Monsters of Television

“Cinderella did not Google Prince Charming.”

Oh la la. What a comeback.

Following the amazing finale of season 3, Gossip Girl managed to keep the momentum over the course of its summer hiatus. A lot has changed over the summer but in a way a lot has stayed the same. Old problems and relationships have come back with some very new and delicious complications.

After all they’ve been through you would think Blair and Serena would actually be best friends instead of that terrible overused term I refuse to say. The jealousy and the fighting and the cattiness should have disappeared. It did for a while. But did you really think that a summer in Paris would be drama free for these two?

You hear it all the time: girls talking about how much they hate other girls. “Girls are mean.” “I don’t really hang out with other girls. All my friends are guys.” If all girls are like Blair and Serena I can see why this may be. The two claim to be BFFs but they only seem to get along half of the time. If that.

While Serena’s been slutting it up around Paris, Blair has kind of taken a backseat. She hasn’t gotten much play, half due to the fact that she’s still heartbroken over Chuck and half because Serena is taking it all. Blair finally thinks she’s won one over Serena by scoring a date with a prince. But the prince turns out to be a pauper, he’s actually just the chauffeur for the actual prince, who is Serena’s companion on the double date they attend. In typical Blair fashion she throws a hissy, blaming all of her problems on Serena.

Serena may be a mumbling, terribly boring and stupid person, but it’s not her fault. Blair needs to break free of her jealousy. Sure some people say it’s good to have a rival, someone to compare yourself to to make you work harder and strive for more (Jack vs. Sawyer, Ash vs. Gary, Dwight vs. Jim) but when it becomes a scapegoat for your failures and a focal point of your whining, it may be time to grow up.

To make matters worse, Serena just got accepted into Columbia. Now the dueling duo are going to be occupying the same learning space again. Constance 2.0 anyone? After the prince situation they have a heart to heart and agree to not let college be like high school. Yeah right. The stakes are higher now and those two are gonna be at each others throats worse than ever before. I can’t wait.

Moving to a slightly connected reemerging conflict we have the Dan and Serena relationship. Or not relationship. No one seems to be entirely sure what is going on. Dan seems to think nothing is going to happen. But why? They reconnected at the end of last season. Serena doesn’t know what she wants (does she ever) so Dan could still be a contender for her fickle heart. Oh right, Dan has a baby. With Georgina. That might be a deal breaker.

Dan and Georgina have been shacking up with their son, Milo, and no one but Dan confidant Nate (I really love their friendship) knows. That is until Georgina decides to go public with the news, jamming a wrench into any possible Dan/Vanessa reconciliation and throwing the Humphrey household into a hubbub.

It was only a matter of time before someone on this show got pregnant. And while Georgina may not be a main character herself, her baby affects many members of the main cast. What’s interesting about this plot development is how understanding everyone is about it. Vanessa, while a bit upset at first, says she’ll be there for Dan. Same goes for Rufus and Lily. While this says a lot for family/friend ties it also kinda says “Hey kids, if you have a baby don’t worry about it too much. Everyone will understand.” For a show that’s already constantly under fire by over oversensitive concerned parents, that’s not a message they want to be sending out.

Georgina is definitely up to something. Between the phone calls in Russian and her disappearance at the end of the episode, foul play is afoot. My initial thought was she’s claiming Milo is Dan’s to get money from Rufus and Lily. Now that Dan has signed the birth certificate and Georgina has seemingly skipped town I’m thinking the plan is to dump Milo on his father. Knowing Georgina it’s a combination of both.

There is one change that has slowly been building since the second season: I like Nate. He began as nothing more than a shell (a very pretty shell) with no real or likable character traits. But as we dove into his family problems and his affairs we began to crack the shell to find an actual person inside. The metamorphosis of Nate continues in season 4.

Nate’s attempts to hide from his Serena problem behind glorious amounts of alcohol and random play only worked for a while. Enter Juliet, a volunteer working for Eleanor. She could tell there was something bothering him and offered to help him through it if he opened up to her. Juliet seems awfully nice and intuitive. Or she could have a board in her room full of pictures and newspaper clippings about Nate and Serena up in her room. So who the hell is this chick? No one can be trusted. Gossip Girl has made me so cynical.

Finally some praise goes somewhere I’ve never paid that much attention to on Gossip Girl. The editing. Chuck finally makes his appearance in the last 5 minutes of the episode in a very disorienting montage of clips showing him being patched up by a mysterious young woman. He gives a fake name (Henry Prince) and rides a train and ends up with this girl in Paris.

It seems after all he has been through and all the hurt he has caused Chuck is looking for a fresh start. While the effort is understood and applauded, giving a fake name isn’t a great way to start a new life or relationship. Neither is faking your death to sever ties with your family. He’ll be found out eventually, especially since he’s ended up in the very city where Blair and Serena are summering

You’re right, Gossip Girl. I do love you. Welcome back.

Final Thoughts:

• Hooray for the use of a Band of Skulls song in the episode. Boo for the use of a Katy Perry song.
• How does Nate have Rock band 3 already? Game’s not even out yet!
• Just when I think Chuck Bass could not be any more attractive or badass they give him a cane. I swoon corrected.