Hello, friends. Long time, lots of bad TV. Well, with the exception of What Would Brian Boitano Make? and brand! new! shiny! Project Runway on Lifetime. But starting, erm, last week, the long summer drought has ended, and we’re getting factory-direct new episodes of scripted TV, which is awesome. Herein, a few things I am looking forward to, and a few more I am giving up on.

As you may know, Gossip Girl returns for a third season tonight, with everyone on the show attending NYU because they are too poor/stupid/antisocial for Yale, Brown, and gen pop (Blair and Dan, Serena, and Chuck, respectively). I suppose it doesn’t even matter if I point out yet again that NYU costs more than Yale, and that CCNY would actually be more on these dimwits’ intellectual levels. I don’t think I’ll be following the Gossips too much this year, because everything became both unbelievable and unbelievably boring last year. And although I do enjoy watching boys make out almost as much as Dan (our Dan, not Lonelyboy. Well, I think Lonelyboy likes it too) does, the prospect of Chuck sucking face with this guy isn’t going to bring me back.

A show I will be following, religiously? Castle! Because Nathan Fillion is a very nice man and it’s fantastic to see him finally get a second season of something. The man works hard, selling the hell out of the show , and also he sometimes shows up . Which is the kind of commitment we like to see in our tall, dark, and handsome Canadians. Besides that, the show itself is quality. It was a midseason replacement last year and turned out to be a nice blend of procedural and romantic dramedy, with Fillion providing most of the giggles and the quite lovely Stana Katic playing the straight man. Also, his interaction with his TV daughter is wonderful. Seriously, I may be most excited about the return of Castle, and that’s saying a lot, since back in April I was inappropriately anxious to find out if Amy Brenneman would survive having her belly sliced open by that psychotic woman from Alias and Felicity.

I am also very excited about How I Met Your Mother, and not just because my crush on NPH really doesn’t care that he’s gay (remember what I said about boys making out? Yeah, I could stand to see a little PDA on the Emmy red carpet, is all). I’ve been rewatching the early seasons of HIMYM on DVD, and honestly, I just love that show. It’s so sparkling and delightful, and even SagetTed doesn’t weird me out anymore. I am really in no hurry to find Your Mother, as that might bring the show to an end, and I just love it too much. More Barney! More Marshall! More everyone!

Avec Eric is like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but with less swearing, fewer snide remarks about my beloved Food Network, and far more inventive use of a toaster oven. Famous, fantastic French chef Eric Ripert travels the world for boar hunts and visits to the greatest restaurants there are, then he whips up something tasty in his palatial home kitchen. And he does it all with the most wonderful accent, a sense of humor, and a deep sense of respect for food, people who grow food, people who kill food, and people who eat food. If you only know him from Top Chef, record the show. There are no commercials! And it’s just incredibly relaxing and beautiful. If Eric Ripert’s accent doesn’t make your ears purr, I will refund your money.

I’ve seen the pilot of Community. It is quite funny, and of course, Joel McHale can do no wrong. I hope it prospers magnificently. I’ve also seen the pilot of Trauma, which is quite unintentionally funny in places, but you know I will watch whatever Peter Berg throws at me. You know who’s interesting on that? Cliff Curtis, who plays a crazy adrenaline junkie helicopter paramedic. He kind of wins the TV Diversity Sweepstakes (at first I thought he was Indian, but he’s actually from New Zealand. And once played Pablo Escobar! Far better than Adrian Grenier did). Speaking of Peter Berg, I have no idea what’s going to happen on Friday Night Lights when it returns to DirecTV, but I will be there. Er, here. In my office, where we have DirecTV. I understand that Riggins will be back (RIGGINS!!) but not Tyra. And Matt Saracen is sticking around Dillon to break our hearts like five thousand more times. Plus, Coach and Mrs. Coach! I almost forgot how deeply I love Friday Night Lights, you all.

And that is kind of it. Yeah, there are other returning shows I’m looking forward to, and I will give a looksee to Flash Forward, The Good Wife, and Modern Family, but with Jay Leno effectively blacking out five hours of primetime a week to me, this appears to be what my DVR will be filled with this fall. And! The Daily Show returns tonight! That is making me very happy. What are y’all looking forward to?

Since it’s music video week, how’s about posting the video for Cobra Starship’s new song, “Good Girls Go Bad,” which features vocals by Leighton Meester. Sure, why not?

