hard to see a connecting point between teenage Lily and adult Lily, other than that their both blonde and like men who wear leather jackets more than men in Don Johnson suits.

So as Serena sits in jail (by choice, in fact, to prove to her mother that she can make adult decisions such as serving her time, which means she’ll miss prom), Lily reminisces on her past. About how she got kicked out of boarding school (Santa Barbara’s Thacher School, which is real and thus I must give unlimited props to the attention to detail there) because she wanted to live with her dad, a music producer. But Daddy Andrew McCarthy doesn’t have time for his daughter, other than to tell the good folks at the Thacher School that she was acting out because her parents divorce was adversely affecting her, effectively getting her back in after a brief suspension. (Sidenote: I miss Lipstick Jungle.) Her mother is callous and inattentive, and her sister had the wherewithal to remove herself from that life altogether years ago, which Lily feels was a worse form of abandonment. So Lily, sensing her life kind of sucks, disobeys her parents and goes to find her sister in L.A.

No Doubt, I have a date with you July 21. Be ready. I will be.

Lily finds one of Carol’s coworkers and he agrees to let her borrow her sister’s clothing from her locker (she changes at work a lot because she’s constantly going on auditions) and escorts her to a Snowed Out show where Carol and her boyfriend/not boyfriend Shep would be in attendance. First of all, Krysten Ritter was amazing. Adorable. Funny. Perfect casting choice for the artsy, free-spirited older sister. But an even better choice was casting Veronica Mars‘ Ryan Hansen as Carol’s sort-of boyfriend. Hansen is amazing at playing self-absorbed jerkmeats, and here he was a self-absorbed jerkmeat with a bad Billy Idol pompadour. Genius. Carol wants to help Lily and be a good big sister and everything, but she can’t at the moment because she and her friends are on their way to crash a music video director’s party so they can get back the tape he took from them, which they paid him a good $500 to shoot. That music video director, by the way, is a Van Der Woodsen, channeling James Spader as Stef in Pretty in Pink. And he really likes to do coke. And he fucked Lily’s sister, which I think, if that turns out to be the Van Der Woodsen that Lily eventually marries, IS SUPER FUCKING AWKWARD. Owen and Shep pick a fight with Van Der Woodsen and his cronies, which Lily gets into to defend her sister. Van Der Woodsen calls the cops, and Carol has to bail her little sister out of jail when their mother won’t, opening up the possibilities for a string of Rhodes sisters adventures in LaLaLand.

Other than Ryan Hansen being a dick and dancing around to “The Safety Dance,” not very exciting. And even less exciting was the modern-day prom storyline. Someone might be sabotaging Blair? Well, no, not really, because it’s just Chuck making her prom dream scrapbook come true by forcing her choices to lead her to the dress she’s always dreamed about (which is fab), the date she wanted to have (Nate), the mode of transport and the glittery princess Prom Queen tiara that Nelly Yuki almost stole from her had Chuck not taken the stuffed ballots. He even gives her the key to his suite at the Plaza, because that’s how she wanted her perfect prom night to end. But instead, she ends it by breaking up with Nate. (Hooray! Because we all know she should be with Chuck, the man who made her 12-year-old prom dream come true!) Serena even makes it out of jail in time to attend the dance because her former lover/almost step brother bails her out. I mean, why? Why even bother with the prom in this episode? It was so insignificant, and wholly, completely understated. While I liked the thru-line of the big band at the prom playing “Stand and Deliver,” I have a very difficult time believing that a prom for Constance and St. Jude’s would have looked like that prom looked. We know their winter formal looks a lot more stunning than this did. This was so cheeseball in its attempt to be elegant, adult and understated that I just didn’t know what to do with it. I hate to say it, but I think the 90210 prom is going to be a lot more believable.

If Blair designed that dress when she was 12, she's a better designed than Little J ever was.

