Well from the sublime to the ridiculous it seems. For a detailed explanation of my thoughts on Gossip Girl as a whole, you can go here. In short, there are few shows I have as much contempt for as this one, and yet the writers have somehow stumbled upon a premise that is relevant and interesting and I'm not quite ready to give it up yet.
Last night's episode was, as usual, pretty dodgy. The weekly party was a back-to-school bash being thrown by Blair, who's still with that bland English lord. Seriously, that guy has somehow managed to have less personality than Nate, which is no easy task. And its still unclear to me why he's so in love with Blair when she has been incredibly and overtly shallow and obnoxious to him. Is he just a moron? I understand that the writers need for this to happen, but couldn't they at least have put a little effort into making it convincing?
Meanwhile, Chuck continues to pine over Blair. The writers had definitely hit on something by getting them together last season, but they seem to have missed the point. Blair and Chuck's games work best when there's lots of collateral damage and when they're truly evil. They're missing a lot of opportunities by making Chuck's scheming both pathetic and directed solely at Blair. Things come to a head when we get the titular blackout, followed by the scene where Blair has sex with Chuck. I'm glad she knew that it wasn't BL (British Lord), but that's still a pretty big contrivance.
Are things finally over between her and BL? It didn't seem like it, but I guess we'll have to wait to find out.
Nate has the opposite problem: for once he's caught up in a plotline that doesn't suck, but he's still too bland for me to truly care. This week Vanessa found out that he's sleeping with BL's stepmom and was none too happy. However, she forgave Nate and then made him go with BLSM anyway, because BLSM would rat out Nate's dad if she didn't. I like Vanessa a lot, even though I'm not really clear on how she is able to afford to live in Brooklyn and shop at Urban Outfitters as much as she does. But this whole Nate thing seemed like it was just going to be a rehash of the Dan-Serena storyline, so I'm glad to see this go in a different direction. As for Nate, seriously dude, try acting for once. The mop in those Swifter ads has more charisma than you.
Onto the swirling vortex of stupid that is Dan and Serena, where there was good and bad. First the good, which was the scene when they came upon Gossip Girl's 12 year old army. This show is at its best when Gossip Girl is a participant in the action, and the scene where Dan and Serena's "fans" came up to them and starting harassing them about their love life was all kinds of perfect. I'll make this point a lot, but Gossip Girl is best when its commenting on the tabloid culture, and there are few scenes that have done that better than this one (it was a delightfully meta moment to boot). Now the bad: everything that happened after that. Did the writers not show up to work the day they wrote this scene? Or did everyone just forget that they had the EXACT SAME conversation in the finale. Remember? There was Death Cab for Cutie and everything? You waste three hours of my time faking me into thinking they'll get back together and you can't even come up with a new reason not to go through with it?
Oh yeah, Jenny's still on this show too. Call me when you become a mean girl again.
So, to recap, this week was just okay and what little scandal there was didn't make up for the lazy writing. In the battle for my sanity, Gossip Girl has won this round, but its still far from over.
C
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