Okay, now I don’t watch Gossip Girl OR listen to Cobra Starship, so the analysis is all up to you. Is this fun and self-aware, or are they tools and poseurs?

Things to consider:

*The white (lensless?) glasses.
*All of Mr. Starship’s incessant pointing.
*Ms. Starship’s bionic silver eye.
*Ms. Meester’s vocal chops that don’t seem to be auto-tuned…until the end.
*The melody’s resemblance to Sean Kingston’s “” at the chorus.
*The fact that Kara DioGuardi had to help make a song that sounds like a Sean Kingston song.
*Rap breakdown.

Verdict?

This week on Gossip Girl: Graduation! And Cyrus came back! I bet you can guess which I am more excited about. I’d like to know whose idea the green robes on the girls and blue on the boys was. Because that shit was ugly. But I can honestly say I’ve never loved Gossip Girl herself so much as on this episode, when she finally effing called it like it was. Oh snap, Kristen Bell.

So Gossip Girl flamed all the major characters during graduation, and the hideous four set out to find out who that nefarious slag is. And it was ERIC’S BOYFRIEND JONATHAN OMG. Oh wait, it’s not. Damn. That would be awesome, but it wouldn’t explain last season’s outings.

And then Jenny and Blair’s wretched former minions had a deeply ridiculous conversation about how they’re going to choose a new “Queen.” Yeah, because people talk like that. I hate Jenny so much. Why are we talking about Anne Boleyn?! Where is Jonathan Rhys Meyers? I’m so confused.

Nate’s party: Nelly loves Dan. Jenny knows that Blair slept with Uncle Jack Bass and plans to use that to become the Marquess de Constance, or whatever the fuck. So then Gossip Girl did a full season recap, which was kind of amazing. And then Blair asked Dan, “What do you know about anything?” Which was great. Because FINALLY.

And then Rufus and Lily stopped acting like morons and got engaged. And Gossip Girl is no one and everyone is going to NYU and Serena and Dan’s creepy not-dead half-brother showed up and Blair neutered Chuck with a box of French macaroons and this IS SO FUCKING STUPID, MAN. Eff this noise. I’m on vacation.

We have hit a new low: Rufus actually called his kids part of “the Gossip Girl generation.” Shut up, Rufus. Further proof that Gossip Girl can be summed up in one-liners, Chuck to Nate: “I don’t know how many times we need to have this conversation.” Seriously, show. Look, the Serena-in-jail stuff is just so ludicrous that it makes my face hurt. The only thing worse is Brittany Snow shoveling heaps of exposition onto Andrew McCarthy in the execrable Beverly Hills Upper East Side flashback scenes. Ugh.

I think we can all agree that Lily is awesome. She and Eric are basically the only things left about this show that don’t make me want to stick hot forks in my eyes and ears. But teenage Lily is an asshole. God, I hope Nikki Finke is right about the spinoff being dead on arrival.

Oh, look, there’s No Doubt.

I will give the producers minor, minor, tiny little props for recycling Veronica Mars cast members and telling Ryan Hansen to call someone his lady. Because he says it with such relish and it reminds me of a better, sweeter, LESS FUCKING BORING time on the CW. (Oh my God. I actually miss Dick Casablancas. I’m going to go gargle with bleach now.) Okay, I take it back: cast member, singular. Because Gia is still annoying as fuck.

And then everyone went to prom and Nelly Yuki said, so truthinessily, “Yeah, because if you do this stuff in college, people think you’re pathological.” Nelly, we already think you’re all pathological. Then Serena took her clothes off in a cab and got lockjaw, because, ew, and Dan is an idiot who didn’t bring her a bra with her prom dress. Egad, honey. Those cans need underwire.

Even Leighton Meester can’t sell a line like “this is supposed to be the happiest day in high school.” She played her entire dancing-with-Nate scene like she’d recently been tranquilized and had her jaw wired shut, which is something I wish the producers would do to so many other people on this show, but not Blair. I feel duty-bound to point out, though, as someone who has both kinds, that even if Rufus and Lily get married, Dan and Serena will not be half-siblings. They’ll be step-siblings, like Cher and Josh. Half-siblings share blood. Step-siblings can bang, although it’s a little creepy, even if it is California, not Kentucky. Clear, Gossip Girl writers? Don’t make me take off my belt.