There’s nothing technically wrong with the L.A. Lily storyline. And nothing wrong with the grainy film wipes they applied to her memory (which works for me because she’s a photographer). It just fell really flat. And even though there was a lovely resolution in which Serena, sitting with Blair outside prom, acknowledges that she knows her mother had her arrested out of love and concern while Lily apologizes for her entire tenuous relationship with her own mother, there were no real risks in telling either story, nothing to lose or gain, which means . . . no drama. And that means boring. I’d like to see the spin-off succeed, though, because I’m very curious about the timeline of Lily’s life, which was something my sister-in-law brought up last night. The music they chose last night put us pretty solidly in 1986, and we’re assuming that Lily was 16 or 17 then. And Serena was born in 1991 if she just turned 18 this year, so Lily was bearing Van Der Woodsen children by the time she was 20/21. Now, that’s perfectly plausible and all . . . but does that really give her enough time in L.A. to cultivate a career as a rock photographer and follow Lincoln Hawk and Nine Inch Nails around? I had assumed her wild years lasted much longer than this, at least until her mid-20s. If anything, I need to spin-off to help me flesh that out.

The Husband:

I do feel a definite disconnect between the present Lily and the 1980s Lily, and I definitely have a hard time believing that whatever Cynthia Watros was doing would ever lead to some of the horrific displays of behavior and evil that modern-day Celia is capable of (I point you toward the Debutante Ball episode from s1), but I also think I liked the backdoor pilot far more than my wife did. It shows a good deal of promise, and while they might be getting their years a little iffy as far as much is concerned, I think it could be a pretty wildly fun program. They just need to bridge the years a little bit better, because otherwise it’s barely even a spin-off so much as an entirely new show. (Like how Mork & Mindy is technically a spin-off of Happy Days. Say what?)

Or maybe it’s just because I really like 80s Los Angeles movies, like Less Than Zero and, as the title would suggest is an influence, Valley Girl. The city still feels dangerous and open in these narratives, not like the plastic, cultureless meh I lived in for five years.

And yes, I love Krysten Ritter too, but I’ve loved her for a few years now. And she is definitely one of the main reasons I thought Confessions of a Shopaholic was such a blindingly underrated film. (Yeah yeah, I am in fact male – don’t let my endorsement of that movie fool you.)

But other than Blair and Nate breaking up, nothing really vital happened to anybody in modern day GG land. Save that for next week.

 

Gossip Girl 2.16: “You’ve Got Yale!”

The Wife:

It’s hard for me to take any plot that culminates in attending the opera seriously after watching Repo! The Genetic Opera this weekend, a cult film I tried really hard to like but couldn’t thanks to a completely unskilled, overwrought score and a clunky and artless libretto. (The different between Repo! and other cult movies is that at least things like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment have good music and well-rendered lyrics. They might make little to no sense, but the musical aspects of them are accomplished.) The opera made marginally more sense as a place for this episode’s drama to culminate, but I still wonder exactly what business some of the characters had being there in the first place. Like, the revelation that some of these characters were even interested in opera came the fuck out of nowhere. Vanessa likes Wagner’s Ring Cycle? Who knew? Who would even know because liking Wagner is so avant garde?! And Eric knows everything there is to know about Mozart’s Magic Flute? Talking wildly about crescendos and high Fs and movements within arias with the wild passion of my friend who’s really into Brahms? Did they lump Eric with a sudden love of the opera simply because he’s Gossip Girl‘s lone gay? I can’t imagine any other reason why they would imbue him with such a weird character trait. I get that it’s important for Lily and Serena and Blair to go to the opera. They’re society people. They don’t give a shit about the music. They just go because it’s a social event. (And certain operas still have lengthy scene changes that allow for socializing between acts, as was originally intended back in the days before electricity when it was necessary to light all the gas lamps in the theatre in order to perform said scene change.) But it’s just so odd for me to have some of these characters suddenly be interested in something they’ve never previously had any interest in, all for the sake of an attempt to create a hyperbolic, operatic plot line filled with deceit, betrayal and, in proper opera fashion, sexual assault.

