Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Where In The Hell Is Chuck Bass? San Diego?
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 01.05.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jenny and Eric foment a sad little Pinkberry revolution against Penelope's Plastics, but it's a short-lived bunch of sound and fury that ends when Nelly Yuki reveals she was only backing Jenny's play for her own sad Mean Girl reasons. Jenny rolls her eyes all world-wisely and freely gives up the Queen B crown like an idiot, but the good news is that this might be the thing that finally sends Penelope barking mad.
The show continues its subtle misdirection w/r/t to the rapid decompensation of Blair Waldorf, relying once again on the shiny, histrionic antics of Chuck Bass in its left hand so you don't notice her slowly being crushed to death in its right. Meet Dirty Sexy Jack, Chuck's evil, 30-year-old uncle who manages to redeem his lame-ass dead-end Dexter storyline in about three seconds of screentime, located somewhere between hauling Chuck home from Thai opium dens... and the episode-ending reveal that he boned Blair just this week, on New Year's Eve.
Yeah. And then just when you thought it couldn't get darker, Blair decides to parlay this walk on the Humbert side into a bid for membership in the Colony Club, your average Chico's Nantuckety Chanel via Anne Taylor sort of early-40s women's auxiliary where all they really want are Xanbar scrips and to have sex with a black man before they die. After a series of invocations because nothing else works, their anti-Bass der Woodsen behavior horrifies even Blair, who was trying to get away from Plastic high school BS.
Rufus and Lily had a son, whom she gave up for closed adoption and can't possibly find, until he gives a big stupid speech about how parenting is, like, his number one thing -- evidenced by his charming children and uninterrupted devotion to their welfare -- and then she suddenly has a lead. Dan and Serena are all excited about how Rufus is murderously in hate with Lily, because it means they can get together, but the dead thing wearing Chuck Bass's face tells him the secret, explaining that having a sibling in common is a dealbreaker even for Chuck Bass. Cross your fingers this is the show telling us that Dan and Serena will never, ever try to date again. Which I really hope it is, because Aaron Rose is apparently gone for good.
Bottom line: Mysterious stupid baby, Blair's going crazy, Chuck's the walking dead, Jack is evil, Jenny and Eric are becoming the kind of pug-owning couple that will soon give up dating entirely. Next week: More mysterious stupid baby, the reading of the will, and the crowning of the one true Bass. And hopefully Blair will take an entire schoolbus of orphans down with her, because every week her massive and inevitable blowout gets postponed is going to make it that much worse.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks about Gossip Girl when he has No Prior Knowledge! And check back later this week for the full recap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!GG's all in a tizz welcoming us to the New Year and scrambling for her namesake. Serena "tangoed in the New Year in the plazas of Buenos Aires," she tells us, but what we see tells us a more important fact: she did it without Aaron-Bobby, clodhopping around in classic Serena style with old guys in those shirts with the ornamental stripe-y things down the sides and some young guys in fedoras. Basically, Serena made the most of what she could with what she had, and what she had was the Buena Vista Social Club of Argentina. "Guess that means Lonelyboy was all alone when the clock tolled twelve." Just like he likes it. Well, they say you spend the year the way you spent New Years, and so far that's been the case for me: I spent the whole time whacked on Robitussin flaking on everybody I know, and ending up in private shadowy corners with various Bad Mistakes from 2008. Which is how I've spent the weeks since then.
"And what of Little J? Rumor is she's given up couture for tartan... Has she also renounced her rebellious ways?" I love Jenny's rebellious ways, and I love the way she twirls into the DUMBO living room in her school uniform, customized with a bit of pink tulle saying a peekaboo hello under her skirt. As if to say, "I'm going back to school because I'm fifteen, but the frustrated fashion designer within cannot be denied." Dan's happy to see her back in the groove, not that he has one of his own; it's a cute scene.
Walking with Eric, coffee in hand, Jenny admits that the most painful part of all this childlike renaissance is the grotesque bathetic joy it brings her awful father. "He actually called Headmistress Queller at home at night on Christmas Eve." That's just so Rufus I can't stand it. Eric's still sort of bewildered about her sudden flip to the Constance side of the equation, leaving Vanessa in her bullshitty autodidactic dust all alone, and Jenny says that Snowflake Ball was so childish and stupid that it made her realize the total lack of accountability that is the best part of childhood was something she sort of missed.
"Blair Waldorf has been spotted making inroads at the Colony Club. With high school nearing its end, has Queen B found a new social ladder to climb?" The Colony Club is real, and we watch her open an invite from them, huge hopeful grin on her face, as Department Of Eagles plays on her behalf: "And when the morning comes/ You don't need to be so honest/ And in the morning come/ You don't need to ask an alibi/ You don't need to breathe so easy..." It's nice to just be a girl. Ask Jenny. I don't know what happened to B on NYE, but I know this look: it's the look of a girl allowing herself to believe she's going to marry Lord Marcus. That she can be normal, stow all the dark and twisty and just be a woman, with the grace of a Kelly and all the lightly a girl can go. And whenever Blair lets herself breathe, you know as well as I do that's when the blood starts running down the walls and the bats turn into dogs with the faces of screaming infants and everything gets really, really bad. And speaking of Chuck Bass...
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