Gossip Girl: When The Lights Go Down In The City

Tonight the temperature in Manhattan heats up.  Our nearest and dearest Gossip Girl gives us three valuable tips to combat the heat: drink plenty of fluids (scotch, neat, for Chuck), stay out of the sun (and don’t drop your fabrics, Jenny), and limit your physical activity (by limiting yourself to make out sessions, i.e., Jimes will not pollinate the delicate, little flower that is Blair).  Speaking of wilting, Vanessa is upset with Nate for standing her up in favor of Duchess Catharine of Cougarshire, while Catherine plays dress-up Ken doll with her boy toy, Nate.  (Query: Whose hair looks more realistic, Nate’s or Ken’s?)  So Vanessa calls Nate, they hang out; Catherine finds out and conspires with Blair to set a trap.  But all that came out later in the dining room….

Serena and Lonely Boy talk about “coming out” with their relationship.  In talking about keeping their relationship a secret, they are photographed making out, still not realizing that Gossip Girl, like Saruman, can manipulate animals and teenaged girls to report on everything that happens on the isle of Manhattan.  So then everyone knows and Jenny overacts being happy.  Blair, though, is unimpressed and thinks that Serena and Dan are fooling themselves.  I happen to agree, but she’s also fooling herself about Jimes.

Nate, deciding he doesn’t want to play the stable boy to Catherine’s plantation, crawls back to Chuck to get the money he offered him in the last episode.  Chuck already put the money away or spent it on Japanese prostitutes.  It’s really not clear, but Chuck is distraught over “Blair and Lord Fauntleroy,” and by distraught, I mean impotent. 

Back at the Parsons Internship and Sweatshop, Jenny is cleaning toilets and is told she is a bird from Cinderella.  Since Jenny is so into fashion, she should tell her brother, Dan, to stop wearing tee shirts with vests; he looks like a douche.  While Serena, Dan, and his vest are in Central Park, the cast of Gossip Girl: The New Class harass Dan for getting back with Serena (except the one Serena fan who yells at her).  For a moment, I thought these were the grown-up, hallucinated, dancing baby from Ally McBeal, but alas, no.  And before our commercial, Blair invites Vanessa to her back-to-school party, per Catherine’s instructions.

Pre-party, Serena advises Chuck not to use Blair as “sexual Drano” and he takes that as an invitation to the party for both him and his, er, plunger.  Back at Parsons, Eleanor Waldorf returns, hears Jenny criticizing the ugly design, and Eleanor fires Jenny.  This was odd – there was one week, tops, left at the internship and she’s still getting a recommendation.  I say, enjoy the vacation!

At Blair’s party (does she have one every other day?), Chuck makes his first attempt at sexual assault this season and gropes Blair while telling her he’s better than her “suit of armor” named Jimes.  A power surge goes off while Serena and Dan call for the elevator, and I remind you readers never to get in an elevator after a power surge because then OMG the power goes off and S & D are stuck.  Back at Blair’s, Vanessa sees Nate with Catherine and realizes they are together (sort of).  Scuffling in the blackout and an awful voiceover says, “This party just went over to the dark side.”  Oh, please.

Blair is ordering people to hand out candles and assuring us that the power will come back on.  Nate confesses to Vanessa (and the audience) that he’s been schtupping Catherine for money and Vanessa understands.  Blair asks if Catherine is “enjoying her last hurrah before the surgeries start.”  Catherine replies in kind, saying Blair is missing something in her relationship with Jimes and that she will never be happy with him.  All of a sudden, the Cloverfield monster bites her head off!  No, wait, that was Catherine telling Vanessa to stay away from Nate.  Whew, scared me for a moment.

On the love elevator, Serena and Dan fight more and break up.  I’m not wasting more binary code on those two.  Good riddance and please lose the vest, Dan. 

Blair pleads for Jimes to meet her in her bedroom for a caucus of the “Rump Parliament.”  Chuck overhears this and, wouldn’t you know, fakes an English accent, pretends to be Jimes, and makes out with Blair in the dark.  And then Jimes walks in and the power comes back on, much like the re-engorgement of Chuck’s, er, “down there.”  Blair insists she didn’t know it was Jimes and Jimes, not being a total idiot, doesn’t believe her, but then he does and they stay together.  Vanessa dumps (or whatever) Nate and leaves.  And in the heat of the blackout, Jenny gets her job back by earning the respect of a middle-aged, uptight woman.  Welcome to my world!

We end with Vanessa and Dan being the Brooklyn misfits that they are.  Vanessa explains that she let Catherine have Nate because Catherine threatened to go to the FBI on where Nate’s fugitive father is hiding (hint: he’s on Broadway).  And we are again reminded that pillow talk is where we hear the secrets that you keep, when you’re wrestling cougars in your sleep.  Until next time….

Mondays at 8/7C, The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW