OMG the hills are totally alive with the sound of texting when bad girl Serena van der Woodsen comes back to the Upper East Side after a year at boarding school. Nobody knows why she left, or why she's back, but everybody's reading about it on dishy blog GossipGirl.net. Those particularly interested in the news include Serena's ex-BFF Blair Waldorf, her BF Nate Archibald, and invisible poet and poor person Dan Humphrey. Blair immediately tries to cash in her V card with Nate on hearing the news, but Serena stops by just long enough to interrupt their love connection; turns out N has a bit of a thing for S. Not to mention reefer LOL.
After a seriously tense showdown at the Met, S and B talk it out. Serena can't tell Blair why she's back and challenging her popularity buzz, but she does apologize for just leaving like that. Everything seems to be going okay between them, and then here's why Serena's come back: her younger brother Eric tried to off himself, and is now being hidden away in the hospital by their mom. Local sleaze Chuck Bass, convinced Serena's spots haven't changed, tries forcibly to get some action, reminding her that he was a witness to S and Nate's giant hookup right before she left -- just as N's admitting their secret to Blair, who now has three problems with S.
Serena's so not invited to Blair's Kiss On The Lips party, but that's okay: she dropped a glass slipper, in the form of a Sidekick, while escaping Chuck's predations. Retrieving it, she makes a date with Dan to get away from the stress of her mom, KOTL, and the rest of it; she and Eric also make the acquaintance of Dan's little sister Jenny. Lily (Serena's mom) and Rufus (Dan's rocker dad) have a romantic history, so they get weird together about the impending date. Which is totally fun and sweet, until Serena and Dan are summoned to KOTL anyway: Chuck's newest victim is little Jenny Humphrey. They rescue her dramatically and bounce for the night, having thrown like the entire world into a tizzy. Blair puts into motion a takedown plan involving both the black ops of Chuck and the lateral attack of befriending Jenny, but between the multiple rape attempts, constant drinking, and couture everything, Serena's too tired to care. Welcome home, S!
"Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn & John -- a song so over-licensed it now plays whenever I send an email, receive an email, am approached by strangers, see a blue or green car, or think about what shoes to wear today -- plays over Serena van der Woodsen's beautiful face as she stares out the train window, heading toward Grand Central, and more NYC porn than you can shake a stick at. Provided it is an inexpensive stick. The weirdest thing about this song is that I still love it, after what, like a year now? That's a good song right there, like "Hey Ya." Does anybody hate this song? Or "Hey Ya"? I might hate "Hey Ya," now that I'm saying that. I don't want to find out. Speaking of sounds that never fail to thrill, check out Kristen Bell as the eponymous Gossip Girl, the oft-heard (perhaps slightly too oft, in the pilot at least) but never-seen narrator of the action. The conceit is that in the heightened reality of the show, our characters are like royalty, and their every move is reported upon by this blogger who is all in with them, but is never identified. This shouldn't make the jump from the books to the show, because it's kind of intrusive, but I still like it because of the way KB fully relishes the saucy, ridiculous lines, spreading them out like sexy, creepy pâté on this, like, brioche of comedic boredom. It's brilliant, the only actual way to do it without wanting to kill yourself, and it takes what should be the worst thing about the show, and makes it maybe the best and craziest thing about the show. Out of an infinity of options, because the show is crazy, vide:
Hey Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here, and I have the biggest news ever. One of my many sources, melanie91, sends us this... Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand? Serena van der Woodsen. Was it only a year ago our It Girl mysteriously disappeared for "boarding school"? And just as suddenly, she's back. Don't believe me? See for yourselves. Lucky for us, melanie91 sent proof. Thanks for the photo, mel!"
Okay, nuts, right? She's like Dowd and Tina Brown trying to like make an incisive satirical example of Carrie Bradshaw, and failing. And meanwhile what we're seeing is this girl, melanie91, spotting Serena van der Woodsen who mysteriously disappeared for boarding school a year ago, and has now come back, and then melanie91 snaps a quick photo and emails it to GossipGirl.net, and that's how it goes. So, I'm not a huge fan of being told what I'm looking at, but I think the point here is that this is the gossip site of record for the teens of the UES, and there's actually not a more efficient way to get that across than to show the people constantly checking it and having their Blackberries go off every five seconds. Serena van der Woodsen is played by Blake Lively, last seen in a movie about these Pants that apparently Travel. I never really...that sounds scary to me. Pants gone rogue. But apparently people loved that movie, which was also based on books. YA horror was never my thing, except for Cormier.
Dan Humphrey is played by this Penn Badgley person everybody's heard of before, who was in a show called Do Over and another one with that awful Oliver Hudson, and another one called The Bedford Diaries. He was also in John Tucker Must Die, which is really good, but I don't remember him in it. He looks like... Oh, gross. I just remembered him in John Tucker. Anyway, he looks like my best friend's cousin Jake, but since I'm the only person who doesn't know who the hell this person is, that doesn't really help either of us: he looks like Penn Badgley, who like almost every person on this show has a name only slightly more ridiculous in real life than that of the character he plays.
Dan's dad Rufus (…see?) is picking up Dan and his freshman sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen) at Grand Central, while Dan stares and stares at the returning Serena. Both Jenny and Dan worship Serena, as we'll see, in different ways: Jenny loves Serena because she's a total diva, while Dan...actually, not that different. Jenny and Dan are coming back from a weekend at Mom's, and we learn that she has taken a "time out" from her marriage and left Manhattan. Dumb, because Rufus (Matthew Settle) is the hottest dude on the show, and I'm not being rude when I say that. Every ball's gotta have a belle. Anyway, he immediately starts in on them about their mom, and Dan kindly interrupts with his hunger so they don't have to talk about it. Rufus pauses sadly, then gets with the full Cohen treatment about how he's going to cook them a caprese salad with mozzarella di bufala, whatever whatever, he likes to cook, he's a Fun Dad who Gets Enthusiastic About Things. Meanwhile, just to review:
Spotted: Lonely Boy, can't believe the love of his life has returned. If only she knew who he was. But everyone knows Serena, and everyone is talking. Wonder what Blair Waldorf thinks. Sure, they're BFFs, but we always thought Blair's boyfriend Nate had a thing for Serena!
Okay, this marks me as a VM fanboy, and I'm really...not, but Kristin Bell has managed to take her most hilarious line reading ever ("Such gentle, yet elusive creatures") and make that the entire job. Awesome. You could say any old shit in that voice and it would be funny and fake-scandalous. Check it. Imagine Gossip Girl explaining the current bullshitty loophole in the tax on the kind of accumulation of wealth that makes these lifestyles possible:
There is no federal estate tax if someone dies in 2010, but a "sunset" provision of the Tax Act basically repeals all its provisions after the end of 2010. As a result, the federal estate tax will be back with a top marginal rate of 55 percent and an exemption equivalent amount of $1 million in 2011. You know you love me! XOXO!
Cut to a party at the Waldorf house, home of Serena's erstwhile best bud Blair, and her mom, the recently cock-olded (zing!) Eleanor. Eleanor's a fashion designer of some repute -- if you couldn't tell from the uniform-like unchanging neutrals she busts in every scene -- and in case you couldn't, she tells Blair (who looks frigging gorgeous) that if she's going to wear one of Mommy's designs, she should at least let her get it fitted properly. Blair runs off just as Eleanor's referring to her as "my best advertisement." No kidding. Blair looks a bit like Bilson, with the large eyes and prominent-but-not-weird forehead. I'd only ever seen her hair light brown before now, so it wouldn't have occurred to me, but now that she's got the dark, dark brown hair of Summer Roberts it's a little distracting. She's a bit more conventionally pretty, and her features are more delicate, but Bilson's entire appealing face is alive, whereas Leighton Meester acts mostly with her eyes and body. She's got a china-doll vibe that Bilson could never have pulled off, while Summer would have swallowed her like one of those gigantic cable-knit fisherman's sweaters.
Actually, that's a good contrast, as much as I'm trying not to compare the two shows: most of the cast of this show is a bit more highly bred, and thus less healthy-looking, than the cast of The O.C.. It is a motherfucker trying to explain myself without insulting anybody, because I don't mean it in a rude way. Kirsten Cohen and Serena -- and maybe Chuck Bass -- could probably do either show, but that's it: the lovely, classy Jeri Ryan would seem hopelessly vulgar on this show, while all these vulpine boys in their scarves and waistcoats would be snapped like twigs before the water polo team even showed up. Kaitlin Cooper could take them down with one hand tied behind her back and a raging case of alopecia. I miss Kaitlin Cooper.
Off in some other corner of their totally swank living quarters, Blair's boyfriend Nate Archibald is being grilled about his college choices by his dad and his dad's friend Captain Chips. The most boring of all conversations, in both real life and the world of movies and television. Before he can even open his mouth, his dad's like, "Actually, I'm a Dartmouth man." Because, see, Nate feels like his whole life is planned out for him and that he is the carrier of the family name and whatever, and that's apparently his entire character, but at least it explains his bad-boy behavior, which is neither really "bad," nor strictly boyish. Everybody on this entire show is like a scary thirty-eight-year-old woman. With a gun in her purse. Who is drunk. It's a truth universally known than any rich kid in high school is having total freak-out about college due to parental control. While Nate is waxing about how he'd like to go to USC or UCLA, Dad jokes about how "Dartmouth is far enough away" for Nate's mom, and Nate obliges that, for all the listed reasons, Dartmouth is still his first choice. Blair grabs Nate to go do it, but Chuck tries to get him to go smoke a joint. He's like, "When I get back from being devoured by Blair, yeah." Chuck's not hopeful that this will happen. Nate looks like a friendlier Ian Somerhalder, Chuck looks like... See, Chuck, here's the thing. You can either be raging hot, or you can look like Jimmy Fallon with a chromosomal abnormality, but you can't have both. He refuses to make up his mind, and it's crazy-making.
Back in Blair's bedroom, stoner Nate is a bit slow on the uptake as to what she wants. Even as she's straddling him on the bed, he's like, "What's going on?" She explains that it's time for them to do it, because they've been dating forever and until just now she was planning on waiting. "Not anymore," she grouses, and tries valiantly to, in the classy words of Gossip Girl, "lock it down with Nate."
"Word is that S bailed on B's party in under ninety seconds Didn't even have a single limoncello. Has our bad girl really gone good? Or is it all just part of the act?" Lest we perish from the suspense, we immediately segue to Serena walking purposefully through a hospital corridor, intent on visiting "him." So I'm guessing she's gone good. At least for today, I guess, so cross those fingers. The call nurse tells her visiting hours are over, and Serena tiredly, and without stopping, informs her that "he" is her brother, nearly weeping. Elsewhere Dan checks GG.net for more of its tasty, scandalous wares, asking the same question we're getting from GG herself: "Why'd she leave? Why'd she return? Send me all the deets! And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell... The only one. XOXO, Gossip Girl."