By the way, the entire Gossip Girl “opera” is about getting into Yale and gaining control of Bass Industries. I liked the Bass Industries plotline. I did not so much like the Yale plotline.

It’s Yale acceptance day and Blair’s father and his lover have flown in from France to feed her a Yale-themed breakfast on the day that they just know she’ll get her letter. They even spring for a Yale sweater for Dorota and give Blair a purse bulldog named Handsome Dan to tote around to show off her Yale pride. (My sister-in-law pointed out that a bulldog is not really a purse-sized dog. Blair pointed out that she will not call the dog Dan, settling instead for Handsome, which I thought was pretty funny.) This is all a bad idea, of course, to count one’s acceptance chickens before they’re hatched and it turns out that Blair doesn’t even get in to Yale at all, despite constantly having her minions refresh the page as if to make the news of waitlisting go away. Dan Humphrey, of course, is the one student from St. Jude’s to get in. (Nate, it seems, has gotten his money back and now no longer cares about going to college at all. Chuck, on the other hand, has bigger fish to fry in the form of apple-cheeked Uncle Jack. He is so over Skull & Bones at this point.) The only Constance student to get in? It Girl Serena Van Der Woodsen, who decides to lie to Blair about her acceptance, claiming to also be waitlisted, making Blair think that it was Nelly Yuki who got in instead. Serena does this a lot, this whole lying for no apparent reason thing, and she should probably stop. It would be better for everybody. Especially because in trying to protect Blair’s feelings, she also has to lie to Dan, causing them to have yet another petty relationship drama about not going to school together in the fall.

Blair talks to Headmistress Queller, who tells her that because she has the next spot on the waitlist, she will definitely get in as long as she keeps up her perfect transcript should the person accepted turn their offer down. Furious, Blair starts plotting against Nelly Yuki. (“Witch hunts are my Valium, Serena.”) Things only get worse when the new English teacher, Miss Carr, who is fresh-faced but no-nonsense about teaching, awards Blair with a B. For Blair, this is devastating. She can’t keep her top of the waitlist spot with a B in English. First of all, who the hell is this Miss Carr who spends two years doing Teach for America and then transfers to a nice, shiny private school on the Upper East Side? Clearly, she doesn’t have the integrity to teach where education actually matters, so I will not trust this character’s advice on anything for the duration of her tenure on the show. (Especially hackneyed advice such as “You should go to the right school for you.”) Second of all, Blair is being 90210 dumb about this whole transcript thing. One B during your second semester will not ruin your GPA. Especially when the snow’s still on the ground. There are plenty of other chances to keep getting As, therefore completely eradicating that B. Instead of thinking like an actual human being, Blair freaks out and demands an audience with Miss Carr, instructing her that Constance has a free pass policy for second semester seniors, where all grades are bumped up to what they should be simply so that Constance can preserve its reputation of sending its graduates to the “best” universities. When Miss Carr tells Blair that this is not a policy she feels comfortable adhering to, Blair cries out for war. Not wanting to cause any more drama, Serena tells Blair that she turned her offer of acceptance down. Dan gets all upset about this, and even Blair thinks that it’s pretty dumb of Serena to turn down Yale just to make Blair feel better/save Miss Carr from ultimate humiliation.

Miss Carr, I think you've misunderstood. I *am* B. I do not *get* Bs.

