* This episode could have ended right after Blair failed to understand the sock-on-the-doorknob “sexile” signal and walked in on Dan and Geogina dry-humping. Fuck, the whole show could have ended right there. If I wasn’t quite sold on the potential of “Gossip Girl Goes to College” before then, I sure am now: Besides offering an endless array of scenarios in which we can watch beautiful young people do it, it also presents Blair and the gang with their greatest challenge yet. How can someone who’s accustomed to occupying presidential hotel suites for her trysts get used to sleeping on a twin bed just a few feet away from where a couple other kids just banged one out? Brilliant. I am so on board for this.
* I think it’s funny how Blair looks like this fresh-faced little munchkin all the time while Serena usually looks like an attractive 40-year-old.
* I did not like Blair’s dress during the second half of the episode at all! It looked like a Deee-Lite video threw up on her.
* I did like how ambitious and ridiculous the big schemes were in this episode. Chuck and Blair hiring various people to ruin Carter’s relationship with Serena, Georgina orchestrating a pair of elaborate ruses to pit Chuck and Blair against one another–it was like that Mark Waid JLA run where someone uses Batman’s contingency plans for rogue JLA members against them. When I saw where the Chuck and Blair photo thing was going I was ready to turn against another goofy done-in-one storyline, and indeed it seems like the writers can’t quite figure out what else to do with that pair right now other than stand-alone hijinx, but it was so baroque and silly I couldn’t stay mad.
* You know, I was really pulling for Georgina. I wanted her turnaround to be legit. Okay, so I suppose there have been an awful lot of redemption arcs on this show: That’s Serena’s story, which is easy to forget since her real rampages took place prior to the pilot. To an extent it’s also Chuck and Blair’s stories, as they slowly transformed from heartless monsters into…monsters with hearts, I guess. Jenny had a rise and fall and rise arc as well. And now you’ve got reformed bad boy Carter, too. But there’s something about Georgina’s potential redemption that would have really worked for me. Here’s someone whose behavior was bad enough to horrify even the likes of Chuck, who the whole gang had to team up against to stop; then she became a Jesus-freak punchline; I think it would have been interesting to see her as someone now more or less comfortable between the two extremes, really trying to keep on the straight and narrow. I dunno, maybe that’s what we’ll get eventually, but I was a little bummed out that she was puppet-mastering Chuck and Blair. It’s also tough to tell if we’re supposed to interpret her Dan wallpaper as sweet or stalkerish–I hope it’s the former.
* Man, that was a poorly acted reveal between Scott and Vanessa, wasn’t it? Maybe it was the editing, though–it felt rushed. I really don’t understand why Vanessa didn’t out Scott there at the auction. Who is this kid to her, compared to the Humphreys? But hey, at least we found out the reasoning behind that weird professor-recommendation party freakout last week. That was baffling!
* When they finally got around to showing Nate, it was like, “MEANWHILE, on another show…” But boy is he beautiful. I hope this Capulet/Montague storyline gives him something to do. Maybe he’ll tangle with Carter? He needs an antagonist other than his father or grandfather, is what I think it is–someone that reveals him as his own person rather than someone constantly reacting to the people who got him where he is.
* I don’t know what it was, but I thought Ed Westwick was a fucking scream in this episode. I mean, he always is, but The Missus and I found ourselves rewinding and rewatching certain moments that weren’t even laugh lines or whatever, just watching him smile or listening to him talk or watching him walk around. He’s truly magnificent.
* Regarding the auction scene, watching three hot kids spend thousands of dollars on things they don’t even actually want is almost erotic.