Which is where the credits would go, if this weren't a pilot. When we come back, Angels & Airwaves' "The Gift" is playing, for the first time in the episode. Here, it's about Serena's fierce desire to protect Eric, her little brother, which is essential to the plot: if she went to boarding school for her own self-preservation, it would have to take something huge to bring her back, and that's Eric: "And now I’ll stop the storm if it rains, I'll light a path far from here..." Later on it means other stuff. The music supervisor, Alexandra (The O.C., Grey's Anatomy) Patsavas, is who I want to be when I grow up. She's just so fucking cool! She's my Serena van der Woodsen. Who is now walking into Eric's hospital room. He's the same age as Jenny Humphrey, and his wrist is bandaged up tight, like a person who tried to kill himself, which is what he is.
Eric wakes up in the morning to find Serena asleep on the chair beside him, bathed in light. She immediately starts apologizing for being "a terrible sister," and he blows it off because he's so happy to see her. And because the show has "gossip" in the title: "Must be a lot of rumors why you're back." She assures him that none of the rumors involve him, just as Lily would want it, and she comes breezing in: "What do I want, baby? For Serena to sleep in her own bed? Possibly wearing pajamas." Heh. They wish their mother good morning, and Serena invites them to breakfast out; Lily pretends to pause to think, then ixnays that, saying she'll be getting Eric a croissant down the street. She pronounces the word croissant perfectly, exactly like somebody hauling the name Lily van der Woodsen around the Upper East Side would say it. Awesome.
Serena follows her into the hall, to Eric's weak protests. "Let me guess, you told everyone Eric's just visiting Grandpa in Rhode Island?" Lily sighs, caught: "Your Aunt Carol in Miami." Serena's horrified by this, that Lily would just hide him away so his suicide wouldn't affect her reputation as "Mother Of The Year," but Lily's like, "You don't know me!" She talks about how it's been hard over the last year, what with Serena off "doing who knows what with God knows who," and Serena swears for the hundredth time that she was not being a bad girl at boarding school. Just mysterious and kind of sad-eyed for some reason. "As happy as I am to have you home, you have no idea what it's been like." I like how the mystery of Serena's disappearance and return have warped into this whole other thing of why things went bad while she was gone. I like Serena and her whole deal, a lot, but I do like that it comes down to more people than just her.
"Diamond Hipster Boy" by Washington Social Club plays at the Humphreys' West Side apartment. You can tell they're totally poor by how their house is nicer than an award-winning castle from the pages of Castle Architecture Digest. This would be Dan and Jenny, last spotted being in love with Serena at Grand Central, and their dad Rufus, last spotted being hot all up in your grill. He turns the Sandy Cohen up a notch: "Guess whose dad is cool?" Not actually a trick question: he produces a copy of Rolling Stone in which his '90s band, Lincoln Hawk, was featured. That would be the first time I laughed out loud, like really loud out loud. There were some giggles, but you say "Lincoln Hawk" to me, I might laugh until I pee a little. That's so awesome. Sylvester Stallone has never done a better job than as the traveling trucker-slash-competitive arm wrestler that he played in that one movie. So anyway, Lincoln Hawk is number nine of the Top Ten Forgotten Bands of the '90s. "Hey, way to be forgotten!" chuckles a game Dan, and Rufus gets all literary about Serena's plight: "But that's how you get remembered."
Jenny chuckles over her arts and crafts, all, "Maybe you'd care if Dad's band was on Gossip Girl," and Dan totally scoffs: "What? I don't read Gossip Girl! That's for chicks!" Instead of going with the time-tested little sister response of "...And?" Jenny opts for factual evidence: "So that wasn't your laptop open to it last night? Reading all about Serena van der Woodsen?" Dan suddenly gets super interested in the Rolling Stone, a magazine I was unaware was still being published. So forgotten is Dan's basic equilibrium that he squeaks out a nearly unforgivable "très cool!" So embarrassing is this exclamation for everybody in the room that Rufus must train his gaze on his daughter Jenny, who is working industriously on some project or another. "It's called the Kiss On The Lips party. Everyone's going." Dan's surprised that she was invited, but explains that it's only because he's never been invited. Turns out the naïve Jenny wasn't so much really invited either: "One of the girls in my art class saw my calligraphy, and she said that if I addressed all the invitations, I could have one." Aww, that's so...pathetic. I kind of love little Jenny Humphrey for that: "Though my body is riddled with polio, Cherry Valance said that I could take her to Prom, if I just did all her Calculus homework for the term!" Not to mention that a "Kiss On The Lips" party, whatever that means, sounds really gross and creepy, and I would not be able to stay away either.
"Sounds very fair," Rufus Sandys. "The sweatshops could learn a thing or two." His progeny first inform him that this is not a platform for his anti-capitalist rants -- no effect -- and then take the route of pointing out how hypocritical said rants actually are, given that they both attend private school. They explain the Ski Trip Conundrum to him (why don't parents ever understand this?), which basically goes: if I have to rub shoulders with people who have way more money than I do, I'm at a disadvantage socially, because I can't do the actual things, logistically, that they can do. It's the same reason you only talk to five people you knew in college: some went up, some went down, everybody is vacationing in different spots and drinking wine from different years, and when you can't get around that -- and honestly sometimes you just can't -- it's painfully weird, and weirdly painful. Rufus still isn't convinced, because he lives in a misty socialist twilight and doesn't understand class distinctions -- and why should he? He's a gallery owner who lives on the Upper West Side -- until Jenny floats the "fact" that their mom thinks it's a good idea. Sold. It literally takes just that. He snarks on Mom, Dan gives him a look, and he caves. Which means his marriage is really over, because parents don't step to that manipulative shit this easy when they're merely separated.
Spotted on the steps of the Met: an S and B power struggle. Blair gives in, offering a half hour. Did S think she could waltz home and things would be just like they were? Serena thanks her for "making the time," and Blair spits "You're my best friend!" with a radiant, maudlin smile on her face. I live for this shit! Did B think S would go down without a fight? Or can these two hotties work it out? There's nothing Gossip Girl likes more than a good catfight, and this could be a classic! I take issue with that one, Gossip Girl. "Can these two hotties work it out?" In what fucking universe... Never mind. Screw it. That was awesome! They're both really good at playing love/hate/fear/power the whole time. I was first impressed by Blair in this capacity, but on re-watch it occurs to me Serena could probably take her.
"99 Percent" by Mooney Suzuki is the closest they can get this century to "Brown Sugar," I guess, which just about describes the queasy way they have to make Rufus both uncool and totally old, but also totally cool and un-old. Like this scene now, where violently sexy Rufus and his stupid poor-person son Dan are hanging up flyers for his famous if slightly Where Are They Now? band, see, but then his stupid son has to explain to him what MySpace is. Like, you can have one or the other but you can't have both, especially if it forces awkwardness like having to watch Penn Badgely say the words "Save some trees, have a blog" without vomiting. No less effed up is Rufus's knee-jerk response that means like nothing at all except that it's a label printed out on plastic and stamped on his forehead that says "Moderately Liberal But No More Incisive Than Anybody Else": "Maybe if musicians got off their blogs and picked up their guitars, the music business would be in better shape!" I'm serious: tell me what the fuck that means. "Maybe if you got off the telephone and started playing the tambourine, this soufflé wouldn't have fallen!" Dan gets an emergency text from Jenny and has to take off, but first they have a brief and awkward talk about how Dan's mom's a "free spirit" which is why Rufus fell in love with her, which also is meaningless because it's not like we've never seen this character before: Rufus doesn't love free spirits, he loves uptight WASPs. Obviously. This isn't my first Aging Rocker Still Holding Onto His Ideals And Childlike Spirit In The Face Of Crippling Disappointment & Adult Responsibilities rodeo.
Serena comes sweeping into Eric's hospital room. Is she wearing a scarf? Surprisingly, no. I forgot to tell you: anytime there's a sentence with a subject and a predicate, go ahead and impute a scarf or two in there. The scarf madness on this show, I am telling you. And it's only a plot point once! So many scarves, doing so little. Although I guess all a scarf has to do is be lovely. Not so Serena: she also has to kidnap! Whom? Eric. Why? Because she had a bad day and needs Bendel's therapy. Eric -- who I thought was young furniture until the premiere, when Connor Paolo offered to punch Zac Efron in the face, earning my eternal devotion -- points out that as the self-harming victim of their class, he has also had a day. They gave him pills, Rorschach tests, and green Jell-O. Serena giggles and makes a funny face: "Mmm! Why didn't you save me any?" She starts getting him together for the getaway, defusing the suicide bummer part and commencing the heist with a very fun, breezy, conspiratorial air that made me very homesick for my siblings. Did you know I have five brothers and three sisters? You'd never tell, because I'm as self-obsessed and control-freaky as any only child, but it's true. Serena and Eric bounce.
Dan arrives at Bendel's in response to the emergency text from his sister, but the emergency in question is fashion-related. He complains about how he's been to a big dance zero times more than her zero times, but it's awesome: "Yeah, but Mom's gone, and Dad's allergic to department stores." Hee! "So basically, you're like the only mother I have left. You're my mother with a Justin Timberlake haircut. You're my TimberMommy." He tells her she looks good, and she does look good, and she's fourteen in real life, because everybody is really close to their actor ages on this show. "Too bad it's more than our rent, but I think I can sew something like it," she says, all full of bullshit. Your rent is thousands of dollars, Jenny. Please get real and stop showing off. Jenny spots Serena and squeals like a golden retriever on six espressos, and Serena and Eric come on over. Dan vanishes immediately, because of true love. Eric, because being called Serena's "brother" would be too embarrassing, introduces himself instead as her "stylist and personal shopper." Do they even have gay in New York? I was given to understand that it was an epidemic. But then why... Maybe it's the East Coast version of how everybody is getting their faces fucked with to look like Ally McBeal, even though that's so scary? Maybe it's a new way of playing hard-to-get, like, if Jenny thinks that Eric is gay, she will pursue him, and then...I don't know what, they're little kids. He's got highlights. Maybe that's why every dude on this show acts so gay all the time: to get chicks. Maybe they let Mystery at them. Anyway, Jenny gives Serena another invitation to Kiss On The Lips, which she made during free period, and Serena's touched, so she offers the fashion advice that TimberMommy cannot: "That dress would look even better in black." Check. Serena does grateful and affectionate really well. I like it, even though in the books she was just this careless monster who destroyed people without even trying. Could still be, I guess. I like both. The books aren't known for their, like, nuanced characters.