This week on Gossip Girl, Serena revealed that she might actually be the dumbest person in the freaking world, even dumber than Rufus. Seriously, there are smarter boxes of doorknobs. I think this whole Gabriel Ponzi Scheme plot might be the writers’ idea of a “topical” storyline. And that is as nauseating as TARP wives bitching about how they can’t go to Bergdorf’s as often.

Also horrifying? Rufus decided it would be a good idea to ask ERIC FOR HIS PERMISSION before he proposes to Lily. Because Eric is “the man of the house.” I … just … that’s so hideous. Does he know that the Upper East Side isn’t actually Saudi Arabia, despite some overlapping among the higher-end boutiques? Feminism fail, Stephanie Savage.

Here’s the problem with the Georgina-found-Jesus-but-is-actually-still-evil story. Michelle Trachtenberg is not a good enough actress to make it believable that she’s pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, and she’s playing Carrie Underwood!Georgina as if she’s had a lobotomy, not heard the Good News. (Tomato, tomahto to some, I guess.) Her bubbly, brainless intonations make me long for the days of Jenny and that revolting tramp Agnes.

Chuck and Nate are still having a pissing contest over Blair. Oh, Nate. Remember when you wanted to go to USC? That was a good idea. They like dim, self-important stoners like you over on that coast. So you should go! Because CHUCK LOVES BLAIR. And so he broke her heart again. That made me terribly sad because they were the greatest part of this show.

So part of everyone’s brilliant plan(s) to get back all the money Gabriel swindled that don’t include calling the police like NORMAL PEOPLE is for Lily to pay everyone back herself (I guess all that Bass money goes a long way), including setting up an annuity for Rufus so he can pay for college. When he found out, he was horribly insulted, and stamped his foot about how humiliating it was. Yeah, Rufus, like asking a woman’s minor son for his permission to marry her? Yeah. Kind of like that, you asshole.

All right, next week is the Lily show spinoff pilot. And the week after that is prom! Whee, pretty dresses.

This week on Gossip Girl, Blair went to the general vicinity of my apartment. She was terrified at the idea of learning to ride the subway. Fuck you, Blair. Rufus still thinks it’s a good idea to sell the gallery (and therefore NOT HAVE A JOB) in order to pay for his kids’ education. Jenny is styling her hair with a weed whacker. Serena is ignoring the fact that she’s a booty call for 47-year-old Gabriel-from-North-Carolina (where did that come from?) and, OMG, Georgina Sparks is back and she loves her some Jesus and is super boring.

Look, I’m not even going to address this bullshit “long-distance relationship” Blair and Nate think they’re going to have when he’s at Columbia and she’s at NYU. Instead, have I ever mentioned that Ugly Betty is stalking me? Yeah, I haven’t been watching it either. But the building they use as the exterior for Meade Publications, if they’re still calling it that, is the Woolworth Building near City Hall, which is where one of the publishers I work for when I’m getting paid real money (not blogger money; Dan pays me in catty comments about people we went to college with) is located. Twice now I’ve been there returning manuscripts and the show has been filming outside.

And Tuesday they’re filming on Fifth Avenue, on my route to work. So, yeah. America Ferrara knows how much I loved her in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and now she is stalking me.

Wait, Gossip Girl is still going on? I’m so distracted by shows about people who work for a living rather than this insipid, repetitive garbage. At least Ugly Betty is candy-colored insipid, repetitive garbage. Right, Blair thinks Gabriel (“the North Caroliar,” which I will have to try to remember for next basketball season) is cheating on Serena with Poppy, which he is even though Serena just said they were dating without strings or commitment or promise rings or whatever the fuck the kids are doing these days. Although since Gabriel is like seventy, . (Enjoy having that in your heads all day, y’all. Little gift from me to you. Look for Chuck Bass’s granddad about 1:50 into it.)

You guys! Gossip Girl is back! I know, it’s been YEARS. So, when last we left the silly little dinks, Blair and Nate got back together, Serena went to Spain with Poppy Humptyhump, Dan wasn’t poor enough to go to Yale, and … Chuck tried to rape Jenny? Like seventy episodes ago, Jesus, are we still talking to that?

