Gossip Girl Review: Climax Pending

“Just because we can’t be friends, doesn’t mean we aren’t.”

I love that quote. Love. It. There’s such simple, quiet truth in it; a truth I believe most of us have known at one time or another, whether we expressed it or not.

And for the strangest moment of this week’s episode, for the smallest of split seconds, I didn’t hate Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen). Then I remembered how she’s the Antichrist and I would give my Burberry purse to the writers if they would expel her from the show once and for all. The small purse. Let’s not be hasty. Seriously, it would be much easier to forgive Jenny for her transgressions if she didn’t have multiple personalities. Two weeks ago she needs to leave because she hates the drama. Then last week she returns to help Juliet (Katie Cassidy) and Vanessa (Jessica Szohr) teach Serena (Blake Lively) a lesson once and for all. Together they turn Dan (Penn Badgley), Nate (Chace Crawford), and Blair (Leighton Meester) against S at a party, withdraw her from Columbia University, and caused her mother (Kelly Rutherford) to be ashamed of her once again.

All of that is child’s play, though, compared to where Juliet went next. She drugged Serena and dumped her in a hotel room, alone. Serena comes to at the beginning of tonight’s episode and calls 911. She insists that she wasn’t trying to overdose but no one – well, almost no one, believes her. The one who believes her is, of course, the ever faithful Dan. He even busts her out of the crazy house. Things take a turn for the worse when a Gossip Girl blast shows S doing drugs at the party, and Serena is forced to admit that perhaps she does have a problem and can’t recall what happened. She and Lonely Boy do kiss, and she admits he was the one she was coming to cozy up to the night of the party. I have to say, I used to be a huge proponent of S and Dan, but these days it’s feeling a little played out.

Meanwhile, Nate is still making nice with his father, who continues to lament the estrangement from Nate’s mother. The Captain (Sam Robards) asks Nate to speak with her, and after Nate discovers divorce papers and gives her a guilt-laden speech, she agrees to go and see how much her husband has changed for herself. The Captain snows Anne Archibald (Francie Swift) like he’s snowed Nate, a fact we corroborate when the guard lets it slip that the man’s parole date is coming up, and having a family to go home to will certainly play in his favor. Nate’s pretty dumb, so he probably hasn’t even figured it out yet.

Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Blair are thrown together, even though she has plans to travel to Paris for Thanksgiving, and they spend the day comforting one another during the upheaval with S. In the end, Blair is beginning to fall back into old habits as far as depending on Chuck, and even doubts her decision the week before. Chuck, lovely, amazing guy that he is, reminds her that she was right – they need time on their own to figure things out. She might be ready to be friends, but he can’t. So poignantly tortured and raw, culminating in the quote above on a note signed “Always, B.” Have I mentioned how gorgeously these characters, their story, and their dialogue are? Yes. Yes, I think I have.

Little J tells Juliet that she plans to come clean, that they went too far and S could’ve been hurt. Juliet calls Vanessa, who rats Jenny out to Rufus (Matthew Settle). Vanessa is a whiny little witch these days, and has traveled so far from the upright, righteous, holier than thou character of seasons past that I’m not even really sure what to make of her. Juliet goes to the jail to inform her brother of their success, only to find him shocked at the lengths to which she’s gone. Juliet skips town, but Little J uses some evidence from her trash to convince Blair that Serena has been telling the truth the entire time.

The end of the night illuminated a reuniting of one of my favorite Gossip Girl duos – Blair and Dan. Together, they plan to find Juliet and get her to admit what she did, there by clearing S’s name. I, for one, am more than ready to find out where this Juliet and Ben storyline has been headed all fall. I can’t wait to see my B in all her evil glory.

Season 4, Episode 10:  Gaslit (originally aired November 30, 2010)

Mondays at 9/8C, The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW.

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