Nate and Chuck Bass get high in Central Park, and Nate's complaining about how Eleanor's going away, which will leave him alone with Blair and her sudden voracious need for sex. Chuck offers either Viagra or Paxil, or both, and notes that "Nathaniel" is acting like he's headed to his execution. See? This is all very Mystery, you know? From that other show where the ugly homosexual teaches other ugly homosexuals to abuse women, while wearing a succession of ridiculous hats. Only here, it's scarves. So after calling his buddy "Nathaniel," also kind of gay, Chuck bottom-lines it for him, how Nate and Blair have been dating forever, so how come now there's a problem? Nate thinks that this is a pretext to explain his sole dimension, which is that his dad wants him to go to Dartmouth, so he talks about that for awhile, how their whole lives have been planned out for them and they're going to end up exactly like their parents. However, Nate is wrong, because he knows the real deal, or rather several of them: he's trying to get Nate to admit that it has to do with Serena, because he knows more about Nate and Serena and their mutual thing than anybody, including Nate and Serena. Plus, he knows that this whole identity-crisis bollocks is never the actual deal, because go write poems in your stupid journal like Dan: the true problem here is that you are worried that you're settling for Blair. And you kind of are, but not quite as bad as she's settling for you. Chuck calls this whole Matrix Revolutions concept about repeating and accreting our parents' mistakes unendingly kind of dark, but scoffs at Nate's assertion that that they are, as a generation, "entitled to choose" and "just to be happy." Like anybody's entitled to that, you pansy. "Easy, Socrates. What we're entitled to is a trust fund, maybe a house in the Hamptons, a prescription drug problem. But happiness does not seem to be on the menu, so smoke up and seal the deal with Blair, because you're also entitled to tap that ass." Seriously! This rapist has the right idea!
Anyway, Jenny's amazed and girl-crushing, and she is sure, now that Serena has been nice to her, that she'd "really like" Dan, if she knew him. Dan makes a passable attempt at joking about how Serena might be "overwhelmed by the glitz and the glamour of the Humphrey lifestyle," and Jenny bonks her own case when she relates that Serena's living at the Palace right now. "Probably sitting at the bar by herself, sipping martinis all alone... You know, it's actually kind of sad." Is Jenny psychic? That's amazing. Rufus is working late at the gallery, and then Jenny and Dan contemplate the inevitability of Dan heading over to the Palace to embarrass himself some more. Like, Jenny has already ordered dinner and didn't order any for him, turns out. So I guess she is psychic after all, because one scene ago he was hiding in some ballgowns to get away from Serena, and now he's stalking her at her hotel based on the word picture Jenny just painted. Whatever, whatever, an hour is not a long time and we've got a lot to get through.
But who arrives first to interrupt Serena's peace-and-quiet drunk? Chuck, of course, whose family owns the Palace. "I love this town. I'm going to have to tell my parents the hotel they just bought is serving minors." Um, just like every other bar in this whole show? Serena, clearly out of the witty repartee game, is like, "Then you get a drink and they will be serving minors and also pigs, who are also minors!" He chooses to call this "talking dirty," rather than what it is, which is "talking lame and awkward," and then makes some kind of rape joke about liking girls best when they're silent. He offers that they should catch up: "Take our clothes off, stare at each other." I kind of love Chuck. I mean, we can all agree that having sex with people without their consent is bad, I don't think anybody's arguing that it's not, but I also think that with Chuck around, you should carry a gun. So if you find yourself up on the rooftop with him and his scarf, or in the kitchen with him and a sandwich, all alone, maybe you should have thought first about that gun, and secondly reminded yourself that he's a perv and rapist. I don't expect to go to the reptile house at the zoo and have those things crawl all over me, because whether or not it's fair, they're still snakes and they're still gross, but sometimes they're fun to be around, as long as you keep your boundaries enforced. She thinks about taking off for a bit of a meal, and we note that she doesn't drink, except for right now because it's special. He offers her a grilled cheese with truffle oil, because she loves truffles. Serena thinks about grilled cheese, doesn't check for her gun, and heads off into the kitchens with Chuck. She's unsteady; he puts his arm around her.
Serena finally busts Chuck proper and makes a run for it, dropping her phone. While Dan is picking up S's Sidekick and watching her flee her rapist, Gossip Girl gets up in your shit some more. "And just when B and S had built a bridge, it all had to come crashing down. But dry your eyes! The Kiss On The Lips party is around the corner, and you know who loves parties? Gossip Girl." That's kind of weak sauce, Gossip Girl. Of course you love parties. It's no "can these two hotties work it out," but sometimes I really think you could benefit from thinking it through a bit more before you blog.
