Good morning Upper Eastsiders,
After a summer of painful boredom at the hands of teen dramedy, we were thrilled to gather Gossip Girl back to our grateful bossom. Kristen Bell's snappy voiceover lacks a little of the spark of the first season (for instance, "We've got another name for Lonely boy...Playboy"), but we're not concerned. We're hoping it's like going for a run for the first time after a summer of eating Ben and Jerry's -- it might take a minute or two to get back up to witty, pun-dropping speed...
Predictably, Serena and Dan spent the summer pining for each other -- Serena in nun-like seclusion in the Hamptons where she served as a beard for Nate's secret trysts with a married glamour wife, and Dan psuedo-whoring it up all over New York City in an attempt to convince himself that brokenhearted isn't his natural state of existence.
Nate passed the time doing some actual whoring with a middle-aged Hamptons housewife -- when asked to comment on his character's plotline for the CW, Chace Crawford could sum it up in one word: "Cougarville." At this point, We've pretty much stopped counting the number of recycled Dawson's Creek plotlines in the Gossip Girl repertoire (Pacey's secret affair with an older woman, anyone?). But listen, there's no shame in mining the Creek for material, it's kind of like sharing DNA from CW parentage.
Pause for a word from our sponsors in which we're amused by a commercial for Degree Girl deoderant with the slogan, "protection for every OMG moment." Sidenote: What ever happend to Teen Spirit? Do they still make it? Because, we feel like if there's a deoderant that could pull off an OMG commercial, it's that one, surely.
Whatever. Back to our regularly scheduled program...
At first we feared Jenny might have turned into a bit of a stepford child -- an odd change from the anxiety-inducing climb to the top of the social food chain that culminated with Jenny ringing in her 15th birthday in a stolen dress. But, it turns out that with nothing left to love or lose in the battle for prep school supremacy, she's shed the nose-against-the-glass fascination with the in-crowd and begun stirring things up as a rebel without a popularity cause. Thankfully, she has Eric Van der Woodsen as her general Girl Friday.
And now, Chuck. The thing is, everytime we try to hate Chuck Bass, he hits us with a startling moment of brutal honesty and we fall in love all over again. After turning his back on his new leaf and standing Blair up at the airport, Chuck is back in the saddle again, sunbathing topless with Brazilian triplets. Blair arrives (why is she so orange?) with rent-a-boyfriend in tow in an attempt to make Chuck jealous. Perhaps the best moment of last night's premiere for us was Chuck's cut-the-bullshit speech that leaves Blair sputtering and us wishing futilely we could find a way to keep hating him. Also, we're kind of feeling his hair parted on the side like that. Damn, that motherchucker, indeed.
Our not-so-merry band of characters find themselves thrown together in a Hamptons bash at which, obviously, hijinx ensue. Serena kisses Nate to help him make Cougarville jealous just as Dan shows up to pour out his heart. Dan storms off, she runs after him babbling excuses, two of his summer flings show up at the same time to scold him for his philandering and pour their drinks on him, Serena tries to get the stains out of his jacket, and somehow they're over their issues.
Meanwhile, Blair confesses to rent-a-boyfriend that she finds him boring. Rent-a-boyfriend appears offended, but finds her honesty oddly refreshing. Turns out rent-a-boyfriend is actually British and and a lord, and wants to take Blair away to his castle or something. Chuck and Blair share an impossibly intense moment prior to her departure in which she implores him to ask her to stay (Pacey and Joey, anyone?) and confess his love. Chuck can't get the words out, and a tearful Blair takes off with the lord.
Dan waits for Serena on the beach (did he build that fire?) penning his latest short story. She arrives barefoot, a Grecian goddess on the sand, and the Hamptons fireworks propel them into eachother's arms. Ah, young love. To be honest, we're skeptical about the ease of this reconciliation, but we're not going to worry about that now, not when they seem so content to be back together. We know how they feel, it's good to have you back, Gossip Girl.