Gossip Girl - "There Might Be Blood"

Finally we get a week off from the Chuck and Blair show and I've got to say that this was probably one of the strongest episodes in a while.

I thought that the central storyline, involving Jenny's efforts to stage a guerilla fashion show (and not, as I had hoped, a gorilla fashion show), was reasonably compelling. The Jenny-Nate-Vanessa triangle is shockingly compelling and Jenny's bubbly, destructive self-absorption can be interesting when used in the right way.

After last week, Nate and Jenny aren't talking (apparently Jenny also forgot that even she was creeped out by Weird Model In Need of Acting Lessons) and Jenny's been working on a secret project: the aforementioned act of fashion terrorism (speaking of fashion terrorism, I didn't mention Jenny's awful new haircut or equally ugly outfit last week, but both seemed to improve this go around). Jenny, with the help of WMINOAL's sketchy friends, busted up a gala event honoring Lilly and Bart.

To be honest, everything before and after the fashion show worked, but I had a couple of issues with the event itself. First of all, I didn't find it nearly as awesomely rebellious as the show seemed to (and a note to Jemina Pearl and Thurston Moore: nice try, but no). Is it really that punk rock to bust up a party like that if your stated goal is to get funding? Shouldn't she have been trying to say something a little deeper than "pay me?" I also didn't like that everyone seemed to love it. If everyone loved it then the stakes are dramatically lower and there's no real consequence to her actions? And aren't these supposed to be old, boring people? No one was bothered by this?

That said, I thought the ending kinda redeemed this. Rufus' poor parenting and Jenny's refusal to care about anything but Jenny make for some interesting conflict. Its hard to say who's worse off at the end of the episode, but I'm going to go with Jenny, just because running off to live with WMINOAL is only ending in tears.

Meanwhile, Blair faced off against a mini-Blair (who reads Gossip Girl obsessively but hadn't seemed to have heard of Blair) in order to get on the good side of someone who can get her into Yale. The girl is determined to have her cherry popped before her friend Muffy, but Blair needs to stop her from doing that. Blair succeeds, thanks to an assist from Chuck who plants a fake story about Muffy on Gossip Girl. It was a pretty slight plot, but it gave Blair the chance to finally get catty again and we also saw a really nice moment of humanity in the end. Again, I felt kind of let down that Blair didn't end up blackmailing her way into Yale (because how perfect would that have been), but nonetheless it looks like she and Serena will be classmates. I also thought it was interesting, considering how both Blair and Jenny alluded to her, that Eleanor was absent. Given how her real daughter may have just opened up some previously untapped feelings and her fake daughter just declared fashion war in the New York Times, I would be kind of disappointed if we don't hear from her next week.

In other news, Dan judged Nate and, more interestingly, was inspired by his failure to connect with Yale professors and Jenny's rebellion to write the Chuck Bass Story - a move that I whole-heartedly support. Rufus didn't approve, but I'd say there's a difference between publicly airing out the tawdry affairs of Chuck, who has never been anything but obnoxious to Dan, and what Jenny did. And I think its better if Dan doesn't always do the "right" thing. Meanwhile, in the night's only plotline that didn't connect for me, Serena continued to try to connect with her Creepy Ex-Husband (seriously, you would have to change very few details of this storyline to make it fit on South Park). Serena, here's a bit of free advice: if you try to speak to or call someone three times and each time you end up talking to a different girl, the guy you are dealing with is sleazy. Ah, but young Serena finds his douchey advances irresistable, so we will be treated to another week of CEH.

Still, those are but small concerns for an episode that was otherwise pretty good. And on a week like this, I'm willing to let a few small things go.

B+

Gossip Girl - "Pret a Poor Jenny"

That was 45 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. Seriously, between the terrible acting, awful writing, and groaning attempts at both humor and serious message-making this episode was like the Olympics of Terrible.

Taking the bronze was Chuck and Blair, for what will hopefully be the conclusion of their will they-won't they storyline. At first, the idea of pairing Chuck and Blair was delightful, but its been THE SAME STORYLINE FOR FOUR WEEKS. However, this wasn't a complete failure for two reasons. First, I thought the idea of getting Dan involved in this storyline was a stroke of genius. It was nice to see him do the wrong thing for once too (although that being said, I disagree wholeheartedly with Serena and thought it was pretty shallow of her to dismiss what Blair and Chuck did to Vanessa). I also liked the resolution, largely because I agree with Chuck. The reason I've never fully been on the Blair/Chuck train is that getting them together just wouldn't work, either for them as characters or for the show as a whole. That being said, the scene on the rooftop was so cringe-inducingly terrible that I can't grade this storyline as good.

In the silver was Serena, who had her first post-Dan flirtation with an artist who wears thick frames that presumably have no lenses (that's how I will choose to explain the fact that he just takes them on and off at random). He seemed pretty bland to me until he asked out Serena, and then he came off extremely douchey. I get that he knew her earlier, but he wasn't being charming, he was just being a tool. Meanwhile, Dan and Serena are now friends again, so Dan can go back to not having scenes with any other character on the show.

But taking the gold this week was little J. Its not that I don't buy that she's that naive and impressionable (because I do. I really do). Its just that the whole good girl falls in with the wrong crowd thing is such a boring cliche. This show does a lot wrong, but by and large they've done a good job of not going for the easy storyline. The bad model was tired. The sketchy photographer dude was tired. And, honestly, since he didn't look any older than the actors who play Nate, Chuck, or Dan I never realized that he was supposed to be much older than Jenny. Speaking of Nate, the whole thing with him and Jenny really came out of nowhere, didn't it? Did they interact at all this season? Have I missed the clues because I'm not examining this show frame by frame, like Lost?

Ultimately there were enough little things to keep this episode from being the worst thing I've ever seen. But we spent far too much time wading into maudlin sentimentality and uptight moralizing; neither of which really fit well with a show this scandalous and amoral.

D+

Gossip Girl - "Chuck in Real Life"

Hey, remember how Serena used to have a brother? No? Well he's back this week, with a new boyfriend who got a cursory mention. The true focus in Van Der Woodsen-land was on Lily, however, who attempted to make up for 17 years of absentee parenting by becoming Supermom. This seemed like the kind of storyline that I would get excited about, but for whatever reason I just wasn't feeling it. Part of the problem may be that this show doesn't really do earnest sincerity very well, but I think my bigger issue is that this storyline kind of came out of nowhere. Serena and Lily haven't been clashing very much recently, and they got over a lot of these issues in season one. More interesting to me is how out of control Serena seems to be getting. Going full Britney Spears seems a little beyond normal teenage rebellion (in all likelihood that was a joke, but it doesn't make Serena any more responsible). I'm not entirely clear on where they're taking her. Is Serena collapsing back to pre-season one Serena? It seems like it, but they're stopping short of turning her fully into a mean girl socialite. My question is why? It would change things up to make Serena the show's evil one for a while, but every time they try it, they always back off before she goes too far.

Meanwhile, in bromance world, Nate and Dan had their first fight when Dan saw the dire conditions Nate is living in. But one off-screen Humphreys guilt trip later, everything's okay and Nate has moved to Brooklyn. I liked the Dan/Nate friendship in theory (both of them are in dire need of something to do on this show), but in practice this episode just didn't work for me on that level.

Ah, but let's not forget about the episode's real A-story, as the Constance Billard Players decided to stage a revival of Cruel Intentions. Blair challenged Chuck to seduce Vanessa and in exchange, Chuck could have Blair. This was vintage, season one level evil calculation. So why wasn't it more fun? I think because it was all just too easy. Vanessa has seemed like a smart and capable girl, so I'd have thought it would take a little more effort for someone as irredeemably awful as Chuck to win her over. But apparently, buying her speakeasy was all it took. While there were three or four points where it seemed painfully obvious that everything from Chuck's bonding with the old speakeasy guy to the argument he had with Bart was part of his elaborate Chuck-plan for victory, but I was wrong. It turns out Vanessa's earnest Brooklynness melted the icy heart of Mr. Bass (if only a little), so Blair stepped in and put an end to the game herself before things went further between Chuck and Vanessa. Then Chuck turned the tables on Blair and tried to get her to admit she loves him.