Nate and Nate Sr. go jogging in the park. Nate's hair looks totally cute, for only this scene, which was shot and added later, which gives me higher hopes for Nate's hair. Because with Nate, the hair is pretty much all you can form an opinion about. He admits to his dad that he fought with Blair, and Dad offers that he should apologize even if it's not his fault, and buy her things. "Always works for your mom!" he goofs. Men are so lame, when they're written so lamely. Nate's like, "No, like we broke up." Angry Dad Archibald tries to reinforce the dominant paradigm about how they've been "dating since kindergarten," which nobody would ever say, because it makes no sense, and not only that, but also, he would now like to pimp his son out like an actual crack whore. Check it: "Eleanor Waldorf is gearing up to take her company public, and I've been courting her for months to let me handle the deal." Nate takes a second to figure it out, and Dad's all like, "Just fuck her and don't piss off her mom, so Daddy can make some money." And here you thought they were going to bond or something. To Nate's credit, this kind of makes him sick. Dad says the family's depending on him. How did Nate get into the grossest situation of them all?
Dan's at the Palace getting major grief from the desk attendant even though all he's trying to do is return the Sidekick. So the concierge or whatever is just lobbing random accusations at his head, rather than doing his job, in order to create an obstacle for this scene to happen. Sadly, this involves making Dan say on-the-nose crap like, "Look, when Prince Charming found Cinderella's slipper, they didn't accuse him of having a foot fetish." Then Serena shows up, causing Dan to whimper and try to hide behind himself, and the concierge is really pushing it, and he's like, "She doesn't know me, nobody knows me, it's cool, it's fine," and meanwhile she totally does, due to her memories of almost getting casually raped being somewhat vivid, and they pants around for a while, but before anybody says anything: Lily. Who has found Serena's invite for KOTL on her nightstand, and thus has gone out to buy a dress for it. Which would have been a nice, truce-y thing for her to do if Serena were going, but of course she isn't. And she can't tell her mom why, because...I guess because then her mom will be like, "It's very important to my business ventures that you have sex with Blair Waldorf." Or something. I'm still kind of mind-blown by that whole thing with Archibald Senior. So instead of going down that whole awkward road, Serena instead says she's got a date with Dan.
Dan introduces himself to Lily, who invisibly winces when she hears his name, Dan Humphrey, and asks -- in a hilariously mom-like tone -- "And what are you and Dan Humphrey doing?" She's playing it really cool, actually. Dan, in order to help Serena out of this "jam," shows Lily one of the flyers from earlier, when his dad was angry with blogs. Serena pretends to be a huge fan of Lincoln Hawk, and appropriately enough, her ruse is quite over the top, and Lily's sort of bummed because KOTL is such a great way for Serena to get back into Things, and the Swing of them, but offers to just keep the dress for herself, and takes off. I guess to do some more manic-episode spur-of-the-moment errands like buying a dress the second she sees a party invitation on somebody else's nightstand. Dan begins to fade out again, but Serena's all, "So, pick me up at eight?" Dan's understandably confused, because he sort of charmingly sucks while Serena basically rules, but she points out that, all things considered, he can't be worse than the guys she does know. Which, of the two guys she knows that we also know, is very true.
"Hang Me Up To Dry" by recent recapper favorite Cold War Kids brings us back to two of them: Blair Waldorf and Nate Archibald, who stare at each other over the lunch she's not eating for a while before agreeing that they have zero problems as long as they never mention his admission last night, pretend that Serena doesn't exist, ignore all truth and live grasping at lies, and repress all their feelings by sublimating with drugs and alcohol. Thus becoming their parents! The very outcome Nate was worried about! They have ten thousand spoons, yet all Nate actually needs is a knife! What would be awesome is if Blair knew about the Waldorf/Archibald business deal, and simply doesn't care. She even twists the "Serena's going to miss you" knife.
"Time Won't Let Me Go," by my second-favorite band of the last five years The Bravery, is playing at Rufus's gallery, so I bet we'll see the uptight WASP that Rufus secretly loves at this point, and she'll be from history. Will she be a Cherry Valance? Or more like a Regina George? I've got my fingers crossed for Lily van der Woodsen, but I'm not magical or psychic like Jenny Humphrey: I've just seen TV a time or two before. Plus, they are the two most attractive people on the television program we're watching, so it would be fun to watch them make out. Or, as it turns out, to have awkward chemistry and fakey-seeming history. "Lily. Shopping for some art to match your furniture?" chuckles Rufus archly, because he's superior and obnoxious sometimes. "Why is my daughter going to one of your concerts?" blurts Lily, because sometimes she's refreshingly direct. "Because we're awesome?" asks Rufus, because he's adorable sometimes. When she tells him Serena is going to Lincoln Hawk with Dan, Rufus's pride in his son is, like, over the top, but he admits they were bound to meet; it's a small island. What would be funny is if they were related, but I don't think this show is that crazy. Yet. Lily suggests the possibility that he's using her daughter to get to her, now that his wife has left him (the wife's name is Allison, which brings horrible fears of Courtney Thorne-Smith), about which Lily has learned via the same "small-island" technology.
