Gossip Girl: Mama Mia!

Another Monday, another episode of Gossip Girl. Unfortunately this week’s episode couldn’t quite match the entertaining ridiculousness of last week and the resulting hour of television was a tad dull to say the least.

We now know that the mystery woman from the graveyard is in fact Squint’s mom but with the mystery element gone, all that is left is Squints walking around looking unhappy and uber serious. In other words, nothing has changed. Blair thinks he should just forget about it, but Serena and Nate take a break from having sex to take him out for a comfort dinner and invite his mom too. This obviously goes over like a turd in a punchbowl and Squints pays her to never show up again and she pretty easily accepts. Classy, right?

Serena still isn’t satisfied though (dealing with her own daddy issues again), so she approaches Mama Squints (guest star Laura Harring) to get the full story, and it turns out she never wanted much to do with Squints anyway. Nevertheless, she has a change of heart, goes to Squints, returns the check and promises to stay in New York to get to know him. It all ends very happily and I couldn’t have been more bored.

On a slightly juicier front, Jenny and drug-runnin’ Damien are heating up their relationship with secret sleep-overs but Lily busts them and promptly calls over Rufus to lay down the law and threaten a move to Brooklyn. GASP! Anything but Brooklyn!!

But in an act brilliantly portraying Jenny’s lack of a brain, she decides to throw Damien’s pill stash all over the floor in front of Rufus and Lily. Why she thought this would be a good move is entirely unclear but it prompts Damien to spout some BS sob story about his dad being a drug addict and how he was just trying to get the pills away from pops. It turns out that the story is actually partially true, but Lily and Rufus still forbid them from seeing each other again and proceed with banishing Jenny to the savage wasteland of Brooklyn. But instead she runs away first with a random bottle of Lilly’s headache medication to make up for the others that she so crazily threw on the ground because apparently all pills are fair game for selling illegally. Next week she may or may not  be shilling Flintstones vitamins.

And finally we have the glacially paced storyline/budding relationship between Dan (Penn Badgley) and Vanessa (Jessica Szohr). Things have been weird since he confessed his love to her so in an effort to make things normal again they decide to go on a double date because that’s obviously the right way to tackle a problem like this. Dan brings a girl that he just met in the hallway and acts like a douche bag making things even weirder but he and Vanessa still manage to end up making out. The kiss puts her into bitch mode for some reason but then its revealed that she’s not really dating the guy she brought either, so she and Dan both get ditched and end up having sex together. Someone please tell me that no real people struggle this much with their relationships. I know it can’t be too simple as this is fiction and all, but these people are just inept.

Next week promises more scandal with runaway Jenny considering turning in her V Card with Damien. Oh, and it looks like Lily is figuring out that Rufus did the dirty with the neighbor lady when the doorman brought up the scarf that the building hussy left with him rather than just hold onto it and give it to Rufus herself. Clearly this girl needs a lesson in subtlety and I’d like to see Lily slap it into her. All I want in the near future is a cat fight so cross your fingers with me and lets hope for the best!

For another take on this week’s episode, check out We’re All Fine (For Now) by Trisha Huntsman.

Season 3, Episode 14: The Lady Vanished (originally aired March 15, 2010)

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Mondays at 8/7C, The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW, Giovanni Rufino