Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Rider Like My Father
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.14.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Well, that was certainly a GG premiere. Painful exposition, repetitive old tropes and constant discussion of the "transition" we're sure to see in all the characters once the season really starts... And not much else. Well, Vanessa's weave looks like Samuel L. Jackson playing yet another homeless/savant/caveperson, but at least her ability to clothe herself has improved. However, with her new buddy -- the Wentz-Navarro eyelinered Pilot Inspektor, who makes Aaron Rose look like twice the thespian and half the stalker -- egging her on, she becomes twice the Lisa Simpson she's been up to this point. Hopefully her obsession with the contents of Dan's pants (in this case a designer wallet full of Lily's money) will go away as quickly as it has the last three or four times we've had to listen to her bang on and on about how Dan can't "be himself" in a hand-me-down suit or whatever the fucking fixed-gear hell.
First and forever chucker Rufus is adapting just fine to the sweet life, thank you very much, without regard to his previous and inevitably future whining about Scary Evil Money. He moons around as per usual pretending to give a shit about his kids, in this case Serena, then sighing audibly with relief the second they lie baldly enough to let him off the hook. And what with his secret son crawling up his ass about Lincoln Hawk under the guise of being Vanessa's even-pushier boytoy, he's already in heaven anyway. I really hope Scott goes off the fucking chain at some point and ties Rufus to that bridge. But even moreso, I hope he stops making that one face.
Meanwhile the only interesting thing about Rufus, Lily, is off having some more real life drama/taking care of the ailing CeCe, and so isn't around to laugh at his ridiculous attempt at parenting wild-child Serena, which involves shaking his head manfully at thirty-seven magazines detailing her summer antics and then inviting her to throw out the first ball at a polo tournament. Alas, Vanessa is too busy bitching at Dan and acting nuts up and down the eastern seaboard to even begin to instruct Rufus in the manly arts.
Chuck and Blair are having sad monogamy issues that amount to picking up stray hos and then having a knock-down about them so that they can kiss and make up. This is only slightly healed at the polo match when Blair, believing that he's run off with some tranny/one of the horses, has a tiny fit and then makes him play waiter/unsatisfied customer. So they're pretty much grosser than they've ever, ever been. You know what's less than totally interesting? Watching the hottest couple on TV act like Real Housewives. Next week: Handcuffs and hot wax!
Serena and Dan are like: How they are. (Well, Dan looks fucking fine. Like, Carter Baizen amounts. I don't know what they did there, but I want them to keep doing it.) Dan's whole deal -- and get this -- is that he wants to control Serena and know everything about her life, which causes her to -- note -- act cagey and spooky about everything, tell inordinately bizarre lies about Carter Baizen stalking her Georgie-style, and then when it comes crashing down around her -- ya see -- gallop away on a literal horse to fuck Carter Baizen in the forest, which he loves because it reminds him of the Shire whence his hot ass came. Oh, and this all happens in a saffron toga dress, because of Serena and toga dresses.
Jenny and Eric are very sneaky for some Serena-related reason, but as fast as they can keep the secrets the secrets keep getting out, so then they act all sneaky some more and cover some more secrets up. I would tell you what the secrets are, except those two are so sneaky and the secrets are so boring you'll just have to believe me when I tell you that you don't care. Jenny's hair looks like it was slept on by the entirety of Lady Gaga's entourage, and she has gained the cracked palsied lips of a ten-time bridesmaid. Not that I'm complaining, because the only person that wins at hair this week, besides obviously S and B, is Dan. Even Nate looks fluffier than usual, and Rufus just looks like one of those pervy blowdried soap-stars one hears about.
If you're wondering why we've gotten this far and I still haven't told you the plot, that's because there isn't any. Everybody goes around acting weird and overexplaining boring things whilst looking fabulous, and then they go to a polo match and act weird and overexplain some more things in some outfits, and then they get weird about the polo match at which nothing happened while being glamorous, and discuss said uneventful polo match weirdly and in detail. Imagine The Hills with even less chewing.
The only fallout is that 1) Nate is now dating a rat-faced girl who belongs to like the Capulet family of the Archibalds, and throws a lame-Serena version of a hissy about it so Gramps knows he's throwing a fit, and generally gets no character traction at all; and 2) Serena has gone from being a fascinatingly blasé human being to the kind of cardboard teen who wants to be in the tabloids and continue to act like a whore "as long as it takes," she literally says, to get her negligent father's attention. Take that, Daddy! Way to toss two years of complex characterization in the sickest toilet imaginable. Maybe next week she'll flash some beev.
Welcome back, I love you very much, next week will be better. Believe, as I do, in Serena van der Woodsen and in the Blair/Chuck thing, and cross your fingers in anticipation of Georgina next week. XOXO.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Gossip Girl wastes no time reminding us of the fakeout free pass/clean slate she gave everybody at Graduation -- when she PK Dicked them into going Spartacus for her -- but only on the way to pointing out how like totally scandalous these characters are because they didn't even let the slate dry before they starting hashmarking it up again.
So the first thing is that Chuck Bass -- last spotted saying three words comprising eight letters any number of adorable times outside the Waldorf residence -- is back to be a ho-bag again. Gossip Girl's like, "Well, on the one hand that's sad, but on the other hand, Blair Waldorf going bughouse crazy is the rock and roll this city is built on." So one of about sixteen Serenalikes we'll be seeing tonight appears out of nowhere and they engage in demi-entendre about how it's "so hot" in the city, which is just very moist and lubricated and ribbed for her pleasure today, and Chuck Bass introduces himself as "Chuck [comma] Bass," so it sounds less like a patented rape implement and more like a human being. Maybe that's important, I don't know. The chick's like, "Where's your limo," because limos are hot and hard and long or what have you, and because he notoriously likes to get it on there, but he quickly covers up something mysterious about that and says they have to go back to his place. She's a real winner, this one. Isn't one of the Rules, like, "Don't ever say aloud that you're down to fuck in anything with wheels. Let the man discover this naturally and think that it is his idea."