Unlike most Gossip Girl fans, I can't say I'm rooting for Chair (you like that? I prefer it to Buck, although either way its pretty stupid) in the same way I'm rooting for, say, Robin and Barney. I think they're both too immature and destructive to really have something that would work (I picture any sort of future looking closer to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf). But its hard to deny they're an interesting pairing.

So all in all, I still liked this. However, I liked it less than last week's which, thinking back on, I feel like I graded a little low. I just wish there was more than one interesting thing per week.

B-

Gossip Girl - "New Haven Can Wait"

Previously on Gossip Girl: Stuff happened. Seriously, it may just be the extra week off, but I can't remember one detail from the last episode. Its okay though, because none of it was really salient to this week.

Instead, the story featured the whole gang going to New Haven for Yale's perspective weekend - an interesting idea that could have led to some good developments. After becoming used to generally be in charge of everything, it would be interesting to see them getting a taste of being little fish in a massive pond. But this wasn't really that episode (and besides, given how obsessed this show is with these characters, I doubt they'll ever not be the center of the world) nor was it an especially interesting one.

The main action focused on Serena and Blair, who dueled for invitations to the Dean's party, a story that started well. The Blair/Serena conflict is an interesting one to me (as I write every week), but it seems like the show spends so much time telling us that they're at war without actually having them do anything. This week rectified that a little bit, but I think it was just doing too much. I was with it for the first half or so, which played like the college admissions version of The Prestige, with Serena the showwoman versus Blair the uncharismatic intellectual. I'll admit I was pulling for Blair (as always) and it was kinda heartbreaking when she didn't get into the Dean's party. But of course, she had a back up plan and was it a doozy. I think Blair bringing up Serena's having killed a guy last year to the whole party was quite possibly the nastiest thing I've seen the show done (and because I'm a sociopath, it was also one of my favorite moments of the season). What I liked about it was that Blair clearly crossed the line, but in a devious, evil way that was also completely believable and well within what we've seen her do before.

But then things got stupid again. The proceeding catfight out on the porch (the second such fight on Monday night, as fans of How I Met Your Mother remember) was predictable and tired (they've already done that a couple times before). I'm not going to complain about a catfight between Leighton Meester and Blake Lively, but what I will complain about is the rushed, now-we're-friends-again scenes that followed. Really? Blair brought up Serena's darkest secret to a room full of strangers and now everything's okay? Serena sabotaged Blair's lifelong dream and now everything's okay? This should have been a die-is-cast episode for a storyline that was just getting started. Instead, B and S have resolved their issues and are friends again? LAME

What else? Well, the Chuck-Nate bromance was threatened through a bonding experience between Nate and Dan that involved each assuming the others' identity. Nate did it first, to get with a girl without her knowing that he's the spawn of Yale's Most Wanted (the Captain). Despite being a TA for the English department, she seemed amused by Nate's vacant responses to her questions about Marquez and didn't really get wise until the real Dan Humphreys showed up at her door, thanks to his need to get a professor to read his work and write a recommendation. The whole Dan thing seemed pretty outlandish to me (why couldn't he just ask a professor? is that even really how it works at Yale? how much clout does English girl have in the department?) but whatever. And I'd like to say that I don't find it believable that she'd go with the boring nothing guy over the nice guy with common interests, but alas I find that all too believable.