However, Blair’s ultimate humiliation plan still goes through, thanks to Iz and Penelope stirring up mischief. And what’s this ultimate humiliation plan? Why, invite Miss Carr to dinner and the opera as a sign of good faith! But tell her that the curtain rises at 8 p.m. instead of 7 and send her to a restaurant that’s closed! Ooooooooh, burn! I would be a bit put out that I’d wasted a few hours of an evening that I’d otherwise hadn’t had any plans for to stand in the cold and then not be let in to the Met, but other than the inconvenience of the thing, this was probably the lamest diabolical scheme ever conceived in the GG universe. I mean, really? Really, Blair? Really? That’s like 90210 lame. I thought you were above that. Of course, there is a complication to the plan. Just before curtain, Blair gets a call from Headmistress Queller saying that Miss Carr had spoken to her about Blair’s B and both women were willing to overlook this grade in order for Blair to keep her top-of-the-waitlist spot. When Blair receives this news, she heads to stop Miss Carr from continuing her evening of inconvenience. She accepts Blair’s apology and admission of craziness, but then turns around and calls HMQ, who calls Blair into her office on a Saturday to lands Blair with detention for Mission Opera Inconvenience, which puts her back on Yale’s waitlist. This, of course, means war. Or, as Gossip Girl herself cleverly put it: “Gon’ B startin’ somethin’.”

While I look forward to seeing Blair on the warpath in the coming episodes, I do have a question: in what fucking world does it matter to a college if you get detention after you’ve been accepted? It should matter if you get a D. It shouldn’t matter if you get detention. Plenty of straight-A students get detention. And that doesn’t keep them out of Harvard, Yale or Stanford, before or after a decision has been rendered. In fact, I’m pretty sure detentions don’t show up on your transcripts, but I could be wrong about that. My sister-in-law thinks that this might be a special rule because Constance and St. Jude’s have a unique relationship with Yalies, which is the best reason I can find for why detention should matter at all in this case.

As for Chuck Bass, he seeks Lily’s help to get back his rightful control of Bass Industries. Lily offers to help him, taking a break from all the crazy hot sex she’s having with Rufus, by leveraging her sizable stake in the company against the lesser shares held by other board members. For her help, though, she asks that Chuck move back in, adding yet another person who can be uncomfortable with the Hump Der Woodsen Humpfest. Getting Chuck’s company back proves to be a little harder than she had initially hoped, as Jack stumbles into a board meeting, late, with coke still on his nostrils. She warns him to be more concerned about the morality clause as she offers him a hankie. He then calls her the equivalent of a whore and storms off. Despite Jack’s obviously reprehensible behavior, Lily still warns Chuck to stay away from the kind of reputation-ruining pranks that Jack pulled on him. Chuck’s pranks are actually more impressive, I think, some of which include getting Jack caught with transgendered hookers, having him placed on Megan’s List as a sex offender, loading his gym bag with cocaine and actually attempting purchasing anthrax with Jack’s credit card.

Chuck, if you want my help, you're going to have to stop purchasing anthrax. That just looks bad for Bass Industries as a whole.

Lily takes Rufus to the opera that night to make their society debut, which angers Chuck, as his father was not a month dead. (Suddenly, Chuck Bass is seeming a lot like Hamlet . . .) Rufus, of course, knows nothing about opera, which kind of makes me question his rockstar status. It’s certainly not a requirement to be classically trained as a rock musician, but, frankly, I think we all know that the greats at least have an appreciation for classical music. (Trent Reznor, for example, is classically trained and you can tell when you listen to his arrangements.) I find it hard to believe that someone who loves music as much as Rufus Humphrey doesn’t even know the Magic Flute, which, as Lily points out, is mostly for children. Lily meets with one of Bart’s lawyers at the opera, and she realizes that a solution for Chuck may be easier than either of them had thought. She leaves Rufus to talk opera for a few minutes and informs Chuck that before Bart’s untimely death, Bart had planned to legally adopt Serena and Eric and Lily had planned to legally adopt Chuck, thus making them one big happy Bass Der Woodsen family. If Lily and Chuck sign the papers, she will become his legal guardian, making Bass Industries fall under her care, and any decisions about Chuck’s future with the company also her decision pending board approval. They sign the papers immediately and Lily becomes Chuck’s guardian, which infuriates apple-cheeked Uncle Jack, who was also at the opera, for no apparent reason. (Which is the same reason Chuck was there, I guess.) When Lily leaves her seats to go to the powder room, Jack follows her and locks the door behind her. He confronts her about her actions and decides that since she has taken the company from him, he will take something from her. As he starts to assault her, Chuck realizes that Lily is missing and that the door to the ladies room is locked. He and Rufus come back and break down the door, saving Lily from being raped by coked-up Uncle Jack. That rape was definitely one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever seen on Gossip Girl, but fitting for an episode revolving around the opera. In gratitude for saving her, a sign that Chuck Bass really is turning over a new leaf . . . he did try to rape two different girls in the very first episode, remember? . . Lily plans to turn control of Bass Industries over to Chuck on his 18th birthday, so long as he remains a part of her family. I’m pleased by this development, especially because I now get to call that entire family the Bass Der Hump Der Woodsens.