Over on the East Egg, Jenny is playing the Serena role by sprawling around by the pool and wishing for breasts. Some dude refills her lemonade. Man, if you saw this show from Jenny's perspective it would be so fucked up, homeless to Hamptons, pointy mean mom to other pointy mean mom. She's had like six careers already, she still looks like an undersea prostitute half the time, and she's the most down-to-earth character on the show besides Eric, who of course shows up to kill her buzz and remind her about real life and its siren song. He doesn't engage, however, in the expected expository about how she's the Queen now so isn't that going to be something or another, which means we'll get twice as much of that next week.
"As soon as we get in that car, it means no more beaches, and no more bonfires, and no more stalking the Barefoot Contessa through 1770 House. Our summer in the Hamptons is officially over," Jenny says, whipping off her shades like that creepy ginger, and they have a mysterious conversation about mysterious shit that is A) Serena-related, B) totes defcon, C) eyes-only w/r/t D-Hump, and D) terrifying. When Eric asks how long they can keep this amazing secret from Rufus and D-Hump, Jenny awesomely goes, "Then it's Serena's problem. As of now, we made her a promise. And it is very important to keep those. Even if they were asked via drunken text from a Turkish pay-as-you-go phone." Jet set boner!
Speaking of Ruphrey and D-Bag, they are just strolling in some flat-front slacks and adorable hair/burns combo (for the latter) and an outfit made entirely of linen (obviously for the former, whom you know has spent the summer pretending he's some kind of like Sting Tantra Terry Gross open-design internet bubble Josh Brolin limo liberal type. Which of course is what he is.) D-Hump points out that Rufus has been drinking his coffee out of CeCe's china all summer, and now has to go back to his Welcome Back Kotter mug at home. Rufus, always able to duck his own vituperative hypocrisy like a ninja, is like, "Well, I like the real world, too." By which he means, "I can't wait to leave this decadent Hamptons lifestyle for our decadent UES lifestyle, now that I am just actually a kept man."
Dan and Rufus go to collect the children by the pool, and they all discuss how Serena was at an ashram on some kind of Eat, Pray, Love-inspired mess, and maybe she took a vow of silence, but Dan of course points out that she's a silly stupid thing that can't keep her mouth shut, and then as though anyone asks notifies everybody that his very important presence will be missing at some point today because he needs to talk to Vanessa. Nobody cares. "...Because she apparently has something to tell me about how she spent her summer." Nobody cares again. Jenny finally asks from inside her coma whether V wasn't in Europe with Nate, and thus may be intending to tell an even more boring story than Dan might be anticipating.
Which is funny as it's both an awkward segue to the next thing, and a reminder of how all of this happened last summer, when Blair and Chuck were going to reap the whirlwind all summer and ended up both becoming mentally ill instead. So even though Nate and V made it out of the country, they didn't stay hooked up, which is sad but also good because how boring can two people be, but mostly sad because as you'll see, Nate got more like Vanessa but Vanessa also got more like Vanessa.
Nate makes out in a helicopter with the ratty face of Bree Buckley, a mysterious girl he grew up with, and is currently making out with, but doesn't actually recognize. This is because have you met Nate. They finally get out and she has a huge purse, which as you know is the number one danger sign. They talk about how if Nate hadn't been sitting in that seat next to her, she would have been handing out the 'jobs to somebody else all across the Atlantic. Which doesn't really speak too highly of either of them, but then that's how Nate sees most of his hookups -- geographically -- so maybe they're a perfect couple. Chuck is going to eat her ratty self, I can feel it.
Nate continues to attempt identity theft on her all the way to these limousines that are waiting for them on a building rooftop, but she's not giving it up because she's so mysterious. I can't even listen to them talk, it's too inane. She congratulates him on remembering basic facts about her life, like how she's going to grad school at Columbia, which is also where he's going. Then he takes away her newspaper, remembers he can't read, throws it on the ground or in a trashcan and spits, because her grandfather on the cover is Jeb Buckley, who has a huge red-v-blue thing going on with William Vanderbilt, Nate's grandfather. Who, and I'm sorry, did not lobby against DOMA. At least not where anybody could see him. Anyway, blah blah, they grew up together, their grandparents are political rivals, he pulled her hair at the Clinton inauguration, her redneck cousins tried to waterboard him, they're so star-crossed. This show made me a lot less nervous when it was pretending politics, poverty and people of color were just figures of mythology.
So wherever he lives now-- the Palace? -- Chuck stalls the Serenalike for a second before kissing her, so that Blair can walk in and start a huge row about it and he can complain that the Serenalike sure enough knew that Chuck had a girlfriend, and play a really weird cringing kind of shamed-badboy role while Blair works herself up into a demonic riot of crazy: "Shame on you, Ashley Hinshaw. How could you do that? Pick up someone in a relationship? Have you no pride? No self-respect? You may have an Abercrombie campaign and the security code to Clooney's castle in Lake Como, but that doesn't give you the right to try to steal someone else's man! Now take your American Girl hair and your poreless skin and get out!"