October 21, 2008

He's Chuck Bass, And He's Awesome

Last night's Gossip Girl was so good I almost can't talk about it. Almost.

So Bart's back and Lilly is desperate to turn the Van der Woodsen-Basses into a happy family so she's suddenly instituted some Brady Bunch rules for kids who've been allowed to come and go and do as they please for 17 years. That goes about like you'd expect, which is to say Chuck ignores them and Eric goes with the flow and Serena assumes the rules are the work of Bart and suddenly starts acting like a petulant 9-year-old. After Serena realizes that Lilly is peddling the happy family story to In Style magazine at their house warming party, Serena outs her as a terrible mother and storms out of the party. That's when Bart puts an abrupt end to the party and Lilly asks Eric to give it to her straight (pardon the pun). Eric is about the only person on the show who just tells shit like it is yet is still the nice guy so he lays it on her - she sucked, she was never around, she was always putting the many, many, many, many men in her life ahead of her kids.



Bart brings Serena back and everyone makes up with everyone and then does what all happy families do - they sit around the coffee table eating cake without plates and totally pretending Chuck isn't related to them.


Speaking of Eric, he has a new boyfriend whose name I didn't even bother learning last night on account of I don't think he's cute enough for Eric so I'm holding out for someone cuter. This is him:


And speaking of boyfriends, Nate's dumped Chuck so now Dan is his new bestie. While attempting to meet Nate for some soccer (???) Dan uses his patented ability to stick his nose where it doesn't belong to ascertain the sad truth about Nate's financial and living situation - Nate's squatting in his family's former Manhattan home.


Hard as Eleanor Waldorf and Bart Bass may try, they'll never take the title of Worst UES Parents away from the Archibalds. Anyway, Humphrey's can't ever leave bad enough alone so Dan and Jenny hatch a plan - invite Nate to dinner, don't tell Rufus the sitch but then use the family atmosphere to entice poor Nate to come stay with them. At dinner Rufus's ignorance of the situation causes him to ask exactly the kinds of questions you'd either desperately avoid if you knew someone was suddenly poor and homeless, or that you'd ask specifically to get someone to admit they're suddenly poor and homeless. That causes Jenny and Dan to make a bunch of awkward faces at each other over chili. Then, lacking tact and grace as always, Dan comes right out and tells Nate he knows he's a poor squatter and asks him if he wants to "crash" on the Humphrey couch. I'm really starting to hate Dan. Oh, and so is Nate because he doesn't appreciate being called out like that by someone he only became friends with 10 minutes ago due entirely to the complete lack of other options. But then Rufus tells Dan to stalk him until he relents, which he does. That leads to a brief, almost nice scene between Dan and Serena on Nate's front steps and the next thing we know, Dan's bringing Nate home to live in Brooklyn like he's a very hot, stray puppy. Rufus is proud and Jenny is really happy because what teenage girl wouldn't want Nate Archibald sleepin' in her house?


See how cute Jenny looks there? That's the last time that'll happen for a while. Next week the hideous chop-job debuts and she turns bitchy again.

Now for the part of the story that really matters - CHUCK!

Vanessa is trying to save some historic Brooklyn speakeasy and attempts to blackmail Blair into helping with the threat of sending a picture of Lord Dull and his step-mother (Madchen Amick) makin' out to...Gossip Girl, I assume. Vanessa is WAY out of her league messing with Queen B, and she really should have known that after the Archibald Fiasco a few weeks back, but V's not so smart. B decides that Vanessa affords her an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone - she'll get Chuck to "seduce and destroy" Vanessa and she'll have sex with him because our girl Blair has a serious craving for some Chuck Bass lovin' (and I REALLY can not blame her!).

Chuck will accomplish this by convincing Vanessa that he's going to buy her speakeasy and restore it to it's original glory, fucking her senseless (it ain't a long trip, but damn, what a fun ride) then dumping her and bailing out of the speakeasy at the last second ensuring it's doom.

But as it turns out, Chuck actually digs the speakeasy, the guy who runs it, and the guy's stories about Rum Running Joe Kennedy (Chuck's hero - hee!), so he decides to make this place his new Victrola. That's when he starts opening up and being sincere with Vanessa which is when his hotness started causing me to black out. He invites her to attend the Van der Woodsen-Bass Family Housewarming Party as his guest and they have some genuinely nice moments but then his father humiliates him by telling him he's a stupid loser, Bass Industries will not be investing in the speakeasy, and Chuck can continue disappointing everyone forever since it's the only thing he's good at anyway.


V overhears that and tries to comfort a very depressed Chuck.


That's when B sees that this plan isn't really going her way so she steps in to handle things herself - she steals Vanessa's phone, erases the blackmail picture, tells Vanessa that she and Chuck were just messing with her and that Chuck is really just trying to destroy her, not save the speakeasy. Vanessa is disgusted so she leaves. That's when she tells the speakeasy guy that Chuck lied to them so now that guy won't have anything to do with Chuck even though Chuck still really wants to find a way to do this just as he did with Victrola. He makes a face that is sad enough to break your heart and hot enough to melt iron.



Fully defeated, our Mr. Bass goes to Blair's room to collect his prize, and what a prize she's made it. She's lit candles and chilled champagne and is wearing the fanciest lingerie I've ever seen. I think she even re-styled her hair. The two of them start to get it on, he lays her back on the bed, he's kissing her passionately, he's working his truly impressive Chuck Bass mojo all over the place and then he stops and gives her the "three little words, 8 letters..." speech she gave him in Summer Kind of Wonderful and when she can't say it, he gets up off of her, puts on his jacket and tells her that it's about damn time she start chasing him. Then he leaves and I black out again.


On a side note and totally SPOILERY - putting the clues together from Ausiello and E's Kristin, I'm about 99.999% certian that Bart's going to be killed off the show in a few weeks. Yay!

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