Also in this episode, Nate and Vanessa had a totally stupid rich boy-poor girl plot that would have been straight out of an opera had it actually amounted to anything at all. He buys her opera tickets in a gesture of kindness, noting her Wagner CDs, but secretly, she has purchased them as well, wanting to be a part of the high-class world Nate resides in. In an attempt to let Vanessa feel good about buying the tickets herself, Nate just puts his tickets in his pocket and never speaks of it . . . until Dan ruins the gig by acting all surprised that they’re sitting in the balcony for the performance. Gallantly, Nate sits in the balcony with Vanessa next to a woman with a cough, until they can’t take it anymore and move to Nate’s box to make out. Why did this plot even exist? There was no confrontation, no payoff, no anything. Worst. Opera. Ever. Almost as boring and pointless as the Nate and Vanessa plot was Dan and Serena’s half-assed confrontation about what it means for their relationship to not be going to school together in the fall, as Dan for some reason takes it as a personal affront that Serena turned down Yale. You know what, Dan? You didn’t even want to go to Yale until this year, and neither did Serena. So, why don’t you both wait and see what other schools you get into and then make a decision? If you don’t go to the same school, it’s not a big deal. If you guys really love each other and want to be together you’ll make it work. Fuck. Just fucking handle it.

I’m really not okay with so many people in the GG universe being so dumb. I count on this how to not be as dumb as 90210, but this episode kind of was. Save for the Chuck Bass plot. That shit was pretty awesome and actually like an opera.

The Husband:

Man, are my wife and I on different wavelengths this week? I really dug this episode. I seem to do that a great deal with episodes on a variety of shows that pretty much just shove every character into one location and see how tense it can get. I honestly don’t care much about why they are at said place as much as I care about what kinds of secrets and betrayals the writers can cook up. That’s why I dug s1’s nearly incoherently silly but awesome episode “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” where everyone converged on the Masquerade Ball, with or without invitation, and wreaked havoc in oh so many ways (e.g. Nate kissing Jenny, thinking it’s Blair, etc. etc. etc.). That’s why I dig episodes that step outside of a show’s comfort zone and give us emotional clusterfucks (such as beach house/log cabin episodes of such shows as Frasier, What About Brian and Brothers & Sisters). It makes up its own rules, like it or not.

Sure, Serena is lying for no reason and making dumb impulsive decisions, but when has Serena been any different? She and Dan clearly have issues when they are apart from one another, so I can understand their hesitancy to go to different schools, even if, yes, they can technically handle it if they just fucking grew up. But see, that’s why I like Serena and Dan. They make ridiculous decisions and have ridiculous fights, but they do it together. What do the Strokes say? “Alone we stand, together we fall apart”? Exactly.

But yes, Dan, what happened to Dartmouth? Are we just ignoring that? Probably, because I even forgot about it, mistaking his interest in being the usher for the Dartmouth representative in s1 as actually being about Yale. I accept this ignoring of items past, simply because I’m selfish and am giving the writers the benefit of the doubt.