Cyrus and Eleanor are finally back from their six-year honeymoon! (And also, it’s Passover, so this episode is taking place two weeks ago.) Thank God, Eleanor seems to be speaking some sense, telling Blair that it’s better to go to NYU based on Cyrus’s contacts than not go to college at all because she didn’t get into the Ivy League. Eleanor is like my favorite character since Dorota has “the weekend off.” (Wait, what?! Dorota is a countess? What the shit is this?)

And Chuck! Chuck is back! He realized he’s “a 17-year-old billionaire with enormous stamina” and finally stopped pining over Blair. Which, it’s about freaking time. He’s back to banging his way through ballet dancers and synchronized swimmers, and none too soon. I sort of hate myself for even making this connection, however, but I find it hilarious that Chuck Bass had a Samantha-in-Sex-and-the-City moment when he realized he’d nailed that ballet dancer before. Oh, Chuck. There really is only a limited number of trampy women who are shorter than you are in the world, isn’t there?

Oh, goddamn stupid Dan Humphrey. I don’t remember Dawson being this unbearable, you all. So Rufus’s business is suffering because people don’t want to buy art in a recession, but he doesn’t want Dan to get a job to help pay for school (or books, or beer, or train tickets home from New Haven) because “school is [his] priority right now.” “Right now” being the height of senioritis, when he almost can’t do anything to screw up his academic legacy (except haze a teacher, apparently). Gee, Rufus. I wonder why your son is such a selfish asshole who thinks he’s too good to work as a cater waiter? Maybe because his dad is too proud to suck up to an art collector at the world’s most incoherent Seder in order to, you know, SELL SOME ART?!

In related news, Lily is all pissy at Serena for running off to Spain, in the grand tradition of hypocritically ignoring her own slutty, globetrotting past, and abdicating all responsibility for raising a feckless, inconsiderate child. (Also, Eric is apparently locked in his bedroom again.) Lily & Rufus: Meant for each other! But what she doesn’t know is completely awesome: Serena accidentally got married in Spain! Which is probably illegal and they didn’t even manage to really get married, because that’s hard to do when you’re completely blitzed on rioja and don’t speak the language, but whatever! And come on, like Lily didn’t do much worse at her age. Lily slept with Trent Reznor! And RUFUS. I’m so glad, though, that Serena’s irresponsibility gives Dan more reason to be a condescending dickhead to her. Some more.

Nate sure picked an inconvenient time to grow a spine, didn’t he? His grandfather wants him to go to Yale, but he wants to go to Columbia on his own merits (and on his own dime? I bet not), so Grandad Vanderbilt asks Blair to convince Nate to play along like a nice little crown prince, and in return Blair gets, like, his high-society stamp of approval or something. Which should come in handy since she has no education and no marketable skills. Maybe she and Jenny can start an illiterate haberdashery, or something.

I am convinced this episode was a riot for Jews who enjoy jokes about people sitting on poor Elijah. This shiksa found it funny. But not as funny as this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Faith the Nation
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Next week: Georgina returns! And she’s been born again. That should be hysterical.

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.

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.)

Hey, Lily’s back! Maybe she and her baby bump skipping the gym because she’s having all that sex with Rufus belly can rescue the show from the doldrums of irrelevance it slipped into last week. Since Blair is having an affair with sleazy Carter, prompting Chuck to make all sorts of filthy plays on words, things look promising. And none too soon; God, Nate is tedious.

So Nate’s grandfather is a Vanderbilt and owns half of Connecticut. (That house looks like where I went to college, seriously.) For some reason, Sir Manbangs of Balsawood takes Dan and Vanessa with him to a family reunion so they can make snide remarks about being poor. Waah. And then they played football like they saw this one time when Wedding Crashers was on TBS.

Rufus and Lily are exchanging lists of people they slept with, which I think happened on Friends 10 years ago. The one page of Lily’s list that she showed him includes (and I’m wondering if this is in order, because if so, HEE): Gossip Girl‘s location manager; the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul (ew, Lily, really?); Trent Reznor; Slash; Rufus; Bart, obviously; and no one else I could discern/recognize. The rest of the list was probably people who’ve given the show good reviews and/or went to school with Josh Schwartz. And Lily wears like forty pounds of rhinestones just to sit around the house making lists of her paramours, which I find hilarious and aspire to. And really? His list fit on an index card? He was a minorly successful ’90s rock star. No groupies, Rufus? That “I was pining for youuuuuu, Lily!” excuse does not wash for me. Liar.

