* Ben Morse is right: Gossip Girl is off to a good start this season. This is almost completely meaningless since the show basically starts over again every fourth episode, but after an exceptionally juicy season finale, which itself followed a frustratingly repetitive wheel-spinning season, it’s good to see they mean business. What sold me here was that even as I was sitting there feeling smugly superior to the Georgina pregnancy storyline–it’s obviously not his kid, she’s probably not even pregnant, now we’re gonna have to sit here for a couple episodes until they send her packing again–the show had actually already delivered the baby during the break! Thank you for remaining two steps ahead of me, Gossip Girl.
* Thank you also for continuing to portray Blair as almost autistic in her neurotic reliance on markers of social status to make herself feel good relative to other people. I appreciate that the show didn’t even try to make her seem like anything but a horrible snob when she discovered she’d actually be dating a prince’s driver and not a prince, and how this manifested itself as a sort of mental illness in which she could hardly control the Miss Manners horseshit streaming out of her mouth during dinner when confronted with the supposed pauper’s supposed transgressions against Good Classy People. No wonder she and Chuck are destined for each other–who else has the training to deal with crazy people that Batman has?
* Speaking of! I loved that the show saved Chuck for the final segment, like the juicy mythology-revealing part of a Lost episode. I love that they made the storytelling rhythm of his section so different from the rest of the episode, with the flashbacks and jumpcuts and time jumps. I love that he is now Harold Prince, a back-up personality he has unveiled after great stress and torment. The Chuck Bass of Zur-En-Arrh is here.
* I hope Nate’s latest CW-famous guest-girlfriend is a bit more interesting than the last few they’ve saddled him with; using the fact that she lives in a studio apartment and does her own dishes as a signifier of her villainy is a good start. If we can’t use Gossip Girl as a sexy funhouse-mirror version of the class warfare being waged against the poor by the rich over the past year or two, what can we use it for?
* Congratulations to Vanessa for getting the line of the show in re: Geor-GEE-na’s Geor-JI-na; thank you, we won’t be requiring your services for the rest of the season.
* Not one but two “look, I was gonna tell you…” revelations in this episode alone! Oh, Gossip Girl, don’t ever change.
* Needed more lingerie scenes, though, and not from the Rock Band Pussycat Dolls or whoever that was.
Not much to add since you already saw my thoughts, other than to add that I too was totally surprised when an actual baby showed up!