This is basically my roundabout way of saying that perhaps I lower my bullshit meter in episodes such as these, where the location itself has enough character and attitude to make up for some logic deficiencies. Is this a problem? As a television critic, perhaps. But as an avid GG viewer looking for my next fix, I feel it comes with the territory. Because even if I was very surprised to see Lily take such an interest in Chuck’s future between the last few episodes and this one, I loved their joint usurpation of the one apple-cheeked Uncle Jack Bass and didn’t mind that it seemed somewhat out-of-character for her. But don’t call her a bitch, Uncle Jack, or you’re gonna get figuratively ass-raped by her.

Clearly, I’ve lost my mind this morning. Too much coffee. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

 

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 2.14: “In the Realm of the Basses”

The Wife:

It’s a new year on the Upper East Side and there’s a lot going on for Chuck, Blair, Little J, Serena, Dan and their respective parents. Completely absent from this episode are the obscenely boring Nate and outsider Vanessa, as well as Eleanor Waldorf and Cyrus Rose. I’m sure they’re off on an extended honeymoon somewhere, but I missed Cyrus a little bit this week. Now I can’t write an “inconceivable” joke in this post, and that makes me really sad.

When we last left off, Chuck had gone missing and Blair has spent the holiday season trying to find him – finally getting word that Chuck’s suave and apple-cheeked Uncle Jack (Desmond Harrington) has located the sole Bass heir smoking opium with Thai prostitutes in a Bass hotel in Bangkok. It’s good to know that Chuck is the kind of guy that goes to find himself and dull the pain by hanging out in opium dens. How very . . . Byronic of him. Chuck’s return, while quieting Blair’s fears that she’s lost Chuck forever, dishevels Miss Waldorf so much that she no longer cares for high school pursuits, completely blowing off Penelope and her mean girls in their petty judgments of Little J and Nelly Yuki. Worse, though, is that Chuck’s return interrupts Blair’s preparations for her impending meeting with New York’s (and, consequently, the world’s) most exclusive social club that never takes girls of high school age, the Colony Club. Blair tries to save Chuck from expulsion when he flagrantly smokes weed on campus by sitting in as his guardian, until apple-cheeked Uncle Jack sweeps in to save the day, stealing Blair’s caretaker role and making her very suspicious of his intentions. Now, I decided immediately that I love Uncle Jack because he looks great in a grey suit with a lavender tie and I kind of want to bite his cheeks of his face. But he is a Bass, and Blair has every right to be suspicious, especially because Jack seems to be very good at letting Chuck wander off when he’s supposed to be taking care of him.

Chuck disappears again immediately after his disciplinary meeting with Headmistress Queller, and Blair later finds him at Victrola, which he purchased back with his mighty Bass inheritance just the other day. I think the only thing I love more than Opium Zombie Chuck is Opium Zombie Chuck + Burlesque Dancers. She tries to convince Chuck to come home with her, but he refuses, insulting her for admitting she loved him before he disappeared to Thailand. He invites her to the party he intends to throw at Victrola that night, hoping to further devalue her affections by asking her to grace him with a dance. She returns home for her Colony Club meeting visibly upset after briefly stopping to talk to Serena and beg her to help with Chuck. Ever the social climber, Blair manages to compose herself smartly in a beret and a vintage-inspired rhinestone collared LBD for her Colony Club meeting – a combination that I couldn’t decide if it was more reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn or Ava Gardner, but amazing either way. She meets with the prepped out UES matrons who immediately begin to try her patience by insulting Blair’s dearest friends: Serena and Chuck. Rather than give in to these wicked biddies who never grew out of being high school mean girls, Blair defends her friends and storms out to find the person she loves most in the world: Chuck Bass.

With the grey shawl, I think its a little more Ava than Audrey. It's fucking awesome, whatever the inspiration was.