As Blair tried to incinerate what was left of her reputation after the horrible, appalling sin of “hazing a teacher” (seriously, there’s a box they can tick for that?) got her barred from every reputable college on the east coast, I realized I’m really tired of hearing about all these scandalous things the children did in the past that are now coming to the light/being used as leverage to blackmail people. Like Serena and whatever happened on a yacht in Santorini with Carter (um, he returned her missing magical pants?) when she was, apparently, in the sixth grade. I don’t buy this because teenagers have really short memories. No matter how devious or prettily garbed they are, most high schoolers have a hard time remembering what happened at Homecoming, much less who did a Saskatoon Snowshoe on who else over Christmas break of freshman year. And honestly, I’d like to see some of this awesome scandal ON-SCREEN. What part of “show, don’t tell” do the Gossip Girl writers not understand? I feel like I’ve been asking for real drama for, like, a YEAR. Kill someone. Knock someone up. DO SOMETHING.

Nate and Blair sleeping together is a good start, Schwartz. Yay!

So, when last we left our naughty little Upper East Siders, thousands of weeks ago, the entire world hadn’t collapsed! Blair schemed a lot, Serena and Dan broke up, and Dan slept with his stupid teacher. And I think Rufus and Lily were still off boffing somewhere.

I have to confess, y’all, I have neither read nor seen The Age of Innocence, because I went to public school. My Wharton is pretty limited; can we just pretend it’s actually Kate Chopin? I know her. Anyway, Blair and Dan are the leads in the school play, Jenny is doing the costumes (covered in tulle! And eyeliner!), and for some unbelievable reason, that stupid teacher is STILL THERE. And Vanessa is making a “documentary” about the school play. Shut up, Vanessa.

The caliber of acting in the play vastly amused me, because it’s several grades above that found on The City (feathers!). And did anyone else think that after his performance in The Age of Innocence, Dan will surely grow up to be Ted Mosby? It is also totally believable that Nate can’t pronounce “dilettante.” As for the tantrum Manbangs threw that effectively ended the play (and in front of Charles Isherwood!), let me just tell you that when I was in high school drama, the male lead of our senior musical literally passed out on stage in the middle of a scene (he was diabetic and had skipped dinner), pretty much collapsing on the female lead, who proceeded to improvise some dialogue and carry him offstage as the stage manager killed the lights. His understudy took over after intermission while John drank orange juice, and then he got up and finished the show. THAT is what we mean by “the show must go on,” you spoiled idiots!

Chuck is back in his ascots (I think he needs an internship with Barney Stinson) and is still harping on about his silly secret sex club subplot. The problem with Gossip Girl shooting in New York is that whenever they shoot outside, insane people take camera phone pictures and sell them to blogland. So I know that Bluck and Chair are getting back together at some point this season, and I have no patience for whatever inane bollocks the writers send Chuck on between now and then. Are they ever going to resolve the whole Blair-slept-with-Uncle-Jack ickiness?

Oh, and Nelly Yuki got accepted “early” to Yale. Never mind that it’s no longer early, for crying out loud. This is when you’re actually supposed to start getting college acceptances. She got Blair’s spot! Which…I did not know you could do that. Apparently, shocker, someone has it in for Blair and has spilled not only the Blair-hazed-a-teacher scandal to Yale (does no one at Yale have anything better to do? Like move the endowment into long-term mutual funds?), but also the Marcus incest brouhaha from earlier this season and the Serena-Yale-PR-clusterfrak news. But that was neither terribly interesting nor terribly important; it really only served to drive Blair farther into nihilism. And to Carter Baizen! I do not even remember what his deal is.

OH MY GOD RUFUS CAUGHT THAT TRAMPY TEACHER! Serves her right. My personal goal in this life is that no one compare me to any of the following: 1. Tonya Harding, 2. Mary Kay Letourneau, and 3. Ann Coulter. I know Dan is an adult, but there are things that are okay and things that are not. And for once, I agree with the parenting choice that Rufus made, because that affair is not right. But since Dan is a silly twit, it drove him directly into the adjunct strumpet’s arms. And then they DID IT IN THE SCHOOL. That is so trashy I’m surprised it didn’t happen in Florida.

You guys, I LOVE that this week’s episode is entirely sponsored by Wolverine. I think Blair would have done well at Professor X’s school for mutants, don’t you?