Whoo boy, last episode of Gossip Girl was full of some real “ripped from the headlines” intrigue. Rufus can’t sell the gallery because of that whole big fustercluck we’re calling the American real estate market. Serena’s new boyfriend went all Bernie Madoff on Lily’s co-op friends, and they invested in his clearly brilliant scheme to install Blueray players in African villages, because smarmy older guys who date your high school daughter are always geniuses who will triple all your money in three months, no proof or research necessary.
In these tough times, Georgina turned to Jesus to solve her problems and absolve her sins, and Vanessa thought she caught swine flu from her liaisons with Chuck Bass, but all she contracted was a severe loss of self-respect.
Also Blair and Chuck still didn’t get together. Instead, Nate asked Blair to move in with him, and she said yes, because that makes about as much sense as anything else that happened.
In all seriousness, “Southern Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was a fun episode, even for those of us just biding our time for the finale when Blair and Chuck will finally reunite. So, while we wait, let’s nitpick the high and lowlights of the most realistic show on TV, shall we?
The Great Griftsby. Let’s just bask in this plotline for a minute. It’s that much fun. Poppy and Gabriel hatched a foolproof plan involving a fake break-up, a fake company, and a fake ultimatum that leaves the fake company without its fake investors. Good thing Gabriel’s new fake-girlfriend Serena was there to offer help in the form Lily, whose word is so “golden” on the topic of investments that her co-op buddies all call her Jim Cramer as a nickname. Lily and Rufus listen to Gabriel’s speech about feel-good exploitation in the third world and immediately sign up for whatever it is because they’ve got to ACT NOW! No questions asked. Cake walk. Classic grift.
Dad & Dumber. So Rufus gives Gabriel a check made out to the amount of “All the Humphreys’ Money” and tells the kids their problems are officially over. The kids pool their money to buy him a $50 ring so he can propose to Lily and they can finally start that Gossip Girl/Step by Step hybrid-spin-off we’ve been waiting for, where Chuck lives above the garage and escorts Jenny to the prom when she gets a bad perm. But the H-VDW proposal hangs in the balance, because Rufus is about lose everything in that grift, which will set off a chain of events forcing Dan to attend a community college communications program, Jenny’s mullet to suddenly become un-ironic, and Lily to dump Rufus for becoming “that kind” of poor. “OH NO, Serena!,” everyone will say, as usual. “What did you DO?!”
Spy Games. Blair puts on her special crime-solving beret and decides to get to the bottom of this, and that was fun, since Kristen Bell (the voice of Gossip Girl) and Michelle Trachtenberg (Georgina Sparks) have both played spunky young female detectives in their times (Veronica Mars and Harriet the Spy, respectively), so they must have all had a good laugh about that on set. Hehe.
I Can Totally Believe It’s Not Butter. Blair hooked in the Bass to help her figure out why Gabriel lied about falling in love with Serena a year ago at a place called Butter, when everyone knows that Butter was closed that night because of something about Nelly Yuki and the SATs. How that relates to why Gabriel keeps disappearing and letting Poppy Lifton climb him like a spider monkey in plain sight is a bit fuzzy. But, determined to help Serena and find a way to hold hands, Detective Waldorf and Deputy Bass head to Connecticut, where they find Georgina Sparks, born again and ready to mingle.
Can Georgie Come out and Pray? After recounting her path to righteousness, Georgina tells Chuck that she never went to Butter a year ago, so–mystery solved! Chuck finds out what was only written on that waxy Ken doll’s face the whole episode: Gabriel is a big fat liar, and a bad one. But actually–mystery not at all solved! Because that still has nothing to do with the whole fake-company scheme. So after Serena finds Gabriel’s apartment deserted, and Poppy pops up and does her best, “Oh no! And I gave him half a million dollars, too!” (classic), everyone rushes back to the city to finally blow the lid off this thing, including Georgina, who sweetly hints to Chuck that she’d like see Blair. Probably so she can finally forgive her sworn enemy. But more probably so she can inflict righteous justice with her prayer-cleansed hands around Blair’s hedonistic neck.
Next week, the gang convinces Georgina to Christian-guilt Poppy into giving back all the stupid people’s money, Serena gives Gabriel a second chance, because she has the best taste in guys, ever, and Blair realizes that living in Murray Hill with Nate is worse than living underground with the subway mole men. Wake me up when it’s Prom.
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Chace Crawford,
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