Meanwhile, Little J has returned to Constance full time, apparently forgetting entirely her multi-episode crazy person bender in which she was virtually expelled and couldn’t figure out how to not have her dresses burned. (Step 1: Take your dresses out of the trashcan before a crazy model lights them on fire. Step 2: Take your dresses out of the trashcan. Step 3: Punch crazy model in the face.) While hanging out at a Pinkberry with Eric, Little J notices how badly Penelope, Iz and Hazel are treating Nelly Yuki, seeing an echo of how she used to be treated. She tries to save Nelly Yuki from Penelope and the girls by stealing Nelly away from the degradation of having to wipe down Penelope’s yogurt-covered shoes, and then trying to show the girls how stupid their “Girls of the Steps” clique is by sitting at their Pinkberry table and inviting the entire sophomore class to hang out at Pinkberry with them, leaving no table at all for Penelope and her lackeys.

So, look, I have an irrational attachment to certain seats as well. I get feeling a little venomous towards those who take your seat. But you quietly fume about that, like George Costanza would. You do not call your parents and insist that someone who sits at your table and invites a bunch of people to “your” yogurt shop is bullying you. Headmistress Queller tells Little J to work out the issue herself, and then finds out that the best way to show Penelope that she means business is to blackmail her with the information Nelly Yuki knows about Penelope (she’s having an affair with someone at her dad’s company), Hazel (likes to get drunk and make out with her cousin) and Iz (whose secret is apparently very fearsome and unmentionable). By the time Jenny confronts them with this information outside Victrola, she has managed to cover up her roots (good for you, honey) and finds out that Nelly Yuki was only playing her to get on the good side of Constance’s new “queen bee,” which everyone just assumed slightly-less-crazy Jenny wanted to be upon her return. But new, not-so-crazy, best-friends-with-Eric doesn’t care about any of that. So Nelly abandons her after all of her good deeds and returns to her abusers.

Serena returns from Argentina, thankfully, without Aaron Rose. She broke up with him three hours into their flight to Buenos Aires, which I say is a goddamned Christmas miracle. Free of Aaron and fully aware of the waning affections between Rufus and Lily, she immediately gets back together with Dan, much to Blair’s disgust. But Serena and Dan’s happiness hinges entirely on the secret that Daddy Rufus is keeping from the kiddies, and Dan, apparently having the heart of an investigative journalist, will stop at nothing to find out why his father was in Boston for two weeks. He and Serena rifles through Rufus’ things and, after Serena sneaks out to see Blair, having been instructed by Rufus that she is not to be with Dan at the house if Rufus is not at home, finds that his father had been calling orphanages in and around Boston. I couldn’t tell if Dan immediately thought this meant that he was adopted or if he knew he had a missing brother or sister out there, but, either way, the hint of an answer drove him to find Opium Zombie Chuck at Victrola and pump him for the secret. (Only after Rufus accidentally lets slip that he thought Dan may have found out from Chuck already.)

Welcome to my den of debauchery.

At the club, Chuck willingly tells Dan the information about his secret brother, noting that the good deed of killing the Bart Bass story deserves another good deed (as good a deed as Opium Zombie Chuck can provide). While Dan waits for Serena to tell her about their mutual sibling (kind of incestuous to continue he relationship, according to Chuck), Rufus pays a visit to Lily, informing her that Dan knows and that it’s only a matter of time before Serena and Eric know, too. She tries to apologize to Rufus for giving up their child – an act he says he’s fine with, he’s merely upset that Lily didn’t feel he had a right to know about the child at all. Unlike Lily, Rufus hasn’t had twenty years to process the information. He somehow convinces her to go looking for their son with him, calling Dan just moments before he’s about to tell Lily’s secret to Serena, insisting that Lily give the news to her children when they return, leaving Dan in a really awkward position.