Rufus accuses her of doing the same thing in reverse, and Lily scoffs unconvincingly, so Rufus brings up some confusing dialogue I still don’t understand about finding her in the back of a Nine Inch Nails bus getting, I believe, eaten out by Trent Reznor. A more horrific fate I cannot imagine, but things were different in the '90s. It was a very dark time. Rufus then totally defames her reputation by saying she moved from Trent to Layne (a downward spiral if ever; the man looked like a heroin-addicted version of those Brownies from that movie Willow) and thence to Perry! My archnemesis! He named his children Hezron Wolfgang and Izzadore Bravo. Who the fuck does that? Oh, I hate him so bad. Lily, what on earth is wrong with you? Trent I can see. But Layne and Perry? That makes me want to barf. Did they just pick '90s rock stars out of a hat? Because what I see before me, in the person of Rufus Humphrey, is nothing so bad as those things. I want to love you, Lily, but let me tell you that the Perry Farrell thing...this is not a story about your daughter's redemption. This about you making it up to me. So Rufus is like, "And then you started going for billionaires." She totally scoffs and then calls his band washed-up and his art gallery "crappy" and "so-called." Whoa, girl. "Not all of us have settlements from multiple divorces to sustain us," hisses Rufus, and Lily takes off, ordering him to stay out of her life. It's all very sexy and sly, even though the actual dialogue is pretty harsh, and anyway, I don't think he's going to, do you? Where's Gossip Girl when you need her?
Jenny stands in front of the mirror at home with Dan, all, "We are variously going to Lincoln Hawk with Serena, or getting raped at Kiss On The Lips! We are so cool now!" She doesn't look very cool when she says it, but that's nothing quite as uncool as when Rufus sliiiides on into the picture all, "Oh, my God, my daughter's a woman!" and then tells her how much she looks like her mother. I'm so done with this scene. Jenny's so cute and it's really neat to watch all these different people tell her how pretty she is, because she gets to do the lip-biting ankle-dip of awkwardness every time, and that is a thing for which I am a sucker.
So here's another one just like it where Eleanor is clawing her way up Blair's ass for no real good reason, all, "Try on this dress! Try on this other dress! Take off the dress you like and wear a dress you don't like! It is a more elegant choice! I love you! You will never be more beautiful or thin or happy than you are right now! But you are also fat and ugly! Take advantage of this time by enjoying yourself! But also put some product in your hair! The ends are dry!" Blair comes down with yet another case of wry bulimia, and then there's a big montage of people going to the dance or not going to the dance, depending on if they are Dan and Serena or other people. This equals drunken drug use and drinking and lots of gowns in the limo, and Blair and Nate looking effed over, by and large. At the Palance, Dan is wearing a Tom Baker scarf that is eighteen miles long, staring up at Serena all dewy, and being nervous.
Kati, Isabel, and Chuck are getting mreow at the door of KOTL, talking about how Jenny -- who, the luxurious camera slide up her body would like you to know, is a hot-ass little girl child -- is a freshman newbie, and Chuck likes freshman because they're "so...fresh" and whatever creeping creepcakes, and they don't even bother to look her up on GG.net, which apparently has a scandal wiki now, which is like the best idea I've ever heard, and then Kati/Isabel (trust me, it doesn't matter) is like, "She won't really make a splash on GossipGirl until you rape her!" And they laugh, and then he sliiiides on over to Jenny's side, and she knows who he is, of course, because all she does is read GG.net and all he does is show up on it, because he's super-rich and wears distinctively stupid scarves. Gossip Girl chooses this moment to giggle to herself about how Jenny's options are to either get Chuck as a boyfriend and thus become cool, or get her ass raped by Chuck, and it's pretty much up to Chuck, isn't it? "I told you I love parties!" she giggles, and sometimes, Gossip Girl, sometimes I hate you just a little bit.
Serena's wearing a totally gorgeous gold gown that would go equally well at a Lincoln Hawk show or at Kiss On The Lips, so like all good shows, we see that the clothes are capable of foreshadowing on their own. She giggles that she's a bit overdressed for walking among the fleshpots of the grunge revolution and Dan totally goes, "Honestly, I don't really have a problem with your appearance." Which is like the cutest thing he's said so far. He drags her over to meet Rufus, and Rufus once again does that "Oh, I know who you are...no I don't!" thing that people do with Serena, and then this awesome Hanson song is playing, and Rufus is making fun of Dan for showing up so early. You know what, how fucked would it be if Jenny and Eric started dating and also Lily and Rufus, in addition to Dan and Serena? That would be like, "What if The Brady Bunch were porn?" Rufus runs off and Serena, apparently unaware of their parents' history together, whatever it is, chuckles about how Dan totally took her to meet his dad on their first date. Dan wows that she just called it that, but quickly recovers. "Maybe I should've worn my loafers, then. Dressed down a little bit." They laugh, because he's poor.
Chuck sneaks Jenny up to the roof and after a funny interchange ("What'd you want to talk about?" "How into you I am.") he starts kissing her. She reacts poorly, so he apologizes and asks to start over. "Um, do you want to start over back at the party?" Jenny asks, which is a pretty good line, but he clarifies that no, he meant he wanted to start over at the beginning of the raping, only this time she should be drunk. So she...takes the proffered champagne and downs it. Jenny's kind of a dipshit, in all honesty. Although to be fair, she re-sends the emergency text from before to her big brother, just in case this obvious scam goes south.