In other news, Chuck acted like a douche for an hour, but his hilarious victory over Skull and Bones made it worth it (and I like that Dan is getting more story-time with Nate and Chuck). Meanwhile, Rufus continued his campaign for father of the year by letting Jenny drop out of school and pursue her fashion career. I think I may have misinterpreted this storyline as being about how hard a time Jenny was having at school, but instead it looks like it was just a vehicle to get her into fashion full-time. So now we have lots more made-for-TV-Devil-Wears-Prada action to look forward to. Yippy. And Lily earned herself a new nickname: Serena's Unidentified Friend (heretofore known as SUF).

I wouldn't call this episode an epic fail as much as a missed opportunity. It seems like there's so much more that could be done with a college visit (or for that matter, any of the storylines happening tonight), but we're consistently getting the least interesting outcomes out of each storyline (a problem this show is not unfamiliar with). If we're going to make this show about people who have Yale as a safety school, then let's go all the way with this. Unfortunately, each week makes me less and less convinced that this show can keep up the crazed, accidental levels of genius it was hitting in season one.

C

P.S. Does anyone think that picture is going to net us a few extra hits this week?

Edited to Add:

Apparently Dan and Serena are Obama supporters. Forget about Bill Ayers, this is the connection the McCain campaign should be running with:

Gossip Girl - "The Serena Also Rises"

No new Gossip Girl this week, a fact that I will take advantage of to catch up on last week's installment. After "The Ex Files" I was expecting a little more fireworks out of this one, but all in all it was pretty solid.

The main focus was on frenemies this week, as the story lines brought together some of my favorite pairings on the show. The one that seemed the best in theory was Dan and Chuck hitting the town, however I have to admit that I was kind of disappointed by that one. The idea of the two of them spending time together seemed like it would be amusing, but I think we ultimately got too little of that. They rushed through the storyline to get to the big revelation about Chuck, a scene that I thought was played well, but that it may ultimately not be good for the show for Chuck to become too human. I also thought it was pretty weird that Dan brought a copy of his marked up short story with him. But I liked that he ultimately rebelled against the crazy writer and apparently wrote a good story about him instead (although that was a pretty predictable outcome).

Meanwhile, Blair felt threatened by Serena this week, the first time we've had such a storyline since the beginning of season one. I was hoping for all out war, but we weren't quite at that point yet. Or Serena wasn't, anyway, but Blair was doing some crazy things. My main problem with this was how much Blair directed her bile at Jenny, for no good reason. I get that she wasn't happy about the seating chart, and that Blair is evil, but I figured her Sun-Tzu side would know to fight the real enemy. Instead she spent most of the hour focusing her evil schemes on ruining Jenny and her mom's fashion show. Most of the plans didn't even seem directly aimed at any goal other than ruining the fashion show, which I just didn't get.

Fortunately, things picked up towards the end, as we got a very nice scene between Blair and Jenny that seems to indicate that the latter is directly aligned with the former. Does this mean Blair is becoming as out as Jenny? Is that one of those scenes we aren't really going to talk about next week? The other really great moment was the Serena-Blair showdown at the end. Both of them acted pretty childlishly (I can't imagine what would compel a person to tell their best friend that she has held them back like Serena did), but I was pleased to see that they didn't just hug and make up at the end. It seems like the show is fully committing to Serena vs. Blair for the time being, and that's probably the wisest choice for now.

Also, really quickly, Jenny clashed with her father over not going to school. While she obviously needs to go to school, I thought Rufus was pretty stupid in this episode. Jenny has some serious problems at school and he refused to even listen to her. Considering how much tuition must cost, he should at least make sure she isn't too terrified to go to school. And, let's not forget that while he's busy not understanding Jenny, he completely missed that Dan was out doing hard pills and getting thrown in jail. Oh, and apparently posing for a Mapplethorpe makes you a cool mom. Back when I was in high school, finding out your parents had naked pictures taken of them was just creepy. Oh how the times change!