Eric, meanwhile, reaches out to Chuck at the Victrola party, and Chuck refuses to come back to the Bass Der Woodsen apartment, telling Eric that he’s been glad to have him as a little brother, heading instead to participate in his favorite activity of drinking and contemplating suicide on the roof. (As Blair notes, he has a thing for roofs.) Blair and apple-cheeked Uncle Jack arrive just in time to keep Chuck from accidentally-intentionally slipping over the edge like his poor bottle of scotch. Jack almost sends Chuck over the edge himself by calling out his name and startling him so much he nearly loses his footing. (Does Jack stand to get a shit-ton of money if his dear nephew bites the dust? Absofuckinglutely.) Blair heads straight to Chuck’s side and extends her hand, reiterating what she told him when he ran away from her profession of love at the Bart Bass wake: she’ll always be there for him. She isn’t going anywhere. After screaming a Brando-esque cry to the gods that he is, indeed, Chuck Bass, a subdued Chuck takes Blair’s hand and comes down from the ledge. She unwillingly hands Chuck over to Jack’s custody, telling the man flat out that she doesn’t trust him and delivering the mysterious ultimatum that Chuck Bass can not know what happened on New Year’s. I’ll tell you what, gang, I can’t wait to find out.

I'm going to eat this man's cheeks.

Some costuming notes:

• Other than Blair’s chic black Colony Club ensemble, I also loved her steely blue tweed overcoat from this episode.
• Iz’s white wool coat with the amazingly intricate black frogs down the front is stunning.
• Little J needs to get over her lemur eye fetish.
• There is never enough Sweater Rufus Humphrey. Sweater Rufus is the best Rufus, always and forever.

(Husband Note: I vote for Drunk Suicidal Robert Pattinson Hair Chuck.)

The Husband:

I should really stop underestimating the show, which I seem to keep doing despite my utter respect for pretty much everything in the world of GG. When Nelly Yuki seemed in this episode to revert back to her nice s1 self (pre-Blair fucking with her life in order to mess up her SAT scores), I just chalked it up to the writers feeling that they needed to restart her character, that enough time had passed between the last episode of GG and now, and that Nelly Yuki had so little screen time so far this season that we wouldn’t really notice that she stopped being a bitchy “Girl of the Steps.” In other words, I’m fine in accepting sudden changes for distant supporting characters, because that, in essence, is their job.

But when she reveals her true intentions at the end of the episode regarding all of her “nice” actions, I realized…goddamn it…that I had done it again. I had underestimated the writers. She was still a brainiac-turned-shallow bitch. Aside from the fact that the show insists that Serena killed somebody, which she didn’t, and that Lily’s mother could go from psycho bitch in s1 to the nice woman we met in the Hamptons at the beginning of s2, the writers and showrunners of GG don’t play fast and loose with their characters’ motivations, and that they treat the audience as if they are intelligent and savvy.

And I’m glad that Zap2It’s TV Gal had both her wishes granted – for Serena to ditch Aaron in South America (done!) and for Chuck to stop with the wild histrionics (Opium Zombie Chuck is a complete 180 from Drunk Funeral Chuck). I hope that the lack of Aaron doesn’t lead to less screentime for Cyrus Rose, not because I want to write references to The Princess Bride (as my wife is wont to do), but because I really really like the Cyrus and Eleanor stuff.

And I want to reference A Goofy Movie and The Incredibles. “I’m not happy, Bob. Not. Happy.”

As far as episode titles go, my wife pointed out that “In The Realm Of The Basses” doesn’t work nearly as well as far as cleverness is concerned as, say, “The Dark Night” or “Desperately Seeking Serena” or “Chuck In Real Life,” but I have a bigger problem in the reference itself. The film In The Realm Of The Senses, to which it refers, is a crazy Japanese movie that is pretty much two hours of explicit simulated sex (and one very illuminating egg trick) and then a graphic and bloody murder/castration sequence. What kind of message is Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage promoting to young, impressionable teenage girls?

 

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?