Leaving Lincoln Hawk, Dan gives a telegraphed giggle so Serena will ask what he's thinking, so she does, politely, and he tells her that Jenny was right, and Serena is very nice. Serena wonders why he would ask her out, if he didn't think she was nice, and he corrects her that she is hot, which is enough, and also that she was the one that asked him out on the date. She giggles and then calls him "sensitive tortured-soul boy," which is A) a pretty outdated construction from Lincoln Hawk's salad days, and B) not true, from anything we've yet seen. Nate Archibald seems more like a sensitive tortured-soul boy at this point, and he doesn't even have a soul. But C) is the fact that if they tell you something directly about a character, and it doesn't seem to fit, you're meant to rearrange the whole show around in your mind to make that one thing fit. So now Dan's the tortured-soul boy and I guess that makes Jenny not a dipshit. As they're laughing about how "superficial" it is for Dan not to care whether Serena's smart or nice or anything but a total MILF, Jenny texts Dan a whole message about how she's in trouble "4 real" with Chuck Bass. Not actually that unrealistic -- my sister Katie could text you a novel blindfolded, using only the pad of her rapidly moving thumb, in about an hour, while IMing on a computer and crying on the phone, I've seen her do this -- but still funny, in a way. Dan realizes, because Chuck was mean to him on the bus but also because he reads GG.net and apparently is not a dipshit, that Jenny is in real trouble, so he gets really to take off, but once Serena finds out it's Chuck behind the text messages, she's like, "We gotta get over there at a leisurely pace and take forever to find them. Trust me, this is Chuck we're talking about. He's this really slow, lackadaisical rapist who always gets foiled at the most dramatic possible moment." Dan's like, "See? I should have worn my loafers."
Dan and Serena enter KOTL, and this part's awesome, because everybody at the party starts whispering scandalously and texting furiously about how Serena's there, she's been spotted, she's "so brave" for wearing the gold dress with a denim jacket, she's not invited, but now she's here, et cetera. But my question for you, dear reader, is this: Whom are they texting? Each other? I mean, my family text each other from across the room all the time, but this is like a mad cacophonous orgy of texting going on here, in a continuous loop around the room, and the only person not getting the updates is Blair, this time, so she can stare madly at the uninvited guests, accuse Nate of inviting Serena to the party when the guy can barely tie his own shoes, and then run around madly. He's like, "You're not really going to kick her out, are you?" Blair orders him not to talk to her, and Serena and Blair do some serious staring.
The rape continues while Dan and Serena wander about at random, and finally decide to go upstairs, where it's all desolate and creepy. While Dan is whining that this is pointless, Serena notes the completely perceptive fact that with all this texting and blogging and telephony and whatever else the kids are doing these days, they could have just called somebody from across town to try and get some protection for Jenny going while they ran toward the party. No, I'm kidding. Nobody points that out. Instead, Serena sees Chuck's totally stupid scarf lying on the stairs, increasing their haste and exciting the music further. Soon enough they get to the roof, grab Chuck off Jenny, and Dan starts punching him while Serena stands idly nearby. Chuck is confused by all the ruckus until Dan reminds him who he is again, and points out that Jenny is his little sister. Like logically that will make a difference: "Oh, sorry! I didn't realize she was your sister and you're a schoolmate of mine! My bad." Like if a tree gets raped in the woods and doesn't text her big brother, did she really get raped? And the answer is no, not if the guy is rich enough, which is why you should carry a gun to Kiss On The Lips, and why you should not go to the roof with Chuck and drink his devil champagne. Dan and the girls take off and Serena finally says something along the lines of how Chuck shouldn't rape Jenny henceforth, but Chuck's all, "Your life is over, slut! Don't forget, I know everything!" Which...congratulations, Gossip Girl, the "everything" that you know is the same "everything" that everybody else now knows, so good luck blackmailing her for no real reason except that you're a six-foot gay pink sabretooth tiger, wearing a detachable collar and stripper cuffs, going "Heavens to Murgatroyd! Exit stage left!"
Downstairs, Jenny's recovering from the experience, and Serena and Dan climb into a cab to take her home. That Angels & Airwaves song plays again, only this time it's about protecting Jenny and not Eric, but also about Dan's huge crush on Serena blooming full, which is kind of nice if you think about it, because what you've got are two freshman types whose innocence is endangered by these shitty people's shitty lives in the most graphic ways, and you've got our two kids, basically in loco parentis, bonding over protecting that innocence, while trying to maintain/recover their own. All linked by this song. It's interesting that beyond some yogurt jokes and the occasional thrown platter, the only people who pay for anything in this entire episode are the two people whose only crimes were to themselves, because they didn't know any better. I wasn't buying Serena-as-hero through most of it, because I am in love with Blair Waldorf, but thematically I think it's so, so awesome that she's part of the only actively protective duo in the whole place. Saving Jenny, she saves herself, and by saving Eric, she saves her family, which is inextricably tied to Dan's in all kinds of interesting ways. Anyway, neat song. Blair's not impressed by any of this.
Out on the street, Dan asks if he's got a shot at another date, and since she has no other prospects and doesn't actually care about Nate that much, plus Dan is smart and cute, she giggles. "I don't think you could top this one!" He points out that he punched somebody, and did this without also making love with Adam Brody, so they're about even. While Nate drinks lonesomely, Blair and Chuck and Gossip Girl are all going wild about how "She better not show her face again!" and "I'm actually hoping she will," from Chuck, earning Blair's approval as a pawn. In the cab, Dan and Serena and Jenny have a sweet moment; Serena stares out the window of the cab, bookending her ride into Grand Central, somewhat happy that she has friends. Even poor ones. Gossip Girl dorks out about how no matter what, school's going to suck on Monday for old Serena, and how you know you love her, and you know you love her stock phrases.
up: Blair begins the slutty reeducation of Jenny, Nate's hair's still cute, Blair tells Serena she knows about the champagne supernova last year, and Chuck gets into a threesome with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Scandalous!