Gossip Girl recap: Empire of the Son

Oh, My, Gossip Girl.

They’ve done it, they’ve really done it. There’s no going back. Blair and Dan have locked lips. Things will never be the same again on the Upper East Side.

Whether or not Serena and Chuck walked in on the darling Dair clinch, (and my money is on not – they are going to draw this drama out for a good few more scenes at least) the basic balance of the Gossip Girl universe is no longer. Let’s refresh.

First, the boring stuff. Lily could be facing a spell in the pokey after confessing (valiantly, of course, to save Chuck’s empire – not because she has seen the error of her ways. As if) meaning Ben is off the hook, Rufus will be a house-husband without a wife at home and Daddy Van dW is back on the scene. His cryptic final comment to Rufus about CeeCee’s imminent arrival?

Basically rich person code for, this is gonna be one hell of a media shit storm, and you Mr Humphrey don’t even have the PR savvy of Charlie Sheen.

Theoretically, Lily’s confession means Serena is free to have her wicked way with the ex-con. Except, obviously, because there are now no obstacles in the way, she’d lost interest by the time he announced his departure to “open his eyes” and move on with his life, sans the blonde who screwed it up in the first place.

But I did enjoy the scene in the DA’s office when he and Lily waxed lyrical about Serena’s feelings for him.

Because, if you’re trying to wipe clean the record of a bloke accused of molesting a teenage student, you’d be totally open about their current relationship status.

And of course, now Ben is bye bye we’ve got time for Serena to be chock full of righteous indignation about Blair playing date the ex. She’ll get over it, but Chuck? Who has just learnt that his departed daddy wasn’t just a regular mendacious mastermind, but basically the guy Machiavelli got his theory of power from.

Reckon it’ll take him a little while to adjust to Blair and Dan “Brooklyn leper” Humphrey (you can just hear him, sneering it), so guess we’ve got an infamous Bass breakdown to look forwards to.

In other news, Nate’s role has basically been reduced to a) looking cute with dimples and b) looking pensive with dimples. Him with Raina is basically the equivalent of Hillary Clinton shacking up with one of the hotties of the Dolce and Gabbana ad campaign

I expect the relationship to implode when she realises he still thinks there’s a little man talking to you inside the television.

Gossip Girl recap: War at the Roses

Forget Versailles, or Lisbon, or even the Sykes-Picot agreement. There’s a new peace treaty in town, and it’s ever so well dressed.

 Fed up with the War of the Over-privileged Teens, Nate and Serena initiate an official amnesty, complete with court stenographer for witness. Blair and Chuck are officially in peacetime, and to celebrate, Blair readies herself for her 20^th birthday soiree.

 Like every normal 20 –year-old, she thinks the perfect party would include the entire faculty, and of course everyone else who has ever set foot on the Gossip Girl set.

 Because she’s “not fighting with Mr Chuck,” she’s fighting with everybody else, raging at the staff for gladiolas and poor couture choices. Still, the party seems to be going swimmingly, until that is a bizarre video of Blair doing bad karaoke shows up.

 Who is behind it? Well, continuing with the war metaphor, Eric has apparently left Switzerland. He’s planning a peacetime stealth attack to take down Chair for the demolition of Little J.

 Enlisting Dan as his cavalry; they plan to bring out Jack Bass as their secret weapon. It’s all very adorable, but their eager-schemer routine, complete with furious typing and self-congratulatory plotting reeks not of Blair Waldorf but of the rather less devious Buffy Summers and the Scooby Gang.

 It doesn’t work, because Blair and Chuck, with their ability to see into the future and whatnot, outsmart him. But Dan manages to get his hands on the treaty after Nate leaves it within full view of him.

Were it not for the fact that this is exactly the sort of dumb-jock behaviour expected of Mr Archibald, it would be a gratingly annoying plot device.

 He finds a clause involving the embarrassing karaoke tape, and plays it at the party. As plots go, it’s pretty tame.

Blair automatically rails on Chuck for breaking the terms of the treaty, but Dan, chuffed with himself for being so Machiavellian, confesses, just in time for Rufus to show up an be disappointed Dan is “one of them.” Honestly, how can he be disappointed with either Dan or Jenny these days?

By Season Two they’d already earned themselves a place in the treachery Hall of Fame.  

 The upshot is that the treaty is dead in the water, making this the perfect time for the long-awaited Chuck and Blair hook-up-out-of-anger. It’s a piano, not a limo, but it’s clear they’ve still got the classic Chair chemistry.

Meanwhile Serena, who tells Juliette with a straight face that she “would never put her academic future at risk”, is obviously doing exactly that for Professor Pervy. Nate comments on how happy she’s looking, shrewdly picking up on why: “Well, if I know you,” says Nate, “There’s a guy at the end of that story.”

Aware that she can’t go near him for six weeks, but also astonishingly aware of her inability to control her urges, she appoints Nate as buffer. Briefly, it’s fine, but Nate gets distracted by Juliette – who he suspects is also studying with Professor Pervy (as insinuated last episode). Actually, he’s her sugar uncle, a cousin  paying for her to go to college. But it looks like he’s about to become collateral damage in her mission to take down Serena.

 Sidepoint. If you’re going to make the effort to introduce the show with a witty comment about the season change, why dress your characters as if they are going clubbing on an equatorial beach? Serena has a hole in her dress, for heaven’s sake, and with that much flesh – front and back – on show, she’d be bedridden with pneumonia if this genuinely was autumn.