B

Gossip Girl - "The Ex Files"

Previously on Gossip Girl, Nate was being boring with both a middle aged married woman and Vanessa, who managed to cram an entire season of crying into one episode. Blair was dating the woman's stepson, a British lord with a hilariously fake accent. Meanwhile, Serena and Dan accidentally got the script from last season's finale, but went ahead and acted it out anyway. Oh, and Rufus is dating. Which is a storyline. I guess.

I was actually considering pulling the plug on these recaps since 3 episodes in, this show was sucking. And not in that special, awesome way that it usually sucks. But I decided I'd give it another week and thank God I did, because this week was all kinds of great.

But bad news first, in order to get rid of boring cougar and her boring stepson we had to deal with a plot that the show certainly thought was OMG-worthy, the two of them are sleeping together! Honestly, was anyone surprised by this? Other than Vanessa, who got to cry some more, and Blair, who told Vanessa she'd take care of it, then ceased contact with her and was shocked when Vanessa saw her with boring stepson and assumed the worst. Of course, Vanessa is also not in the clear here, since, as much as I hate to say it, Nate was right and she should have told him. But that's about all the interest I can muster in this plotline, the result seeming to be that Nate and Vanessa are done (again), and Blair was too distracted to keep up with everyone else's schenanigans.

Which is too bad, because everything about this episode was so great. The Swirling Vortex took center stage and, although that normally means trouble, this week we finally got to see the plot move forward into post breakup territory. The trouble started when Dan appeared to be winning the breakup by meeting and arranging a date with Amanda, who I had a serious crush on for about a half hour. Seriously, she looks just like Jenny Lewis, has great taste in books, is both rich and unpretentious, and looks JUST like Jenny Lewis. Of course, it was all too good to be true, but I'm getting ahead of myself, for much of the show's first half dealt with Blair's failed attempts to marginalize Amanda. That plan backfired hardcore when Dan and Amanda showed up at Club That We Saw Like Twice Last Season (I assume, it was so generic looking it could have been everywhere and the show is somewhat surprisingly missing any sort of hangout or central gathering place). This gave us the triumphant return of Gossip-Girl-as-plot-device, one of my favorite elements of the show, and ultimately led to Serena deciding for once acting like an adult and attempt to bury the hatchet.

Unfortunately, she also demanded a group date, something that was clearly only ever ending in tears. For a second, after the bland girls burned Amanda's hair I was worried we'd get self-righteous Serena. But instead Josh Schwartz smiled upon us and gave us the greatest development of all -> MEAN GIRL SERENA. We've heard forever about how bad Serena used to be, but getting the chance to actually see her in action should be the shot of adreneline this show needed. And now we've opened up all kinds of plot opportunities: for Blair, who's back to being number 2, for Chuck, who now has someone new to plot with, and for the Humphreys, who have suddenly become public enemies 1 and 2. The ending revelation, that Chuck was paying Amanda to get close to Dan, was just the delicious icing on this week's cake of awesome bitchiness. Honestly, Amanda was too good to be true and my one complaint was how unrealistically she had been behaving for someone who didn't know Dan 24 hours ago. It was nice to see someone's stupid and unrealistic behavior explained for once.

In subplot world, Jenny was treated obnoxiously and ended up skipping school to go to Eleanor's again. I feel bad for Jenny, but I'd rather see her dealing with the mean girls than trapped in a made for TV version of The Devil Wears Prada. She was always the most interesting when she wasn't running away, and I sort of thought they were ultimately setting her up as some kind of vigilante, using mean girl tactics for good. I guess not. Oh, and Rufus is dating. Still. But he can't date Lilly. Whatever.

I have short-changed a number of great things about this episode (Blair actually had files for Draft Day, and literally conducted interviews! And Chuck used the files to find people to date!), because there was just so much to like. If I'm going to be obnoxious about everything this show does wrong (and believe me, I will) then I've got to give it credit for what it gets right. When the writers manage to place us inside the workings of the TMZ lifestyle these kids lead, it makes for truly compelling television. And now that the season seems to have finally found a compelling and new direction, there could be no stopping it.

A-

Gossip Girl - The Dark Night

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