Home'Gossip Girl' recap: Serena 0; Lisa Loeb 1.
May 13, 2008, 11:29 AM | by Adam Markovitz
Categories: 'Gossip Girl', Mini TV Watch
Last week's rapid-fire revelations (an outing! a sham relationship! a
murder confession!) left us with high hopes for Monday night's episode of
Gossip Girl, but the results were definitely a mixed bag. The show
starts with an unexpected mystery: on the night after her big
revelation, Serena has fallen off the grid. She's not answering her
phone, and no one knows where she is: Not Georgina, whose Cruel
Intentions shtick is getting a little old; not Dan, who makes a quick
stop at home to tease Rufus about his upcoming "Top 10 Forgotten Bands
of the '90s" concert; and certainly not Serena's mom, who's too busy
planning her wedding (which now has its own reality-blurring website at lilyandbart.weddingwindow.com) to even care. But then Blair summons Nate and
Chuck to her home, where the three of them nurse a well-sauced Serena
back to consciousness and finally extract her secret. At this point, the
plot's already moving a little too fast for its own good, but there's a
brilliant moment in which Nate, Chuck, and Blair stage an impromptu bad
behavior contest to convince Serena that whatever she's done can't
possibly be worse than things they've done in the past. Blair: "I had
sex with [Chuck] in the back of a limo." Nate: "I had sex with [Serena]
at a wedding while I was [Blair's] date." Chuck: "I'm Chuck Bass."
Game, set, and match, sir.
And now, finally, the scoop on Serena's huge, monster, mind-blowing, life-changing secret. On the night when Serena hooked up with Nate, she headed back to a hotel room with Georgina, where some guy tried to force himself on her before fatally ODing on drugs. Aaaaand that's it. Serena called 911 before leaving the scene with Georgina (who was afraid of getting caught with blow), and then felt so guilty about the whole thing that she told her mom to send her to boarding school. Excuse me? THIS is what Serena meant when she said she "killed someone"? After all that build up, I was expecting to see something more along the lines of Serena strangling the guy with her lustrous mane. And sadly, things only go downhill from there as Serena develops a severe case of Lazy Writer Syndrome (symptoms include unmotivated decisions, rash behavior, and out-of-character antics) and lies to Dan about the whole thing for no good reason. Was I the only one having flashbacks of late-period O.C. here?
Thankfully, the show takes a break from the main plot for a goofy jaunt
to Oldsville, where Rufus is hanging out with none other than Lisa (pictured)
at their concert. Yes, the "Stay" songstress makes an actual
appearance. Pointless? Absolutely. But I'll take a Loeb cameo any day I
can get it. (I think "#1 Single" may still be buried somewhere in
the Series Record list on my DVR...) It's a short-but-sweet bit of
relief before the the rest of the episode rushes by in a blur. Lily
(who found the snuff tape after rifling through her daughter's clothes)
makes Serena apologize to the parents of the guy who died, but we don't
even get to see the moment when Serena must have confessed to her.
Georgina is forced by Vanessa to reveal her true identity to Dan, who
totally buys it when she says she changed her name to escape a crazy
ex. Lily kisses Rufus. And then Georgina seduces Dan, just to spite Serena. None of these
events has any real weight, and it feels a bit like the last 15 minutes
were edited down from what could have been a whole show right there.
Packing a lot of action into each episode has always been one of Gossip
Girl's strength, but it doesn't work when you feel like the characters
are just along for the ride.
What do you think, PopWatchers? Was the episode overstuffed? Was Serena's secret a letdown? Is Georgina already overstaying her welcome? And isn't it time for a bit more of Chuck and Nate?
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