The consensus after the season three premiere of Gossip Girl, “Reversals of Fortune,” was that it was one of the worst episodes ever. Agreed. I think, however, we have to cut Josh Schwartz and the gang some slack, as they seem to be slaves to the unnecessary high school/college calendar. The perfunctory “we know what you did last summer and are glad to use it as exposition” season opener was repeated this season after last year’s brief stint in the Hamptons before returning to Constance. Last week’s episodes titillated us with a patented Gossip Girl montage of New York City, only to lock us into the haunted Bass apartment and take us to a polo match (to a song that croons “I was born into money” against a techno beat. Subtle).
In the Hamptons, I was bored of Nate’s “I need attention from the viewers if not my parents” act of hooking up with a married woman and hated the forbidden love of Serena and Dan, but I was moved by Blair and Chuck’s courtship and her white tiered dress at the party. I spent the majority of that plot line waiting to return to NYC, as I think most viewers were. The creators of the series seem to believe that our obsession with Gossip Girl lies in the opulence of the upper class and that therefore we need to know about their unattainable lives of summer decadence and luxury. False. We turn in for Nelly Yuki and Dorota (not because we all want maids). The closest we get to being shallow voyeurs of wealth is the costumes, like Serena’s orange dress, the only redeemable part of the season three premiere.
I want a Creamsicle now
“Reversals of Fortune” also cast Serena as a coked out, Sienna Miller version of Cinderella (let me explain). In the season finale, the big cliffhanger was the Carter had located Serena’s dad. The estranged parent-child reunion is as good a narrative trope as any, but you know that the CW is going to abuse it horribly. Serena spent the premiere fame-whoring and wearing long flowy dresses to hide her beer gut from bar-hopping in Europe all summer, all in the hopes of catching the attention of her father through the trashy tabloids. Serena is supposed to be the logic to Blair’s crazy, but that kind of backwards reasoning is certainly worthy of a blazed Brown University student. The plot line isolated Serena from the rest of the group, who fared poorly without her and looked sanctimonious when trying to save her. I will, however, defend Carter as the first male able to keep up with Serena sexually and emotionally. If they fix those permanent Neanderthal bags under his eyes, he has major hottie potential.
In the second episode, “The Freshmen,” Serena morphs from attention ho to lost soul effectively and immediately. I preferred this episode’s New York focus and ability to use the narrative to illuminate the abstract and the emotional: everyone is off to NYU and Chuck Bass is comparing himself to Al Capone after the Market Crash of ’29, but Serena is an apathetic nomad. With minimal references to her father and the absence of the paparazzi, her party girl veneer loses its luster. I’d love to see an actual Serena downward spiral a la Marissa from The O.C. or Mischa from Real Life. She’s on her way to Penn Station and to train wreck status.
The Nate complex I referred to earlier continues this season, as he romances a girl from the other side of the Archibald compound fence and from a rival family. It seems that Nate can do no right with women except for Blair (faaate), as Vanessa was too other side of the tracks and the new girl, Bree Buckley, is too other side of the Congressional aisle. His Romeo/Juliet romance has no sexual spark, despite his propensity to swallow his lines before going in for a kiss. Nate’s family drama was too prominent in the season premiere, perhaps the CW’s apology to the actress Joanna Garcia of Reba fame for the cancellation of “Privileged,” and in “The Freshmen” they have three scenes. Nate’s irrelevancy is growing rapidly, as other male characters fill his niche. In the books, Nate was the lost pretty boy, Chuck the gay guy, and Dan the rando horndog in the background. The blurring of these lines for TV purposes has benefitted the women, with Blair’s personality competing with Serena’s beauty, and hurt the men.
The most egregious error of the season premiere was the outlandishly twisted turn in Chuck and Blair’s relationship, in which he Pretty Womans himself out to models (aka no kissing) and Blair barges in as the scorned woman breaking up the coital embrace. It’s the kind of thing you read in the pulpy romance novels at the grocery store, not what you witness in the Nobu bathroom on a Friday night. Why do these shows find it so difficult to believe that neurotic girls like Blair and me are capable of functional, even sweet relationships? I mean, I’m not exactly a ProActiv testimonial for that, but someone out there is.
Fortunately, my cries for romantic justice were answered last night with an adorable Blair/Chuck cuddle sesh as a part of the final couples montage (another great montage: moving into your dorm).
This actually melts my heart
The brunt of this episode dealt with the much anticipated transition to NYU for Blair, Dan, Vanessa, Georgina, and that rando Scott. I also realized that this new setting means Nelly Yuki and the ebony and ivory pair are gone forever! So sad. Everything, from the WTF advertisements to the adornment of Blair’s first headband, has been setting Blair up for failure in college. Far fetched as this plot point is (I’d take authentic sushi and a mango saketini over pizza and the freshman fifteen anyway, but maybe that’s the West Coast…), we all knew this moment would come, though certainly not at the hands of Georgina. I’m really sick of her, by the way. Isn’t Michelle Trachtenberg making enough money off of Harriet the Spy syndication? “Here you’re just a loser who will never fit in,” Georgina tells her as Georgina’s cheap New Hampshire firework rises and Blair’s classy white Christmas light falls. Implausible as all of this is for Blair, her inability to feign interest in or obsequiousness towards her peers reflects her deeper feelings of entitlement and even deeper feelings of insecurity. Blair doesn’t try with them because she doesn’t want to have to try (I mean, that Katie girl who worships Dan is hardly a worthy groupie for anyone). While Georgina is bribing people to her party with lines like “you’re really pretty” (yes, she says that), Blair is struggling to “reinvent herself” into an NYU hipster. I think the idea of reinvention in college is simultaneously overrated and misunderstood: everyone does change himself, whether becoming more crass or working harder, but there’s certainly no way to escape your past at college. I can’t tell if the Georgina/Blair battle will ultimately come out on my side, in which past does matter and Georgina gets replaced by HilDuff, or the idealist’s, in which Blair trades in her gorgeous pink heels at the Met for Birks. Basically, extreme reinvention of the self is an impossible myth, but it makes for great television. Vanessa complains about the assumption that “She’s Georgina, I’m Vanessa, and you’re Dan,” but the show functions on that very premise. The Humphrey men make waffles, and Chuck is planning to exploit the economic crisis to open a club. Variations on a theme in the mind of Josh Schwartz.
It is the universal reconciliation of this episode that turned me off. Dan apologizes insincerely to Vanessa, and suddenly they’re bonding over women’s lit in front of a SparkNotes display.
SparkNotes: All the Cool Kids are Doing It!
The similar calm before and after the storm came with Blair and Serena’s reunion on the steps of the Met, with neither revealing too much despite the intimation that they’re being honest. All of this, of course, sets up a ticking time bomb like Serena or Scott, the least necessary character in TV history. Scott, the son of Lily and Rufus that got away, serves to revive a flailing adult plot line. As a disciple of the original books (I could read two a day in my commute alone), I have always been opposed to the inclusion of adult drama on the show. With The OC, the issues of gender and wealth and boredom and social mobility were presented evenly. With Gossip Girl, we watch a bunch of rich old people gripe about not marrying the gold diggers soon enough. Lily’s been absent these first two episodes, so maybe she’ll be killed off? I mean, look at Mischa.
Also, best part of the episode was “Good Girls Go Bad” playing at the party while Blair was in attendance. Irony accomplished.
