Gossip Girl: Summer, Kind of Boring

We begin Season Two with a math lesson on the different ways to calculate a year.  For those who don’t like math, we also re-watch most of Season One.  Anyway, 365 minutes later, we are in East Hampton watching Nate study the natural habitat (read: breasts) of a cougar.  Cut to Lonelyboy Dan interning in the city, where he’s learning how to date two women at once.  Cut back to East Hampton’s own Serena, who’s all alone to stew over her deception.  Meanwhile, Blair is in Paris and little Jenny is making eggshell dresses for a bitch. 

So Blair returns to the States and takes the Jitney (seriously?) to East Hampton with her new boyfriend, Jim/James (or Jimes).  Blair thinks Jimes is cool because he drinks gin martinis and speaks six languages.  Big deal, I can speak all languages after drinking gin martinis.  We quickly learn that Blair is using Jimes to make Chuck jealous for ditching her in Europe for the summer.  And Chuck and his lime green suit are green with envy.

Meanwhile, Serena and her lifeguard friend almost run over Nate and his boxer shorts as he runs from a cougar’s husband.  Jenny and Eric reconcile and she invites herself out to East Hampton so she can model her new dress at the annual White Party (no, not the gay one in Miami).  Speaking of gay, Eric, Chuck, and Nate play croquet while plotting to expose Jimes as a fraud. 

Dan treks out to East Hampton because he’s still not over Serena.  At her house, he helps Serena’s snotty grandmother with her pearls and all is forgiven between them.  You see, her cancer and her vindictiveness are in remission.  To make her feel better, she dresses up Dan in her dead husband’s old clothes and they head to the White Party, sponsored by vitaminwater®.

In addition to the many shades of white, the theme of this party was jealousy: Nate and his cougar (he gets her back) and Blair and Chuck (he doesn’t).  But Queen B finds out that Jimes is actually British and a lord (named Marcus Beaton), who wants someone to love him for who he is, not what he is (think Coming to America).  Blair, being the social butterfly that she is, falls for this story and they ride off into the distance.  And speaking of distance, Jenny impresses her bitchy boss in a very Mentos commercial kind of way; it seems that Jenny and her designs may be going places.

That leaves us with Serena and Dan.  These two are ridiculous, and after her little stunt last season, I think he can do much better.  So now they fight, she misleads him again, he gets colored drinks thrown on him (by the girls he two-timed while they were two-timing him), and Serena washes his clothes – because she’s grounded like that.  But what’s not grounded is this relationship and its future.  The promoters tell us we want to know if S and D will ever get back together.  But, I’m more interesting in finding out how all of these minors drink openly and never get in trouble.  I’m hoping to find out the answer on this season’s Gossip Girl.

As for this first episode, it was merely a prelude for the drama that will unfold when they head back to school.  It’s like the first few minutes of a Harry Potter film, where you’re suffering through the fat Dursley jokes knowing things will be cool when they get to Hogwarts.  So yeah, this episode was lame and it dragged on, but I’m optimistic that any show with an episode entitled “The Blair Bitch Project” has to have a few more tricks up its sleeve.

Mondays at 8/7C, The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW