The Brady Bunch

It was during the wedding scene at the Botanical Garden in last night's Gossip Girl that I realized Rufus and Lily are the parents of practically everyone on that show. They share Illegitimate Joe, he has Dan and Jenny, she's got Serena and Eric and step-son Chuck. He's practically Vanessa's dad since she has no parents to speak of. If only Chuck were to marry Blair, and Serena could marry Carter and then they could adopt Nate because God knows someone needs to...they'd be the parents of every kid on that show!

I really liked the episode a lot and was pleasantly surprised that R and L ended up hitched (not to mention that Georgina and Illegitimate Joe both left town!) in the end. Actually, now that I think about it, there were several pleasant surprises last night. As much as I hate the Georgina character (and how it's translating into strong dislike for poor Michelle Trachtenberg), I liked the scenes between her and Vanessa. V's interaction with the bat-shit G made V more likable to me again. Now they just need to give her something to DO!

The same can be said for Nate who seems to exist only to nail pretty girls and then have it turn out badly. Such was the case when he discovered that Bree was using him to track down Carter so her family could kidnap and possibly kill him and then he dumped her because "but I'm from Texas" is not a good excuse for being an ass hole (though, there are quite a lot of them there...).

The van der Bassphrey children banded together to get their parents hitched and help each other be happy people. Jenny, Eric, Dan and Serena Parent Trapped R and L into making up but then they fought about stupid shit again and broke up again before getting back together AGAIN. Then Serena, Jenny, Eric, Blair and the mean girls threw together a pretty stunning wedding in 24 hours while Dan and Vanessa tried to fool Georgina into thinking that Dan still liked her so she wouldn't tell the 'rents about Illegitimate Joe during the nuptials but then Dan forgot to grab G's ass and the whole thing fell apart anyway. Chuck first tried to save the whole family from ending up related to Carter Baizen and his under-eye baggage, but then he saw what big meanies the Buckley clan are and how Carter was willing to risk getting killed by the glandular Texas dickheads just to come clean to Serena and try to make their relationship work so then he told Serena the facts and let her see that Carter was being stand-up for once in his slimy little life.

Then all the kids chased after R and L when another one of their petty squabbles began to derail their wedding which was so nice. Also nice? When all the kids came back to the loft for the actual hitching and everyone hugged and danced and was nice to each other. I know it's weird to say when you're talking about Gossip Girl, but I like it most when everyone gets along!

A final bit of awesome scheming from B had Dorota and Vanya tricking G right out of the country so good riddens to her until Trachtenberg's crappy new nurse show gets axed and she needs a job again.

You know what wasn't so good last night though? Gossip Girl herself. Her bon mots were weird and random and all over the place. She was off her game last night. I think genuine happiness throws her for a loop.