TV Verdict

It’s easy to mistake Gossip Girl for a trivial, fashionista, portrait of rich girls-type show, but it’s more than that, more than morally ambiguous. There are family values going on here. Why, in this one episode, I learned that just because your mother tells you you’re a family doesn’t make it so, that sometimes good triumphs over evil, and that you always help a friend in need, even if they refuse the aid … yadda, yadda, on to the gossip. Here’s the story morning glory:

Vanessa and Chuck make up a large chunk of this week’s episode, and it’s surprisingly heartwarming. See, Vanessa is trying to save this authentic speakeasy in Brooklyn, so she lightly dabbles in blackmail to get Blair to help. Even I could see that was a bad move – Vanessa’s too nice for blackmail. Blair kind of hires Chuck to seduce and destroy Vanessa. His prize is, well, her. He meets with Vanessa and the speakeasy’s owner to try and do some sort of real estate deal. It’s a pretty good deal, actually. And Chuck is surprised that he felt so comfortable with Vanessa and the owner, that he invites Vanessa to his parents (Serena’s mom, Lily and his dad, Bart) house-warming party. While there, Blair sees that she might be losing her power over Chuck because he seems interested in Vanessa. In fact, when Chuck finally wins his prize, he asks Blair to say those three magical words, and she can’t do it. He does the most un-Chuck Bass-like thing and leaves her, telling her that it’s time for her to chase him.

Other storylines swimming around this episode is the house-warming party itself and the rules that Bart and Lily have established for their kids: no going out on school nights, weekend curfew, every Friday night is pizza night, etc., just the kinds of things that Lily was never around to enforce when Serena and her brother were taking care of themselves and Lily was off galavanting with some new guy. Serena’s having none of it and blows up at her mother during the party. The four of them, minus Chuck, have a very sweet ending scene just having some cake.

Like Montgomery Burns on Christmas, I also felt my heart melt a little when Dan invited Nate to come live with them after he discovered Nate was basically squatting in his old house – no electricity, presumably no utilities whatsoever … At first, Nate’s pride got in the way, but as Dan’s father Rufus told his son, “a real friend wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Or, something to that effect.

The show ended with its usual preview for next week’s episode. For those of you that don’t know, Jenny is now home-schooled and still working with Eleanor Waldorf on her designs. Well, it’s almost like another year passed because Jenny is pictured in the preview with heavy heavy eye makeup while she’s yelling and screaming at various people. Hmmm, do I care? I think no.