This week on Gossip Girl, Blair and Nate are shagging, Chuck and Vanessa are teaming up against them to salve their wounded hearts egos, Serena is back with her obnoxious socialite friend Poppy Whatshernuts, Rufus is going to sell the loft and move in with Lily so Dan can go to Yale (because selling real estate in this market to fund your kid’s overpriced education is a great idea!), and Eric and Jonathan are back! Yay. Oh, and Dan is a knob.
Can you tell they're totally doing it in real life?
Now, I know that the Gossip Girl Reality Index is about at the level of the Nikkei these days, but some things really get to me. Like the amount of stuff these people manage to get done before school. Does the first bell at Constance/St. Jude ring at 1 p.m.? For crying out loud, the entire Humphrey clan trooped from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side for breakfast. On a school day! I can barely find time to shove a granola bar in my mouth and I have a 30-block commute. Aha! Dan said they were having breakfast at 8 a.m. My high school started at 7:20. The rich really are different.
So the Blair-Nate-Vanessa-Chuck love cube had a tepid little explosion this week. Blair tried to rekindle her since-we-were-six-years-old lurve with Nate, while Manbangs attempted to assert his independence and Chuck and Vanessa seethed and stomped their cloven hooves, then made out grotesquely in front of their respective exes. (At least there is some precedence for the Chuck-Vanessa please-tell-me-they-didn’t-actually-video-it.) But can someone explain to me why Blair was spending so much time in Madison Square Park? That’s like four miles from anything in her orbit.
Rufus’s grand plan led to a Humphrey–van der Woodsen blended-family ragefest after Jenny’s disastrous birthday party, especially over the epically stupid idea to sell real estate in the current market to pay for college (only thing dumber? Cashing in your 401(k). But wait, Rufus doesn’t have savings. He’s a moron), because Dan doesn’t qualify for financial aid (but he would qualify for LOANS) because, after growing up with an artist mother and rock star father in a multimillion-dollar Brooklyn loft, he thinks he is just the poorest little boy in the world! Is it possible to be that stupid in real life?
Finally, I know that TV networks can’t afford to turn down any advertising, but I wish the folks who schedule Gossip Girl‘s commercials wouldn’t make me feel like a decrepit old lady by pushing Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron movies on me. I can deal with the latter ironically, but the former has me one Jonas away from shaking my fist and telling those damn kids to stop playing their rock and/or roll so loudly. (I, um, kind of want to see that Zac Efron movie.)